The NAMA degree program is oriented towards community language activists who wish to train in the kinds of skills and experience needed to work on maintaining, revitalizing, and documenting their native languages. Students interested in NAMA can either be speakers or second language learners of their language, or ones who have studied a particular Native American language and have close contact with that language community. The specialized nature of this degree focuses on indigenous languages and meeting the needs of Native American communities: due to the rapid decline in the use of heritage languages tribal communities have pressed for practical linguistic training to:<br><br>revitalize, maintain, and document indigenous languages,<br>provide skills and expertise for Native American linguists to develop teaching grammars and other educational materials,<br>promote understanding of indigenous peoples' educational issues at every level of policy making,<br>enhance and promote understanding of complex factors leading to language choice, language shift and language loss, and,<br>work with archival media (such as audio legacy audio recordings and historical documents) to enrich the language record and to produce viable teaching materials<br><br>The NAMA program is designed to be completed in as little as 15 months, and begins as a summer admit program: during the first summer session the student completes coursework in the AILDI. Here they focus on language materials development, working with language archives, teaching methods, and other relevant Native American language and linguistics topics.