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Jerome Viles

Biography

Jerome Viles (Chee-me’, Lower Chinook) is enrolled at the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. He was born and raised in Eugene, Oregon where he lives with his partner and child. Jerome has been engaged in language revitalization efforts for his ancestral languages of Nuu-wee-ya’ (Oregon Dene) and Chinuk Wawa for nearly a decade. He received a B.A. in Linguistics and a M.A. in Nonprofit Management, both from the University of Oregon to aid in his language revitalization work.

Jerome specializes in archival language research and works with members of his family and community to bring language from archives back into daily use. Since 2016, he has worked as part of a community research team at the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) to build a digital archive of Nuu-wee-ya’ historical language materials. These efforts have been supported through partnership with the Myaamia Center. This partnership resulted in his team’s creation of the Nuu-da’ Mv-ne’ Digital Archive hosted on the Myaamia Center’s Indigenous Languages Digital Archive (ILDA) platform. Jerome is currently with the Myaamia Center as the National Breath of Life Archives Development Trainer, working to provide ILDA to other Native American communities engaged in archives-based language revitalization.