Mobilizing and Activating Haíɫzaqvḷa (Heiltsuk Language) and Culture Through a Community-University Partnership (original) (raw)
Related papers
Decolonizing the digital landscape: the role of technology in Indigenous language revitalization
AlterNative, 2021
Due to colonization and imperialism, Indigenous languages continue to be threatened and endangered. Resources to learn Indigenous languages are often severely limited, such as a lack of trained or proficient teachers. Materials which follow external standards or Western pedagogies may not meet the needs of the local community. One common goal for Indigenous language revitalization initiatives is to promote intergenerational language transmission and use in multiple social domains, such as the home. Could the use of technology assist in Indigenous language revitalization? And what would be its role? This article, emerging from ongoing research, aims to synthesize some key takeaways on the role of digital and online technologies in Indigenous language revitalization over the past three decades since the foundation of the World Wide Web in 1989. The article highlights how Indigenous communities, content creators, scholars and visionaries have contributed to an ongoing decolonization of the digital landscape.
McGill University, 2023
This manuscript-based thesis explores the role and impact of relational technology, strength-based language education, and community-led language planning and policy research in a pilot project to support Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation processes. Following an Indigenous research paradigm and decolonizing methodologies, this thesis introduces an immersive, community-led Indigenous language acquisition approach—TEK-nology (Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and technology)—to support Anishinaabemowin language revitalization and reclamation in the Canadian context. The purpose of the TEK-nology pilot project is to explore the practical application of a self-determined, technology-enabled language and knowledge acquisition approach rooted in Indigenous worldviews. This thesis offers three primary original contributions to the field of language education and language planning and policy at three interconnected and interdisciplinary levels of analysis and praxis: (1) TEK-nology as a language acquisition and knowledge transmission approach; (2) Dùthchas, a Scottish Gaelic kincentric methodology for community-led research in-relation praxis; and (3) TEK-nology as online community-based language planning. The research demonstrates: (1) the potential and impact of grounding language acquisition and knowledge transmission in Indigenous worldviews, relational technology use, and strength-based language acquisition indicators; (2) ways in which researchers who are not Indigenous to the lands on which they work can collaborate in a more ethical and mutually beneficial manner with Indigenous Peoples and communities; and (3) ways in which federal and provincial language education planning and policy could be improved to address inequities and marginalization of Indigenous Peoples in the educational system. The community-led TEK-nology pilot project has implications for more equitable and self-determined language education, language planning and policy research, and community-led methods and methodologies. The TEK-nology approach and pilot project demonstrates that community-led, relational technology and immersive, strength-based Indigenous language acquisition can support Anishinaabemowin language revitalization and reclamation and foster more equitable multicultural and multilingual education practice and policy in the Canadian context. The research also illustrates how TEK-nology, as an online self-determined site of praxis and community-based language planning model, can inform more community-led, technology-enabled Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation initiatives worldwide and more equitable language policies and legislation at a territorial, provincial, and federal level. Finally, the implications of Dùthchas as in-relation methodology and kincentric praxis can inform ways in which researchers can foster, improve, and uphold emplaced ethical and mutually respectful Indigenous—non-Indigenous to Turtle Island (research) relations.
Designing Indigenous Language Revitalization
Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in education. Situated within this gap, Mary Hermes, Megan Bang, and Ananda Marin consider the role of education for Indigenous languages and frame specific questions of Ojibwe revitalization as a part of the wider understanding of the context of community, language, and Indigenous knowledge production. Through a retrospective analysis of an interactive multimedia materials project, the authors present ways in which design research, retooled to fit the need of communities, may inform language revitalization efforts and assist with the evolution of community-based research design. Broadly aimed at educators, the praxis described in this article draws on community collaboration, knowledge production, and the evolution of a design within Indigenous language revitalization.
Language and Linguistics Compass, 2012
In this article, Hermes brings together literature from disparate areas to give a perspective of indigenous language revitalization and documentation efforts in the United States as situated in the context of global revitalization. Much of the narrative surrounding indigenous languages has been dominated by the idea of language death. In stark contrast to the picture of impending doom, the author brings attention to long-standing efforts of change characterized by community building and collaboration with academics across disciplines, cultures, and ideologies. In this narrative of change, indigenous languages are central to a sustainable future rather than relics from a dying past. Reversing language shift efforts on behalf of the inter-generational mother-tongue transmission is community building, that is what is essentially required, in and through the beloved language.
Elders’ Conversations: Perspectives on Leveraging Digital Technology in Language Revival
The Open/Technology in Education, Society, and Scholarship Association Journal
In First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) communities, Elders are highly regarded as intergenerational transmitters of ancestral language and Indigenous knowledge. Without language revival initiatives, ancestral languages in FNMI communities are at risk of extinction. Leveraging digital technologies while collaborating with Elders can support revival initiatives. Through semi-structured interviews and qualitative analysis, this study addresses how three Elders who use technology in their ancestral language teaching (1) describe the benefits, drawbacks, and preferences of technology; (2) reveal the accuracy with which cultural knowledge is imparted through technology; and (3) view the impact of technology on their role as traditional knowledge keepers and intergenerational language transmitters Findings suggest that while Elders acknowledge the benefits of leveraging digital tools in language revival initiatives, they are concerned about technology’s potential negative impacts on rel...
Technology and Indigenous Language Revitalization
Indigenous or minority languages around the world have been making use of computer technology for over twenty years now (Zimmerman, Zimmerman, Bruguier, 2000; Warschauer, 1997). Computers have provided improvements upon earlier technologies in efforts to revitalize these languages not only because of the way they can combine audio, text, video and hyperlinks, but also because they release these languages from the notion that they belong in a hermetically sealed past and bring them into a modern context (Warschauer, 1998; McHenry, 2002; Galla, 2009). It is this motivational force that is perhaps the strongest feature of computers in Indigenous Language Revitalization (ILR) efforts, because while technology can help, a living language requires face-to-face communication happening between people (Villa, 2002; Hermes and King, 2013). This paper will discuss how computer technology is being employed in ILR and the conditions that need to be in place for technology to help revitalize not only dying languages, but those already extinct.
Community collaborations: best practices for North American indigenous language documentation
International Journal of The Sociology of Language, 2008
This article describes a collaborative project for language documentation involving the North American indigenous languages of Mohave and Chemehuevi. We define the essential elements of field methods and of project design while proposing a basic model for collaborative community-based projects in language documentation. Our recommendations apply to community-based projects in North American indigenous communities; however, we anticipate that they will be extendable worldwide to others working in the field of language documentation.
Resounding the clarion call: Indigenous language learners and documentation
2017
In this paper we discuss a five-year Ojibwemowin documentation and description project and illustrate how we adapted the documentation agenda in response to reclamation goals, in particular, with an eye to the needs of language learners. The science of documentation no longer stops at preservation; the groundswell of demand for respect for the intellectual and linguistic rights of Indigenous peoples must be considered. There is a call to action by and for speakers of Indigenous endangered languages, although how that action should occur is often unclear. This project offers one case to illustrate the negotiation of relationships among participants who held multiple roles (Elders/speakers, applied linguists, advanced language learners – many are tribal and community members and some work for universities) to show how consideration of Indigenous peoples’ intellectual and linguistic rights can shape a documentation project for language reclamation. We critically examine the processes a...