Using the digital alphabet drawn by Juliet Shen, HWT has recently completed a new wood font of the Lushootseed alphabet. The font was used in the Tulalip Tribe’s Language Camp, you can learn more about Language camp here.
Wood type presents the opportunity for the tribe to interact with their language by printing using their own font. Letterpress printing for young people combines art, literature, technology, and literacy in ways that traditional classroom activities don't allow.
Lushootseed is a severely endangered Native American language of the Salish family. Native speakers on the Tulalip reservation were first introduced to a system for writing in the 1960s. Today there are fewer than a dozen native speakers and all are very elderly. The Tulalip Lushootseed Department is currently providing instruction to preschoolers through adults, with a mission of restoring the language to everyday use.
Check out this article about the project.
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