Several focal points for southwestern American Indian English research are proposed. This variation is used on reservations or in urban Indian enclaves when the "Indianness" of the discussion or participants needs formal linguistic marking. One research goal is to demonstrate that tribal varieties of Indian English actually exist. Analysis shows that Indian English grammatical and phonological structures are often replications of the Indian language detail. American Indian English may have had a fairly recent origin in federal boarding schools where only English could be spoken in classrooms and dormitories by the Indian students of various tribes. A second area for research is the idea that current American Indian English dialects vary predictably according to the native language rules. Dialects of American Indian English contain grammatical features common to other nonstandard dialects, such as Black English. Testing is underway to determine whether the dialect factors arise from similar motivations. Another research project is a study of the Indian English patterns within a given community to yield information about both grammatical structures in the Indian language and first-language interference in learning standard English. A final research area is the need for educational techniques and policy to develop diglossic fluency in both standard and American Indian English. (CHK)