Cornell Yao Project

Investigator: 

Greg Green, Echols Collection, Kroch Library

Collection Type: 

Preservation Fund

Year: 

2014

The material for this proposal comes from a Cornell project in Thailand in the 1970’s called the “Cornell Yao Project.” The project was run by Richard Cushman and Herbert Purnell, and focused on the Yao, now known as Mien, people in Thailand. The collection consists of over one hundred unique reel-to-reel audio recordings of the three primary Mien languages: ritual language, everyday language and song language. The recordings are of great historical, cultural, and linguistic value, and are absolutely unique.