Indigenous Languages

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Quick Wins

Changes you can easily implement to make a difference in your teaching and in the learning and experiences of your students

• Acknowledge the Indigenous Peoples and languages of the region: Consider adding a land acknowledgment (see the UCSD Intertribal Resource Center’s example, or use Native Land Digital to learn more about acknowledging the Indigenous Peoples of your region) in your course and highlight local Indigenous languages where possible
• Regularly incorporate examples from Indigenous languages: Illustrate as many concepts as possible with examples from Indigenous languages
• Use sources created by Indigenous authors: Center the perspectives of Indigenous scholars and community members in discussions of Indigenous Peoples
• Do not exoticize Indigenous languages: Avoid framing features of Indigenous languages as “deviating” from patterns in dominant languages
• Be mindful of the impact of endangerment rhetoric: Be explicit about the colonial forces driving language shift in discussions of vitality and avoid terms such as “extinct” or “dying” as this framing can undermine Indigenous revitalization and reclamation efforts
• Acknowledge language users and the social context of languages: Include information about the users of languages and their social context and culture to contextualize data drawn from Indigenous languages

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Bigger Impact

What more can be done to have a long-term, positive impact in your teaching and on your students’ learning and experiences in linguistics?

Suggestion #1: Incorporate a research project on an Indigenous language

Assign a scaffolded project where each student selects an Indigenous language to research for the term using sources such as descriptive grammars.

Why?

• Provides students with an opportunity to gain significant knowledge about an Indigenous language
• Teaches students to engage with scholarly sources
• Offers a way for students to contribute to the exchange of knowledge in class

How?

• Select a few topics of relevance to the course that students can explore in the language they select and consider making the topics broad enough or offering enough alternatives that students will easily be able to find information in their sources
• Design a set of assignments that build on one another over the course of the term (for example, a series of descriptions followed by a formal analysis or a series of short responses followed by a longer term paper) with the first assignment involving the student selecting a language and identifying the source(s) they will use (see this sample list of languages and grammars)
• Consider providing guidelines (see these sample instructions) about how to locate relevant information, especially if students will be working with genres of sources that may be unfamiliar to them, such as reference grammars or archival sources
• Incorporate opportunities in class for students to share what they’ve learned in their project and summarize or highlight relevant information from languages that students are working on

Suggestion #2: Acknowledge colonialism in academia and highlight Indigenous resistance, resilience, and reclamation

When discussing Indigenous Peoples, include information about the impacts of colonialism, including from within linguistics, but be sure to also emphasize the ways in which Indigenous Peoples have demonstrated resistance and continue to persist in the face of oppression.

Why?

• It is important to explicitly acknowledge the legacy of trauma and violence against Indigenous Peoples and to not overlook the role that the field of linguistics and academia more broadly has played in extractive colonialism
• Focusing only on narratives on oppression and violence can compound trauma, especially for students who themselves have experienced racialized trauma and violence
• Highlighting examples of resistance and resilience and focusing on reclamation and revalorization efforts emphasizes Indigenous survivance and combats damaging narratives of decline

How?

• Intentionally center the perspectives of Indigenous scholars, activists, and language users in discussions of Indigenous Peoples to allow their narratives to shape the conversation
• Discuss decolonial approaches to the study of Indigenous languages and to research with Indigenous Peoples more broadly
• Talk openly about past shortcomings and failures in the field of linguistics, and provide examples of collaborative and community-driven language research as a model for moving forward
• If you are a non-Indigenous educator, it is important to model an attitude of humility and emphasize a continual process of (un)learning in your own journey to understand how to engage in or with Indigenous language research

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Resources

Resisting rhetorics of language endangerment: Reclamation through Indigenous language survivance. Davis, Jenny L. 2018. In Leonard, Wesley Y. & Haley De Korne (eds.) Language Documentation and Description, vol 14: 37-58. London: EL Publishing.

Reflections on (de)colonialism in language documentation. Leonard, Wesley Y. 2018. In McDonnell, Bradley, Andrea L. Berez-Kroeker, and Gary Holton. (eds.) Reflections on Language Documentation 20 Years after Himmelmann 1998. Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication no. 15: 55-65. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.

Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (3rd ed.). Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 2021. London: Zed Books.