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Indigenous Uprising
informing and archiving the social justice and sovereignty movements of indigenous people from around the world
Research
Indigenous Language Revitalization
The revitalization of Indigenous languages has long been of interest to me. I have very personal ties to the success of Indigenous peoples who are working to protect their sacred languages. I have been working with my people, the Menominee, to teach the young basic phrases and conversational Menominee. This project has helped me to focus on the important resources that are out there and has given me a foundation to start deeper research into the worlds of language revitalization processes and funding.
Indigenous language revitalization is a very tricky process because of the diversity of languages as well as the difficulties that some communities have accessing information on the Internet. Some of these communities may still be accessing the Internet using a dial-up connection, if they can access it at all. This may pose problems for the use of this web page by community members. This may have to become purely a personal reference for my own studies and a foundation for future work for other Indigenous communities. I am hoping that I will be able to create a more accessible web page with these resources.
I always ask myself before writing a paper or starting a project, "Who is my audience?" Am I writing this for myself, for my teacher, for my people? The communities that this information is meant for may have trouble deciphering the data collected and tagged. I had a lot of difficulty trying to make sense of the way in which cataloging terms applied to websites. The terms themselves are very confusing and I am afraid I may have to spend more time trying to explain what these tables are and what they contain than utilizing these resources for the advancement of my people through our Menominee language. So my next thought was how exactly do I take this information I have collected and present it in a way that anyone young or old, educated or not, may access it.
That being said, I think my research into valid websites dedicated to Indigenous Language Revitalization was sucessful. I tried to find a wide variety of knowledge on language protection, documentation, grant resources, and ideas for growth. I did find more resources than needed for this project and this is only a sample of some of the best. I would like to expand this to include the other sources and maybe add another category that would include a personal analysis of the content with an Indigenous perspective and audience in mind.
Teaching Indigenous Languages Identifier:
http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_Contents.html Description:
Teaching Indigenous Languages contains a selection of papers presented at the Fourth Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium "Sharing Effective Language Renewal Practices" held at Northern Arizona University (NAU) on May 1, 2, and 3, 1997. This conference brought together nearly three hundred indigenous language experts, teachers, and community activists to share information on how indigenous languages can best be taught at home and at school. Subject:
LCSH: Indians of North America--Languages--Study and teaching. 1997 Edited by Jon Reyhner Northern Arizona University Copyright © 1997 by Northern Arizona University.
ISBN 0-9624990-3-X
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 97-75530
Reprinting and copying on a nonprofit basis is hereby allowed with proper identification of the source.Event; Text; Collection Text/html English IsPartOf: Northern Arizona University's Web Server Fourth Annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium
Bilingual Reseach Journal Volume 16 1992