Timothy Powell: Forging Partnerships to Promote Native Languages, Culture

Timothy Powell’s ethnographic research has taken him to far reaches of the world to uncover what happens when the cultural stories that Native Americans told anthropologists hundreds of years ago are returned to indigenous communities today.

Powell is a senior lecturer in the Department of Religious Studies, a consulting scholar at the Penn Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, and director of a new initiative at Penn called Educational Partnerships with Indigenous Communities (EPIC) housed at the Penn Language Center.

For EPIC, Powell will build on his current research, working in partnership with community-based language teachers and elders in indigenous communities.

“Native Americans believe that partnerships should be reciprocal,” Powell says. “Reciprocity is a guiding principle in how they govern and do business.”

He says that giving back will be a central philosophy for EPIC.

“Tribes are sending their language teachers to Penn to teach our students,” says Powell. “In return, we are actively engaged in digital repatriation.”

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