What is the relationship between Indigenous research paradigms and Indigenous languages?

I have long felt that a kind of middle road strategy should be applied. In every generation it should be insured that there are people whose careers and lives are dedicated to the language. Governments should fund this, and communities should choose those who will be the language experts/representatives of their generation. They can teach others as much about their language as the others want to know. The language stays alive in that way.

Thank you John for your good point! I agree that there must be some people to preserve, maintain, and promote indigenous languages that will lead to the exploration and establishment of indigenous knowledge systems. I would argue that both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples play an important and symbiotic role essential for the furthering of indigenous education worldwide.

You are right. Both indigenous and non-indigenous people should be involved. School boards have to be more active in promoting Aboriginal language classes. Governments should declare the languages as being 'official.' I try to mainstream the languages (primarily Wendat, the language I work with) by including a discussion of them in my sociology and anthropologfy textbooks, and classes. A few years back I did a TEDX lecture entitled "what if Aboriginal languages mattered". That has been responded to well.

Thank you John for your helpful comments and great lecture in the TED lecture. I have enjoyed appreciating your good points within your presentation and studies. I am so humble and grateful to be able to share and learn your beautiful and honorable insights into Aboriginal studies in Canada. I'm also impressed by what you have done the meaningful ways for including Aboriginal themes into your sociology and anthropology courses. I hope one day I can also follow your model and way to let more people know Taiwan Aboriginal knowledge systems and their substantial contributions.

I was in Taiwan for about one week and a half in 1999. I met some from the Amis nation there, got to visit a village, and wrote a paper on lifelong learning with him.

Dear Prof. John,

It is really good to know that you have been to Taiwan and visit Amis tribe! Amis is the biggest group of Taiwanese Aborigines. I know some Amis friends. Do you remember the person's name that you wrote about his lifelong learning? I may know him, or my colleagues know him, and hope to let him know we both have connection via this ResearchGate platform.

I am Paiwan people, and very welcome you can come to visit our tribes. My Anthropology Prof. Andrew J. Strathern and his wife Pamela J. Stewart (Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh) visit my tribe each year. I also took Prof. Duane W. Champagne and his wife Dr. Carole E. Goldberg (Department of Sociology and School of Law, UCLA) to visit my tribe. It's really good to exchange each other's cultures, languages.

I am so humbled to know you and your work in this way, and very much look forward to reading more about your great work!

Crawford's article on the loss of Native American languages is a wake-up call to those who have a stake in preserving this almost non-renewable resource. I say almost, because language can successfully be renewable from Elders to the young people of the culture, and from generation to generation.

In my work with Native American people throughout Western North America, I am constantly reminded of the work that is necessary to perpetuate the languages of the people. This work is all the more difficult because of the historic suppression of language that has occurred within the previous two centuries as a result of American Federal Indian Policy. Native Americans were banned from speaking their language in many places, including schools and other public places. Children were punished at boarding schools for uttering a word of their traditional language. The "voice" of many Native Americans has become all, but "silent."

For some Native American Tribes, partnerships with anthropologists and linguists from colleges and universities has been successful in documenting the language in written, oral, and video format (Rushforth NMSU; Jerofke and Thornes EOU/BSU). Rushforth has given hope to the Mescalero Apache people of the Southwest by working with their Elder language speakers; and Jerofke and Thornes have done some preliminary work to start ensuring that the Wadatika Paiute language continues to be understood and taught to younger generations using the oral histories of the Elders.

It is these oral histories and stories told by the Elders that often contain the meanings for the indigenous words that are spoken. Sometimes there is no direct translation for specific words, and there may be complexities involved in translating foreign (English, French, etc) words into one that fits within the culture of the Native American. As documented in the handbook of American Indian Languages (1911), Franz Boas describes the Inuit culture having multiple words for the English word "snow"" and "water."

I conclude that in order to save Indigenous languages from extinction, it is imperative that academics with a passion for language preservation partner with the people who have the knowledge about their culture and language. Through this joint effort, perhaps a few more languages can be preserved and taught to the descendants of the indigenous people, thereby enabling their cultures to survive, as well.

Dear Agnes, thank you so much for the successful examples, your invaluable work/perspectives, and insights on this issue. Most language researchers tend to use the negative point to work on their language revitalization tasks, but I am pleased to hear from your positive angle to see endangered indigenous languages. It's sad to know American Indian history regarding their languages; however, I am very glad and humble to learn that you are one of language revitalization warriors. The synergy of Indigenous Elders and researchers/scholars/cultural workers for preserving moribund or small languages is a great model. Passion and persistence are very vital to each individual who commits to this great social engineering. Thank you Agnes again for your good point!

Just as a modest contribution to the topic: No doubt governments and many schools tend to ignore cultural linguistic aspects that do not represent money; thus, keeping records from our indigenous fellows is a most in any possible way. One of those ways is the approach to texts - such as the ones cited in this trending, and some other that are available out there in a written testimony. I like to call your attention to approaches that are possible to follow to those native indigenous languages that tried to survive - they and their language through commerce. I know the book that describes the surviving language experience of the Lacandones - from Chiapas, Mexico: "Lacandones de Chiapas:negociación e identidad dentro del ecoturismo: El evento de compra-venta de productos y servicios turísticos dentro del ecoturismo. This approach may be of some useful insight to those interested in approaching to communities, explore, publish and preserve their language. I translated the resume of the book, which is in Spanish:

"This work is set within the studies of the discourse practice of the Applied Linguistics and Anthropology fields. Its purpose is to analyse the triadic relationship established between the discourse, commercialization social practice and the (re)construction of identity. The context interculturality promoted within a frame of ecotourism. The book is focused on the social discourse practice along the purchase – sale of ecotourism services or products and their links with current identities of a group of Lacandones from the Lacanha Chansayab town, in Chiapas, Mexico. The book describes the current social conditions that indigenous towns from Mexico experience related with the commerce practices and their identities. The findings are related to the Lacandones current discourse practice in their intercultural exchanges during their commercial event. The conlusion is that the use of diverse linguistic and symbolic codes has an incidence in the social practice, but it is in no way related to the origin of the multiplicity of their identity, which encompases cognitive, linguistic, pragmatic and symbolic essential competencies".

I guess that this kind of approach can be done among those communities all over the world that are surviving next door big cities and the researchers may find an easier way to be accepted by the indegenous communities and has the chance to leave a linguistic testimony.

Rafael, I think you bring up an underlying issue of trust(or lack of) between the researcher and the indigenous community that is sometimes overlooked. In the shared history between Native Americans and the non-natives that came to colonize their traditional homelands, there is an accepted perception that the Euro-Americans forced the natives from their lands in order to grow the country(ies) and prosper. Prosperity, of course, is tied to Western culture's dependence on money. In Chiapas, non-natives have diminished the rainforest by using the land for economic development for the government, which the Chiapanecos rely on for survival. A big question regarding "ecotourism" is "How much of the money earned from ecotourism actually ends up in the hands of the people most in need? The people of Chiapas?"

Hello Agnes, I totally agree with your remarks. And, we may agree that as long as the money or submission are the only interest for governments or some researchers, investigations would be biased in some degree. Regarding the big question you rose, what I know based on the book I referred to is that the money is used to buy computers and Internet connection services. Governmental authorities are the intermediaries, of course. Then, the natives becoming aware the world offers by means of Internet, decide to make enough money to migrate to those places they have seen through web sites. Yes, and what about the language? I do not know.

Hello Che-Wei,

Very interesting remarks by all investigators, but not all is lost and there are many people who keep their languages/customs alive, or can be studied by others.

The Cree (Northern American native) language has been revived. (More than one) Cree dictionaries have been published recently and the language is taught at primary schools (example: Cross Lake, Manitoba). Here a parenthesis to remark that a comparison with the Homeric (very Ancient Greek) dictionary will show amazing similarities. The list continues with English, Basque (Spain), Ainou (Japan), Pacific Islands, etc many similarities exist.

Unfortunately, I am not a linguist, so my remarks/articles are not taken seriously.

The Mapuche of Chile describe the language as being assembled from the sounds one can hear from the environment.

Take "scissors". If you replace c with k, this is the sound you hear when you tear something like paper. This is also the sound one hears when sea water is "torn apart" by the waves around the "Scilly Islands" of SW England, long visited by the ancient Greeks to get the tin out of the rocks there.

congratulations for your questions!

Hi Michael,

Your response has inspired me a lot and given many indigenous friends the hope and potential strategies. Also, your example is very interesting and informative. I have learned several Native American languages from you, and hopefully strive for learning more.

I am a descendant of the Paiwan tribe, one of the 16 officially recognized Austronesian-speaking indigenous peoples of Taiwan. We do have our own tribal dictionary that records rich words describing the world based on our Paiwan people's worldview. Indeed, from our people's viewpoint, we have many distinct and beautiful interpretation of our mother earth. I know several American Indian works also point out the similar phenomena.

Thank you for your nice information. Hope to learn more from you and your work!

With best wishes,

Che-Wei 

Hello Che-Wei,

Thank you for your kind words. I was very glad to find out about the Paiwan people, the language and customs. Interesting that your ancestors must have come to the island from the south (probably). I also note from your appearance that you remind me of the Yunnan people in China. However, I am not an expert.

Best wishes and looking forward to any new comments/questions from you.

Michael