Indigenous Languages Initiative

The Indigenous Languages Initiative (ILI) at LLILAS Benson is focused on teaching, researching, promoting, and revitalizing Indigenous languages spoken in parts of Latin America. Classes are taught by experienced native speakers. ILI has offered classes in Maya K’iche’, Nahuatl, Quechua, and Mapuche languages. 

During the 2022–2023 academic year, Nahua scholar Eduardo de la Cruz Cruz (pictured above) taught two semesters of Nahuatl at the undergraduate and graduate levels.

ILI forefronts and seamlessly integrates scholarly research with the acquisition of linguistic and cultural competence. Based on the interests and intellectual strengths of native-speaker instructors and students, students in our classes regularly work with one-of-a-kind Indigenous language manuscripts and rare books held in the Benson Rare Books Collection, as well as written and sonic materials from AILLA (The Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America), housed at LLILAS Benson. Students can fulfill their requirement for Intermediate Proficiency in a foreign language with 12 credits of any of our Indigenous language offerings.

Along with our exceptional in-person programming, we also produce state-of-the-art open-access online instructional materials for Indigenous languages, currently in K’iche’ and Nahuatl, with Quechua coming soon.

• View the K'iche' materials
• View Nahuatl materials

Read more about our instructors in Portal at Indigenous Languages Thrive at UT Austin: Quechua, Nahuatl, and K'iche'.