AISRI research activities focus around
several major, interrelated topical areas:
- Language documentation
- Culture history
- Music
- Material culture
Within these topical areas specific
projects deal with languages and cultures throughout
North America, but most focus on central and northern
Plains peoples.
Editorial projects that make the
results of research widely available to scholars,
tribal members, and the general public is one of the
primary goals of AISRI. Publication of important documents,
employing the highest standard of historical editing,
is a major focus. Throughout the history of the study
of American Indians, Indians and non-Indians alike
have recorded a vast range of descriptive material—ethnographic,
historical, and linguistic—that has remained
unpublished in archives. Preparation of those materials
for publication requires interdisciplinary skills,
drawing on the concepts and methods of anthropology,
history, and linguistics, to make those documents
optimally useful for understanding the American Indian
past.
