Building Language Movements
Indigenous Languages Now and Forever
Indigenous Language Reclamation Movements involve two major goals:
Protecting the speakers you have while making new ones
Ensuring your Indigenous language is the language of power and use
Building Language Movements
The state of a language will often determine the general approach to building a language movement. There are many approaches to determining the state of a language, but the most recommended approach from Aanikoobijigeng is one that is centered upon the knowledge and authority of the descendants of a language. When engaging in assessing the health of a language, participants need to be honest about the situation without feeling like it is a terminal diagnosis. This means taking a look at the number of speakers, their ages, whether new speakers are being made, fluency levels, and the places where the language is spoken. This establishes a benchmark for determining the approach to building a language movement.
Language movement building is the overarching term for all of the work done with a given language in order to keep it alive and healthy now and build it stronger in the future. This involves a wide variety of activities, ranging from language documentation and publication, to developing educational programs and institutions, to implementing philosophies of learning, correcting, sharing, and changing along with the surrounding world.
There are many approaches, and our intention is not to prescribe activities or methods, but instead to offer definitions to the types of activities and approaches you might develop. Here are two terms for us to start with:
Indigenous Language Movement Building
A collective social movement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and institutions with the intention of re-establishing and/or maintaining Indigenous language presence and prestige.
Indigenous Language Reclamation
A collective intention of taking back land, time, space, and education for Indigenous language empowerment.
“Ultimately, saving a language that is endangered as a result of racism is in fact a battle with racism itself. Families and communities can come together or disassemble as a result of making a commitment to face and change racism.”
– Margaret Noori
Types of Language Movements
A safe language has a large number of speakers when compared to the population of descendants of the language and also the number of people overall who reside within the territory of the language. Safe languages are spoken across generations and in a wide variety of social settings.
An endangered language is in a state of loss, with high fluency birth speakers who are usually elderly. The language is rarely used in social settings and often is no longer spoken across generations.
Languages that are sleep may not have any living birth speakers and is not currently used with high fluency in any social situations.
It is important to determine the state of a language and then to develop and implement strategies in order to stay safe or to move to safety. All Native American languages require constant analysis and adjustment at the micro, meso, and macro levels. The micro is made up of individuals and families, the meso is made up of communities, institutions, and regions, and the macro is made up of the governments of Indigenous peoples, cities, regions, states, and nations.
Indigenous Language Stabilization (safe)
A strategy to ensure that a language does not drop in percentage of speakers or social use.
Indigenous Language Revitalization (endangered)
A strategy to increase the percentage of speakers and social use.
Indigenous Language Revival (asleep)
A strategy to bring a language back to use that has no current speakers
Language Status
Determining the health of a language requires a balanced analysis of the following indicators of language health: number of speakers, age of speakers, levels of fluency, rate of making new speakers, presence of inter-generational transmission, and physical and social places where the language is spoken.
When determining the health of a language, it is important to find the balance between being overly optimistic and overly pessimistic. Sometimes it is hard to see the truth of language health because one may not wish to admit that things are in a state of endangerment, and other times it is hard to see the way to improved language health.
When doing the work of determining language health, those doing the work need to keep in mind that where a language may be on a scale of endangerment does not mean that is where it must stay. It is not a permanent diagnosis, but a moment in time with a future that will be determined by those who reside on the ancestral lands of a given language.
Aanikoobijigeng encourages folks to determine the health of their language, and then to work collaboratively towards safety. We are committed to helping all Indigenous languages in North America find ways to safety that work for them. There are several ways to measure language health, and the chart below shows one of those ways to determine the current state of language health. Beyond this, language advocates should also consider the ways the language is valued and used, and how attitudes towards the language and towards language use can be adjusted.
Models of Education
Aanikoobijigeng believes that language medium education is the most secure way to ensure endangered languages survive and thrive. Medium education means that the target language is the language of power and use, and that content is taught through the language. The level of endangerment and the number of available resources—teachers, state of curriculum development, alignment of ideas, facilities, and budget—will determine what options are currently available. Also, ensuring that the language is being used between generations is a critical factor.
Many folks have suggested that languages need to be in the home to be alive, and while this is true an educational system built with an Indigenous language at the center can help restore a language to the home. For Native American languages in particular, education may seem like a foreign place for Indigenous languages, but that is because education in North America was one of the most destructive colonial forces that resulted in language endangerment across the continent and Pacific Islands.
The history of the Boarding School Era in the United States, known as the Residential School Era in Canada was a time of widespread inhumanity and attempted genocide. Indigenous languages were almost always banished within education, and often within the community, and were attached to the attainment of citizenship and employment. Children were often removed from their homes and forced to attend schools where their names, languages, and identities were denied to them.
These atrocities have been documented, but the governmental and church initiatives to avoid language loss have been few and far between in terms of substantive changes and efforts.
For more information on the history of Boarding Schools and what can be done to help Indigenous peoples, communities, and languages to recover, please connect with organizations like the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition (NABS).
To contribute to Indigenous language health, please advocate for increased governmental and Christian commitments to supporting Indigenous language reclamation movements through public acknowledgement and apologies, increases in funding committed to Indigenous language health and stability, increased behavioral health options available to Indigenous communities, and policy changes that result in more educational pathways that include Indigenous languages as mediums of education.
MOVE TO THE CENTER
Language Schools and Programs should work with their language communities and resources to determine what is possible. Ideally, things will move towards language medium education to ensure high fluency and transfer rates. It is possible to have multiple systems if resources allow, and to migrate language learners with high ability and the right learning and use environments towards language medium education.
CULTURAL IMMERSION
These programs function within English medium environments, where the language is taught and used within language classes, but is often not present outside of those classes and exists in an English medium environment. High fluency is not likely unless outside factors include immersion.
LANGUAGE IMMERSION
These programs are design to teach the language to non-speakers and rely on immersive environments. Because the language is still a subject, high fluency is difficult to achieve. Language use is often not the goal, but instead teaching basic speaking abilities.
DUAL LANGUAGE
This is a split program with dedicated time spent teaching through the Indigenous language and dedicated time teaching through English. High fluency is possible and likely because the language is a medium during select portions of the day, which can be increased.
LANGUAGE MEDIUM
Teaching through the language and existing in the language assures that high fluency levels will be achieved and an Indigenous worldview can be constructed. Teaching through English is not allowable, but teaching English through the Indigenous language is permissible.
First photo: Tehota'kerá:tonh Jeremy Green, Ph.D. at Hale'ōlelo for Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikōlani (KHUOK) College of Hawaiian Language
Next photo: Ḵaalḵéisʼ Kiana Twitchell at a Lingít language camp in Teslin
Next photo: maple syrup boiling over a fire in Wisconsin
Next photo: a student at the Ke Kula ʻo Nāwahīokalaniʻōpuʻu Hawaiian language medium school greeting visitors in chant
Quote from: Noori, Margaret. “8: Anishinaabemowin Language, Family, and Community.” Bringing Our Languages Home: Language Revitalization for Families. Ed Leanne Hinton. Berkley: Heyday, 2013, 118.
Language Health and Language Medium graphics by X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell