Tributes

Gratitude Expressed by Fellows

I wish to express my sincere thanks to your foundation for supporting our efforts. Without your help, it would be very challenging to continue our work documenting endangered local traditions. Meanwhile, resettlement, mechanization, electricity, compulsory state education, etc. proceed apace, wiping away the vast majority of the local traditions once found in this area. Simultaneously, local values continue to emphasize monastic and other institutional forms of culture, and therefore the vernacular traditions such as those documented by our project over the past twelve months typically disappear without a trace. Much has been irretrievably lost, and much remains to be done.
Gerald Roche

 

I would like to offer my deepest thank[s] to you all for having a such chance for people [who] want to preserve their endangered cultures and languages.
Yina Jody

 

Two weeks ago I finished editing our film ‘Voices from the Tundra – The last of the Yukagir’ and participated [in] a festival in Petersburg where last Saturday we won the most important award! Obviously, the making of the film was also possible thanks to the generous support of the Firebird Foundation!
Edwin Trommelen

 

Thank you once again for your support and understanding the urgency and importance of this work.
Ambika Aiyadurai

 

Thank you very much for the grant. I am very grateful as it will enable collection of texts which would otherwise have been impossible. I would also like to express my sincere thanks to you for establishing your Foundation and for supporting work like mine. I feel I often have to justify my work in meaningless ways as it will contribute to this or that theory, when I feel it is much more important to simply record the genius of my tribe before it disappears from the Earth completely.
Yankee Modi

 

Many thanks for the notification of the result of my application. To me, it is really a great joy though it is also a big challenge. This project is of great importance to the local people and they value it a lot. It is really my greatest pleasure to know you all and to work with you all through this project funded by the Firebird Foundation.
Sihong Zhang

 

I want to thank you again, from the bottom of my heart for having helped me to spend time with these wonderful and fascinating people in the amazing forests. I am so grateful for your support and all I have learned. I feel I have become well educated and can now really begin some serious, well-informed, well-connected study of the indigenous medicine and mysticism of the Amazonian people.
Jillian Stansbury

 

It has been more than a pleasure working with such an enthusiastic colleague...The work has been fascinating and even exhilarating and I should tell you that I have received some very positive feedback from the people in Rajasthan about the work on the Pabuji epic, which means that it must have struck a chord. I very much appreciate the fact that you took the time to publish the paper on the Rajasthani textiles and I know that many scholars of oral tradition would be fascinated to see what all your grants have produced and read the results of the research you have fostered.
Elizabeth Wickett

 

Fortunately, generous funding support from the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research (USA) has now made it possible to carry out the extensive research needed to properly record and document the verses. The kind assistance of the organisation has enabled the detailed recording of the elements of this rich narrative, which otherwise might well have simply faded from memory in the face of modernisation. For this, I deeply express my gratitude.
Yonten Dargye

 

As you could image, I am really thrilled to learn that my project has been approved and I would like to express my enormous gratitude to your Foundation for accepting to fund this project which is very personal to me. Once again, I am really grateful for the chance you just gave me to contribute significantly to both my language and my culture!
Mamadou Bassene

 

With sincerity of heart I write to appreciate you for believing in me and all that I stand for.
Ayo Bakare

 

This is such an honor, and I am happy to receive this great news! Thank you so much for your understanding of the importance of this work, and for your generous support.
Sunmin Yoon

 

We are really happy to work with you and deeply touched by your generous support.

Rinchenkhar

 

It is to my great pleasure and honor receiving this fellowship and the results of which will have unprecedented importance to the Shabu in particular and Ethiopia in general.
Amare Fentaw

 

I am very glad to know this information and also showing my gratitude to you for showing extreme interest in my work.
Lourembam Surjit Singh

 

Greetings and regards. Thank you very much for your kind and encouraging words. Thank you also, for the inputs/proposal that I broaden the scope for the project and for sharing the information and the guidelines for [the] applicationthis will help me enrich the application. I am motivated by your kind words.
Olekaunga Johnson

 

What wonderful news for me, and for this project. My sincerest gratitude to the Foundation for its support.
Hannah Binzen-Lincoln Wild

 

I would like to thank the Firebird Fellowship Committee for having considered my application worthy [of] funding by Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research. I also thank you for providing me with the literature related to the work with which Firebird is involved. I hope that if this research goes on as anticipated, I will be able to carry out a major project of documenting traditional ecological knowledge of a number of ethnic tribes in Uganda.
Kizza Mukasa Jackson

 

Many thanks for your careful reading of my report and for your thoughts on various aspects of the ongoing Nungon Oral Literature collection project! I also very much appreciate your appending the references on ethnobotanical and ethnozoological classification. Thank you again for all your support, and for the honest musings on my latest update.
Hannah Sarvasy

 

I am really very grateful that the Firebird Foundation has found it possible to approve my proposal.
Maksim Chistotin

 

Without your support I would be paralyzed to complete this documentation project. [The] oral literature of Tagin are seriously endangered as Tagin people are eschewing their language, oral literature and culture.
Kepor Mara

 

Your support is very important to minority languages in the world (such as the case of languages in Bhutan). I hope you could contribute to save Oral Literatures from minority languages to Vietnam as well. Thank you very much for your support to the Êðê Oral Literature project. The fund from the Firebird Foundation is very important to us as this is the first Êðê documentation project we planned on. Our project [would] not be possible without your support. Thank you!
Tam Nguyen

 

Many thanks for raising those important points. Your words reflect the inspiring passion you have for the subject.
Francis Merlin Franco

 

First of all, I would like to inform you that I am very happy to be engaged in this project. I think I have been undergoing very important work. In this regard, I really would like to acknowledge you and your institution.
Hom Yamphu

 

First, your foundation's work is not only impressive but a real breath of fresh air when it comes to funding the collection and preservation of oral traditions. The sad situation is that most third world nations that contain these traditions cannot themselves fund their preservation. As you suggest, the role of outside researchers and agencies is to mostly empower local scholars and performers to collect and preserve their own verbal arts.
Bob Cancel

 

...I would like to offer my deepest thank[s] to you all for having such [a] chance for people [who] want to preserve their endangered cultures and languages.
G.yu Lha

 

To me, it is really a great joy though it is also a big challenge. This project is of great importance to the local people and they value it a lot. I will release this good news to the local team soon and I am quite sure that they are very grateful to you for supporting this project.

 

I am writing back to you to express my sincere thanks and gratitude for enabling me to carry out my research on the oral literature of Thadou through your generous grant. At last, I am in a position to do something for my language because of you. May God bless the foundation.
Pauthang Haokip

 

I am very pleased and honored to hear that my project on "Narratives on Ethnomorphosis..." has been approved by the grants committee of the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research. Thank you very much for the appreciation and confidence you have for my research proposal and for my planned work. This award is simply vital for my possibilities of continuing to do anthropological research in these sad and difficult times.

 

Indeed, I believe oral literature to play a very important role in contemporary processes of preserving or revitalizing one's ethnic identity and attachments - especially among ethnic minorities. Let me express here my deep gratitude to the Firebird Foundation for Anthropological Research, and personally to you, for the generous support offered to my work.
Marin Constantin

 

Thank you so much for your financial support towards the creation of our Tsilhqot'in Picture Dictionary. This extra fund was necessary to complete this project.
Linda R. Smith

 

I would like first of all to express my thanks to your foundation. We are so happy to see now that important parts of the Uyghur dastan collected. Moreover, these narratives will be archived and preserved for future generations of Uyghurs, as well as researchers and scholars from around the world, to learn from and enjoy.
Rahile Dawut

 

This is indeed an important contribution and is greatly appreciated. The sum awarded also offers the opportunity to have trainees in the project and to involve other speakers, so discourses about the stories told and the occasional prompting or response by fluent listeners can be made part of the documentation. Undoubtedly, there will be a positive affect in the community.
Henry Kammler

 

 

 

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Tributes