2025 Distinguished Alumnus Awardee – Richard Grounds

Alumni

Grounds (PhD 1995), a scholar, advocate, and Yuchi language revitalization leader, will receive the Distinguished Alumnus Award at the alumni awards luncheon during Reunion 2025.

The award honors his decades-long commitment to preserving Indigenous languages and cultures through scholarship, activism, and community leadership. Since earning his Ph.D. in the History of Religions from Princeton Seminary, Grounds has devoted his career to creating new Yuchi speakers and promoting global Indigenous language rights.

He has represented these issues at institutions around the world—from the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues to the World Council of Churches and the Smithsonian. As chair of the Global Indigenous Languages Caucus, he has been a leading voice for the U.N.’s International Year and upcoming Decade of Indigenous Languages.

Grounds sees this work as sacred. “Language is not just communication,” he has said. “It’s ceremony. It’s memory. It’s life.”