Indigenous Language Education Research Articles

Language, artificial education, and future-making in indigenous language education

ABSTRACT This paper examines how language-based artificial intelligence is envisaged to imagine new futures for indigenous languages. It draws on the visions, programmes, and plans of six language initiatives that are developing language technology for often-marginalised indigenous, tribal, and minority (ITM) languages, such as Gondi, Maithili, Rajasthani and Mundari, in India. We note three distinct discourses: (1) technological optimism in utilising these new opportunities by claiming space for otherwise-marginalised languages, (2) the imperative for collaborative and collective work in order to address sparse datasets, and (3) the need to negotiate the contested nature of imagining a new collective future. This paper argues that indigenous language technology is not just a technical project but a contested process of subverting linguistic hierarchy through the ‘active presencing’ of these languages. Overall, the paper emphasizes the need for a nuanced approach that recognizes the interplay between technology, language education, and broader social and political factors.

Relationality in online Indigenous language courses

ABSTRACT This article considers ways Indigenous Peoples enact relational epistemologies in online Indigenous language courses which support Indigenous language education. We give an overview of popular platforms and their key features, including audio, images, video, text-based instruction, and assessment. Based on our reviews of Indigenous language courses, we discuss how course creators used these features to enact relational epistemologies. Audio represented the voices of learners and speakers across generations. Images, whether photographs or graphics, offered visual representations of community life and cultural teachings. Videos showed interactions between community members engaged in cultural activities and shared stories. Text-based instruction wove together grammar teaching with culture. Some communities have also pushed against the rigid conventions of formal assessment to prepare learners through culturally appropriate measures. Through the intentional use of the course features, community-led Indigenous language courses are centering relational epistemologies and decolonizing digital language learning spaces.

Migrant bilingual youth, family, and school language policy: ethnographic insights for urban Quechua education

Abstract In this paper, I draw on the ethnography of language planning and policy to consider how urban Indigenous language education might benefit from understanding the meanings and processes behind other language planning and policy activities migrant youth participate in, specifically, family language policymaking activities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted in the region of Cusco, Perú I examine the experiences of two youth from rural hometowns and of their families. My analysis discusses how family language policies influenced youth’s shifting repertoires towards and away from Quechua, how youth drew on their Quechua–Spanish bilingualism to act as family language policy agents guided by local crianza and raciolinguistic ideologies, and how youth experienced Quechua language education in urban high schools. I argue that urban Quechua education efforts need to consider how migrant youth experience and shape their bilingualism and that of their families across rural-urban continua in order to craft safe and meaningful spaces where youth can participate in the strengthening of their Quechua language practices and identities.

“You Should Know the Name of the Wind Where You Live”—Relationality and Relational Accountability in Indigenous-Language Education

This article explores relationality and relational accountability in Indigenous education, contextualizing these processes within a current US-wide study of Indigenous-language immersion (ILI) schooling. With the goals of promoting language and culture revitalization alongside education equity, self-determination, and community well-being, ILI exemplifies a form of holistic education. The teacher’s quote that gives title to this article speaks to the multifaceted relationality at the heart of ILI, expressing Indigeneity as being in relationship with each other, place, and the more-than-human world. These relations are given meaning through the Indigenous language. Situating our analysis within a paradigm of storywork, we present the storied vignettes of parents, teachers, school leaders, and youth at diverse ILI schools. We provide a comparative analysis, drawing out the implications for Indigenous education and for schooling more generally, asking, How might a focus on relationality enable schools to be more responsive, respectful, and reciprocally engaged with their students, families, and communities?

Sustaining and revitalizing Indigenous languages in Oklahoma public schools: educational sovereignty in language policy and planning

ABSTRACT As Indigenous scholars committed to Indigenous education in Oklahoma, we use a decolonizing approach to consider how the 39 Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma assert educational sovereignty to sustain Indigenous high school students’ linguistic and cultural identities. Seeking to promote education models that sustain and revitalize Indigenous languages, we ask: 1) How do Indigenous Nations in Oklahoma engage in language planning and liberate educational sovereignty through policies, programs, and services to their high school students? and 2) How do Indigenous Nations navigate Oklahoma state education language-in-education policies that may support or restrict Indigenous language education in public high schools? We consider the function of Oklahoma public high school classrooms as sites of Indigenous language revitalization and reclamation. We discuss how Indigenous educational sovereignty to support language revitalization occurs in interaction with overlapping and often competing language-in-education policies imposed by the state of Oklahoma. A goal of this article is to share knowledge with Indigenous Nations, educators, and policy makers who are involved in language planning. We conclude with recommendations of ways to support culturally sustaining and revitalizing education models for Indigenous students, communities, and languages in Oklahoma.

Linguistic diversity, official language choice and human capital

The mechanisms linking high ethnic fractionalization (ELF) to poor economic outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa remain obscure. This paper proposes that high ELF raises the costs of implementing indigenous language education policies, and that the concomitant reliance on colonial languages as media of instruction lowers human capital development, our measure for economic failure. Exploiting the fact that 101 linguistic groups in sub-Saharan Africa cross country borders that have different language-use-in-education systems, we are able to include ethnicity fixed effects in our regression estimates. This allows us to control for a large set of cultural, geographical, and environmental factors that could confound the estimates. Our within-ethnicity estimates show that even the partial use of indigenous languages in schools is associated with an economically meaningful increase in the probability of reading for individuals with seven or fewer years of schooling. Once including language-use-in education as a regressor, the coefficient for ELF in explaining lower human capital turns insignificant. Our results suggest that retention of colonial languages is an important factor in explaining economic failures in postcolonial Africa.

Building a bridge to the future: teacher perspectives on indigenous language education

This article addresses the histories of two Indigenous language immersion schools from the perspectives of teachers in the programs. The research questions, “What is the place of stories of our families, and communities? What does it mean to negotiate our place within the world of traditional stories told by our elders in the hogan and between worlds in the classroom?” draw on the histories of these programs to critique constructions of mainstream schooling and to frame the Dine epistemology as central to these narratives of teachers in the immersion classroom.

Indigenous language curriculum revival: an emancipatory education analysis of Taiwanese Indigenous language policy and textbooks

ABSTRACT Objective Taiwan recently published new language education policy documents and Indigenous language textbooks to support the emerging Indigenous language revitalization initiative. Thus, this study investigates how these current Indigenous policy documents and textbooks portray Indigenous agency and also examine how their contents construct Indigenous emancipatory viewpoints. Research Design To examine the Indigenous emancipatory goal in the textual data, this study incorporated themes of critical consciousness about Indigenous experiences, voices, and actions from Paulo Freire’s emancipatory theory for textual analysis. Methods/Procedures The textual analysis was informed by Freirean theory to examine two language policy documents and 48 Indigenous language textbooks. Indigenous critical consciousness of voices, experiences, and actions in the data were examined to reveal Indigenous emancipatory themes. Results Results demonstrate discrepancies within both the policy and textbooks concerning Indigenous emancipatory themes. While Indigenous language policies and textbooks advocate Indigenous sovereignty, there is a simultaneous insertion of mainstream and values juxtaposed with an Indigenous viewpoint. Conclusion The policies and textbooks embed conflicting Indigenous and mainstream viewpoints. They also construct an inconsistent critical consciousness of Indigenous experiences, voices, and actions. From the policy and textbook analysis, implications for future policy and textbook revisions concerning Indigenous language education are explored.

Subverting the Erasure: Decolonial Efforts, Indigenous Language Education and Language Policy in Nepal

ABSTRACT This paper analyzes Nepal’s language education policy from a decolonial perspective, examining how rights-based (neo)liberal ideologies and policies do not necessarily contribute to creating space, either ideological or implementational (Hornberger, 2005), for Indigenous languages in education. Drawing on the theory of “decoloniality” (Quijano, 2007), I have argued that the efforts to create equitable Indigenous language education should go beyond a language-centric perspective and pay attention to recognizing and reinforcing critical historical consciousness of Indigenous communities. The data for this paper are drawn from a larger ethnographic study of multilingualism and language policy in Nepal. The analysis of ethnographically grounded dialogues with teachers and community members and the close observations of community activism and pedagogical practices shows that Indigenous communities transform discriminatory language ideologies, policies, and practices by embracing the centrality of their history, culture, and place as the fundamental aspects of Indigenous language education.

Decolonial Struggles in Indigenous Language Education in Neoliberal Times: Identities, Ideologies, and Activism

The importance of Indigenous languages and epistemologies for sustainable development, equitable society, and a green environment is acknowledged by a significant body of literature (e.g., Green et...

A glossary of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language revitalization: The work of adult Indigenous language education

A glossary of Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language revitalization: The work of adult Indigenous language education

"Step into learning when ready": Towards a strength-based approach to Indigenous language education in a university setting

"Step into learning when ready": Towards a strength-based approach to Indigenous language education in a university setting

Locating Spaces for San Mother-Tongue Education in the South African Education Framework

ABSTRACT Twenty five years after the advent of democracy in South Africa, indigenous language education for San communities in South Africa is a goal that still needs to be realised. There have been various attempts, though none of these have resulted in sustained programmes or projects. In particular, attempts to implement the recommendations of a report on Khoe and San language education in schools submitted to the Northern Cape Education Department (NCED) in 2001 are reviewed. Two types of language programmes are relevant, namely language revival programmes to reintroduce languages no longer spoken by communities, and mother tongue education (MTE) programmes to ensure home language maintenance. This paper will focus on the latter, namely the possibility of providing some form of MTE within the context of the two San speech communities of Platfontein township located outside Kimberley. Different scenarios are provided taking into account the South African policy environment.

Indigenous language education in Russia: current issues and challenges

ABSTRACT Despite the high number of recognised Indigenous groups who are struggling to maintain their languages, cultures, and identities in Russia, there is little research done on the matters of cultural and linguistic revitalisation. This study sought to address this gap by exploring the views of two Indigenous groups, Karelian and Mari, on the development of their Indigenous languages and educational strategies to protect and revive their languages. The study relied on in-depth one-on-one interviews with 20 participants, ten from each Indigenous group. The findings show that despite older generations’ relative proficiency and interest in their respective Indigenous languages, motivation to master them is fading among younger Indigenous populations. There is also a lack of opportunities to learn the languages including informal settings despite protections within the federal legal system. The participants identified three reasons for the rapid decrease of language speakers that include assimilation of the Indigenous groups, differences in rural and urban development, and globalisation. The article concludes with recommendations on how to revitalise Indigenous languages in Russia.

A worksheet, a whiteboard, a teacher-learner: leveraging materials and colonial language frames for multimodal indigenous language learning

ABSTRACT The growing demand for Indigenous language education in the United States often relies on community teachers with widely varying proficiencies as part of local language reclamation efforts. While these English-dominant ‘teacher-learners’ play a central role in the success of classroom-based K-12 language programs, their classroom experiences and practices have received little attention in second language acquisition research. I address this gap in the literature by examining an English-dominant Ojibwe teacher-learner’s pedagogical practices in an English-dominant tribal school. I theorise the use of colonial language and materials by relying on linguistic ethnography’s multi-scalar approach to language in use as well as a focus on sign-makers’ transformations of local resources. Findings show how the teacher-learner’s reliance on relational knowledge and colonial language framing scaffolds translingual practices and opens up discursive space for learners to experiment, play, and learn. This study highlights how one teacher-learner negotiates the ideological and material conditions that shape the learning and use of an Indigenous language within a colonial institution (school) that has long been a tool of assimilation and erasure.

‘Llegando a secundaria les ha dado amnesia…ya no quieren hablar’: Indigenous speakerhood socialization and the creation of language deniers in Quechua education

Schools are sites where youth's identities as uninterested in their Indigenous languages and cultures are constructed in everyday interactions. This article addresses the ways in which constructs of personhood and language proficiency interact to impact learners’ identities in Quechua language education, a process I call Indigenous speakerhood socialization. Specifically, I examine the process through which one high school student came to be identified by her teacher as a Quechua denier, someone who allegedly knew Quechua, but did not care to show it or learn it. I draw on ethnographic and interactional data to show how local figures of personhood, language ideologies, individuals’ biographical information, teaching practices and classroom participation patterns became meaningful resources that led teachers to misidentify certain students as uninterested speakers who denied their Quechua abilities. The article concludes by highlighting implications for Indigenous and heritage language education research and practice.

Developing a researcher identity of relevance for remote Indigenous language education

PurposeThe study is an elaboration on how a graduate student discursively navigates a research identity through lived experiences as an Indigenous Sámi and writings on Indigenous, as well as other suitable research paradigms informing research on digital technologies in education. The guiding question is how a strategy of inquiry to be used in a PhD study on remote 1–9 Sámi language education can be informed by an Indigenous research paradigm. What philosophical guidelines are needed in navigating a sensitive field of investigation shaped by historical atrocities, discrimination and racist assumptions towards the Sámi people and other Indigenous, marginalised groups?Design/methodology/approachA dialogical approach has been used between readings of mainly Indigenous scholars' writings on the topic and anecdotes illustrating personal experiences from a lived life as Sámi.FindingsThrough this process, a researcher identity has developed, informed by the views from an Indigenous research paradigm that humans are ontologically equal to other entities, and epistemologically knowledge constitutes of relationships between different entities. This makes relationality a central feature of an Indigenous epistemology –not only between people but also including, for example, ideas, history, ancestors, future, artefacts and spirituality – which links epistemology to ontology. The axiological issue of accountability works holistically as “glue”.Originality/valueElucidating underlying arguments and motives behind both an Indigenous research paradigm and the development of researcher identity when designing and planning research is rarely done, which provides the originality of the present contribution.

“We are the mayas”: Indigenous language revitalization, identification, and postcolonialism in the Yucatan, Mexico

This ethnographic, discourse analytic study elucidates a poorly understood area of applied linguistics: identity issues in Indigenous language education. Multi-year data – from large Yucatec Maya language programs that enrolled over 200 learners, including schoolteachers and Yucatec Maya-speaking university students – reveal a new stage of Indigenous ethnogenesis in the Yucatan, Mexico. European colonization has decimated countless Indigenous languages, and language revitalization represents a global movement for linguistic decolonization. I use postcolonial theory to explain how involvement in revitalization programs led students to form new self-understandings and representations of “Mayanness.” Specifically, participants deployed three processes of Indigenous identification: strategic essentialization, appropriation, and articulation. While anthropologists have previously asserted that Yucatec Maya speakers do not self-identify as “ethnic” Mayas, this research reveals that some now do. Additionally, this study advances theorization of Indigenous language revitalization, the postcolonial turn in applied linguistics, and the field more broadly by centering on “identification” – which conceptualizes identity-as-process.

Academic Partnership Building in Indigenous Education Through Social Media and Digital Contents in Bangladesh

Language is, through both utterance and understanding, an inevitable element of human existence. In addition to being substantially endangered, indigenous languages are also digitally endangered. The digital divide that causes this danger infringes most of the indigenous community's linguistic rights. This paper will illustrate, along with this detailed background, the extent to which the indigenous communities can develop academic partnerships by digitising educational content and using Social Media. From the observation and discussion with the community members, some feasible suggestions came up that demonstrated the academic partnership as a way language documentation and teaching in MTB-MLE. The aspects of indigenous language education and connection of social media based content making is another solution tool in present days in which this paper also narrates the possibility.

"We Need to Make Action NOW, to Help Keep the Language Alive": Navigating Tensions of Engaging Indigenous Educational Values in University Education.

Despite centuries of contact and conquest, Indigenous communities persist in maintaining their cultures and psychologies. Key to this success in cultural survival is the maintenance of Indigenous languages, which contain distinct worldviews. However, Indigenous languages are at risk, with fewer and fewer fluent Elder speakers. Fortunately, there remain committed groups of community educators who carry out Indigenous language education. Current mainstream teacher education programs do not typically introduce the importance of Indigenous language education to teacher candidates, who are the next generation of K-12 teachers. We view this as highly problematic, and thus carried out a proof-of-concept project in which one U.S. university's American Indian/Alaska Native teacher candidates collaborated with, and learned from, Indigenous language educators during a two-week-long summer institute at the university. In our article, we share three main findings, based on qualitative analyses of daily-written student journals collected during the two-week pilot project: (a) Indigenous language education supports the social justice vision in the American Psychological Association's Multicultural Guidelines; (b) intergenerational educational opportunities are invaluable for affirming Indigenous psychologies; and (c) Indigenous community language educators do important survivance work. Our findings provide insight into how Indigenous language education is crucial for advancing education that honors Indigenous community psychological well-being.