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The
Institute
In 1985 the American Indian
Studies Research Institute (AISRI) was founded at Indiana
University to serve as an interdisciplinary research
center for projects focusing on the native peoples of
the Americas.  AISRI
was founded in part on the premise that language, culture,
and history are inextricably interrelated, and that
to fully understand and describe the language, culture,
or history of a people, a study of one of these topics
must be informed by work in the others.
The primary function of AISRI is to
provide the institutional structure necessary to carry
out research and educational projects, most of which
are funded by outside sources including the National
Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the
Humanities.
Current projects center around Plains
Indian languages, cultures, and history, and include
software development that enhances linguistic documentation,
analysis, and publication, as well as innovative instructional
media for teaching Native American languages. AISRI
also fosters publication of research results through
the journal Anthropological Linguistics and the series
"Studies in the Anthropology of North American
Indians," the latter published for AISRI by the
University of Nebraska Press.
The American Indian Studies Research
Institute is located in a two-story limestone house
built at the turn of the century, situated on the northwest
corner of the Bloomington campus. It stands in a quadrangle
flanked by the William H. Mathers Museum of World Cultures,
the Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology, the Center
for Research into the Anthropological Foundations of
Technology, and the Folklore Institute.
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