Ray Huaute

Ray Huaute
Core Faculty
Assistant Professor
Linguistics | Language documentation and description, Native American language reclamation, language vitality and rekindlement, Indigenous and community-based linguistic research, California Indian languages and cultures, technology and Indigenous language revitalization
Office: Haines Hall 396
Email: ray.huaute@ucla.edu
Biography
Ray Huaute is an assistant professor in the American Indian Studies Department at UCLA. He received his Ph.D. in Linguistics at UC San Diego in 2023, and is a former University of California President’s Postdoctoral Fellow (2023-2025). His research examines the ways in which linguistic research can be leveraged for language reclamation and revitalization, and how Indigenous Research Methodologies and Indigenous ways of knowing can be integrated into linguistic science. He is also interested in critical discourse analysis of contemporary and historical language used in association with language documentation and language loss, the use of Indigenous signed languages (Plains Indian Sign Language) for second language acquisition, and how technology can be utilized for Indigenous language revitalization.
Dr. Huaute was awarded an Endangered Language Documentation Programme grant in 2019 to support his linguistic fieldwork on the Desert dialect of Cahuilla spoken on the Torres Martinez Desert Cahuilla Indian Reservation in Southern California. He is also a member of Natives4Linguistics (a special interest group of the Linguistic Society of America), and a board member for the non-profit group Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS).
Education
Ph.D. (2023) Linguistics; University of California, San Diego
M.A. (2014) Native American Linguistics; University of Arizona
B.A. (2011) Native American Studies; University of California, Riverside