Indigenous Language Education in Critical Times

Voices of Community Reclamation in the Americas

Julieta Briseño-Roa, Paulina Griño, Vanessa Anthony-Stevens, Jose Antonio Flores Farfan, José Antonio Flores Farfan, José Antonio Flores Farfán, Paulina Griñó

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781800418387
• eBook ISBN: 9781800418417
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Sociolinguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This book builds a space in which a diversity of voices – Indigenous teachers, activists and committed academics – are foregrounded in the processes of Indigenous education with the goal of Indigenous language reclamation. It decenters state systems of education (e.g. schooling) and instead considers the efforts of teachers (defined broadly), community activists and scholars who are developing initiatives to support Indigenous language practices in, around and beyond schooling, thereby emphasizing diverse processes of language reclamation in complex and varied settings. The authors invite the reader to reconsider language reclamation in the face of climate change and neocolonial exploitation, offering a source of radical hope for the future. Central to the book are narratives regarding community-based collaborations, which subvert the asymmetrical power relations between academia and educational practitioners and activists, and call into question the categories constructed by a top-down approach, as well as the colonial relationships that linguistic anthropology and linguistics have constructed within the spaces and people they 'study'.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Map
• Foreword: Weaving Indigenous Words and Worlds and the Work of Everyday Hope
• Introduction
• Part 1: Narratives of Reclamation: Lifework and Learning in Dialogue
• 1 ‘We Are Not Going to Be Who We Were Meant to Be if We Don’t Speak Our Language’: A Dialogue with Language Educators
• 2 Nunayaagvi?mi itut Uvlumini in Anchorage: A Conversation about Language Revitalization and Reciprocal Research Practices
• 3 Reclamation of Language, Stories, Relationship to the Land: Niimíipuu Female as a Storyteller
• Poem: Nchií NaáKuú/¿Quién soy?/Who am I?
• Part 2: Pedagogies and Practices of Indigenous Language Reclamation in and around Schools
• 4 Communal Education, Existence of Shared Autonomy
• 5 Experiences and Spaces of Opportunity for Work with the Ngigua Language
• 6 The Use of Indigenous Languages in Community-Based Indigenous Education in Oaxaca, Mx
• 7 Toward a Methodology of Urban Indigenous Youth Language Learning
• Poem: Gidro’ Lihdxan/Placenta
• Part 3: Redefining Language Learning in Diverse Spaces and Modes
• 8 Nlt’éégo bénáldiih: The Dissemination of Ndee Epistemology in Contemporary Times
• 9 Reconnecting to Homelands through Digital Storywork
• 10 Learning from Narratives: Life Stories of Indigenous Students in Chilean Graduate Science Programs as Voices of Advocacy for University Space Reclamation
• 11 Reflections and Actions on Linguistic Resistance in Formal and Informal Spaces as a Proposal for Decolonization in Wallmapu/Wajmapu
• Poem: Kuú teku/Ser de colores/Being of Colours
• Epilogue