With the generous help from people who contributed to my Light for Limol campaign, the Ende Language Team was able to bring in 120 solar lanterns and 2 water rollers for Limol! We will be bringing more in on future trips, but for now enjoy this photo of all the mothers in Limol with their new solar lanterns. Feeling very grateful to be a part of something that means so much to the people of Limol.

Another enormously successful field trip to Limol in the books. I learned so much, not just about the language, but about what it means to be kind, generous, and selfless, Ende qualities that abound in KT village. This picture is of me and "the boys" who make this crazy dictionary/grammar/corpus thing happen! Jeff, Joshua, Warama, Tonny, and Jerry far right. Couldn't do what I do without their hard work and awesome attitudes!​

Today, I take off for beautiful Australia for a year of fieldwork and collaboration at the Australian National University! It was a tough decision to take a year "off" and leave home but I know that I need this year to understand the Ende language well enough to do it justice in my dissertation.

Spent the weekend down in Virginia getting my Wilderness First Aid certificate! I learned so much information and also how much I have still to learn but I feel more confident that I can help someone in an emergency. Will put this patch on my first aid kit for PNG ​

I am happy to announce that I will be moving to DC for the summer on an invited visiting scholarship at my alma mater, American University. I will be hosted by the Department of World Languages and Cultures. I'm so grateful to my undergraduate advisor Professor Naomi Baron for making this happen.
​While at AU, I will be preparing for this year's fieldtrip back to Limol and beginning to write my dissertation.

​I am very happy to report that I have been awarded support from the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research. They have accepted my proposal to collect and annotate the Ende spoken corpus and expand the Ende dictionary and grammar. Their support will go directly toward this important documentation task that has been requested directly by the Ende speaking community. I feel very honored to have their support and look forward to sharing this with Limol. 

​Today, I received the wonderful news that my proposal to continue research on the phonology and morphology of the Ende verb was accepted by the Stanford Vice Provost for Education Diversity Dissertaiton Research Opportunity fund. This grant will support travel and equipment fees related to my dissertation.

​I learned today that the Stanford Graduate Research Opportunity fund accepted my proposal to continue field research on the phonology and morphology of the Ende verb. Their generous support will support travel and equipment fees related to my dissertation.

​On May 6, I completed my first 100-mile bike ride - the Wine Country Century - to raise awareness for my Light for Limol campaign. During the month of April, I shared videos and stories about life in Limol, where solar powered lanterns and water rollers will make a big difference in the lives of Ende speakers. My goal was to raise $1000 to bring 2 water rollers and 40 solar lanterns - one lantern for every house in Limol. My friends and family went above and beyond to support me and as of May 6, we raised $2025 for Limol! This money will go to 4 water rollers and 80 solar lanterns, which will be shared between the villages of Limol and Malam.

Our second trip to Limol was an amazing success.

​Our research team included Grace Maher, Diana Johnson, Elizabeth Conlan, Catherine Scanlon, and Gwynn Lyons.

Expanding the Ende Oral Literature Collection

Dear George Appell and the Firebird Foundation Fellowship Committee,

I am excited to bring you more fantastic news regarding the Ende Oral Literature Collection, a project graciously funded by the Firebird Foundation in 2015. I have previously informed you about the overwhelming success of our 2015 trip in letters and with the materials that we sent to the Firebird Foundation Archive, also summarized below. The Ende people of Limol, Papua New Guinea were also very pleased with the project and have attached their signatures below in support of its continuation.

The present proposal seeks to expand last year’s goals, which were to record Ende traditional stories, establish an Ende orthography, and explore the range of Ende orature. This year, I’m bringing two more specialists to enhance my linguistic expertise. The first, Diana Johnson, is an illustrator, storyteller, nurse with Doctors Without Borders, experienced project coordinator, and an avid outdoorswoman, who plans to apply all her skills to writing and illustrating the first short books for the local elementary school and health post. Second, Elizabeth Conlan is a horticultural scientist with expertise in plant anatomy, physiology, and nutrition, international agriculture, and rural development. Her aim is to understand how storytelling and traditional knowledge can inform both our knowledge of the role of agricultural crops in the community and the natural sciences more broadly. Finally, I will be exploring a question of interest to my linguistics dissertation: does the act of writing down spoken language reveal a hyper-correct grammar? Ende is the perfect language for this study, as we can document the progression of the two diverging grammars (what can be said and what can be written), from the origins of writing itself.

Continued support from the Firebird Foundation ensures this project’s success and allows for a continuity of materials and focus. We foresee a long-term relationship with this community and we are grateful for your support.

With gratitude,

Kate L. Lindsey
Diana L. Johnson
Elizabeth Conlan

The Stanford Storytelling Project is an arts program at Stanford University that explores how we live in and through stories and, even more importantly, how to deepen our lives through our own storytelling. Our mission is to promote the transformative nature of traditional and modern oral storytelling, from Lakota tales to Radiolab, and empower students to create and perform their own stories. The project sponsors courses, workshops, live events, and grants. In 2012, we created a new radio show, State of the Human, where we share stories that deepen our understanding of single, common human experiences—fighting, giving, lying, resilience—all drawn from the experiences and research of the Stanford community.


Three Braden Storytelling Grants are given annually to research and create an audio documentary based on oral history archives or interviews.

I have been offered a Braden Storytelling Grant for my project, "Telling an Ende Story." This will benefit the fieldwork that I will do this summer on the Ende language in Papua New Guinea.

It was a real privilege to be a part of Dr. Sarah Ogilvie's fantastic new course at Stanford titled "Endangered Languages and Language Revitalization". Not only are the students incredibly engaged and excited by the material, but the discussions are profound, as they draw from their amazingly diverse backgrounds. After we read Himmelmann's 1998 paper on the difference between documentary and descriptive fieldwork, I presented two case studies of very different fieldwork experiences: my work on Chuvash (descriptive) and on Idi (documentary). My slides are included below.