The American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) has provided effective training of Native American language educators, practitioners and researchers from across the U.S., Canada, South America, and various parts of the world. Since the establishment of AILDI, its primary mission has been to advocate Indigenous language rights and to ensure linguistic and cultural diversity.

AILDI was founded in 1978 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The proposal was drafted by Lucille Watahomigie, Hualapai educator and language activist and Dr. Leanne Hinton, linguist, from the University of California, Berkeley. The first institute was held in San Diego, California and consisted of representatives from the Yuman language family. This group consisted of parents, elders, linguists and bilingual educators. They gathered to share linguistic and cultural knowledge of their communities, to obtain linguistic educational training, to develop Native language educational materials for effective transmission of their knowledge to younger members of their communities. The institute has grown to include a wide range of languages and cultures, and its faculty members come from different parts of the country with rich experience working with indigenous language communities.