A 2024 Anthem Awards winner for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (Awareness & Media category)

Through art photography and prose, this book addresses the fragility, beauty, and cultural value of preserving endangered languages, particularly Indigenous languages, at a time when Indigenous and diversity issues are at the forefront of our national conversations.

In a groundbreaking project turned into a national touring exhibition,
endangered-language speaker, poet, and photojournalist B. A. Van Sise
worked with endangered-language speakers, learners, and revitalizers
across three years and an entire continent to showcase some of the
natural beauties of their languages and lands, highlighting, in
particular, American diversity and its many Indigenous
communities.

Augmented by nine contributors from diverse cultural
groups, On the National Language is a journey into both the challenges
and opportunities faced by revitalization efforts, as well as a
testament to the beauty and poetry of these many languages themselves.By B. A. Van Sise and Contributions by Crisosto Apache, DeLanna Studi, and dg okpikB. A. Van Sise is an author and photographic artist focused on the intersection between language and the visual image. He is the author of two previous monographs: Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry and Invited to Life: After the Holocaust. He is a New York State Council on the Arts fellow, a two-time PX3 award winner, winner of the Lascaux Prize for Nonfiction, and an IPPY gold medalist.74 color imagesThe Poetry of Americas Endangered Tongues74 color images