Justyna Olko

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Warsaw

This study examines the enduring impact of historical trauma on the Lemko ethnic minority in Poland, focusing on the interrelation between collective memory, perceived discrimination, and trust toward the Polish majority. The findings reveal that frequent thoughts about historical trauma and associated psychological symptoms are positively correlat...

Background The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has hit minorities more profoundly than the majority society. We evaluated the interplay between ethnic minority identity, gender, and COVID-19-related attitudes and behaviours. Participants and procedure Using data from a survey carried out among both members of ethnic minorities in Poland and Mexico and the maj...

This chapter explores selected aspects of Tlaxcalan history, showcasing the complexity of human–environment relations that have been affected both by climate change and by colonization and postcolonial domination. I explore historical texts in Nahuatl and Spanish that reveal complex battlegrounds upon which the Tlaxcaltecah strove to maintain contr...

The introductory chapter describes conceptual frameworks and methodological approaches employed in the book to address environmentally informed histories. It also provides an overview of the thematic contents of individual chapters that combine archaeological data, oral history, linguistic research as well as ritual life and different testimonies o...

Objectives: The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that ethnic and ethnolinguistic discrimination, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) related to being Indigenous as well as different aspects of acculturative stress, are associated with poorer health and higher levels of depression among the Nahua Indigenous communities. Materials...

he publication, which is the result of the “Language as a Cure” project, analyses the influence of discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities and migrants on their health and well-being. It also looks at the benefits of preserving native languages and strong ethnic identity as well as the consequences of the pandemic for these groups. The book...

he publication, which is the result of the “Language as a Cure” project, analyses the influence of discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities and migrants on their health and well-being. It also looks at the benefits of preserving native languages and strong ethnic identity as well as the consequences of the pandemic for these groups. The book...

The publication, which is the result of the “Language as a Cure” project, analyses the influence of discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities and migrants on their health and well-being. It also looks at the benefits of preserving native languages and strong ethnic identity as well as the consequences of the pandemic for these groups. The boo...

The publication, which is the result of the “Language as a Cure” project, analyses the influence of discrimination experienced by ethnic minorities and migrants on their health and well-being. It also looks at the benefits of preserving native languages and strong ethnic identity as well as the consequences of the pandemic for these groups. The boo...

Studies based on the "social cure" hypothesis suggest the positive role of strong social identifications for well-being and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the three-factorial model of identification that distinguishes ingroup centrality, ingroup affect, and ingroup ties as separate aspects of group identification, we propose t...

Although the impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has been devastating to societies at large, Indigenous groups have been disproportionately affected, a fact which is reflected globally in the rates of COVID-19-related deaths. Indigenous and minority communities are particularly vulnerable during this health crisis due to systemic discrimination and p...

This paper presents the results of multidisciplinary research assessing the impact of COVID-19 on two ethnic minorities living in Poland. While the pandemic affects minority groups in a number of ways, the most obvious threat to the continuity of already endangered languages is the disappearance of the most crucial agents of their transgenerational...

The present paper examines a hypothetical correlation between language endangerment and the simplification of nominal and verbal inflections. After contrasting the complexities exhibited by two endangered languages (Eastern Huasteca Nahuatl and Wymysorys) with the complexities of their non-endangered predecessors (Older Nahuatl and Middle High Germ...

In this paper I carry out a microphilological study of a section of the Codex Indianorum 7, a colonial devotional manuscript in Nahuatl preserved in the John Carter Brown Library. It contains wisdom teachings derived from the biblical Book of Tobit and directed to both parents and their children. I argue that this hitherto unstudied text reveals th...

Objective: In this article, we examine the relationship between Indigenous language use and community-based well-being among four Nahua ethnic groups in Mexico, taking into account the role of positive emotions related to speaking the heritage language as a mediator of the influence of its use in the family domain on community-based well-being. Met...

Research on the ‘social cure’ points to the many positive outcomes of having strong social identifications for minority and immigrant groups. At the same time, identification is a multi-faceted psychological phenomenon, combining three dimensions: ingroup centrality, ingroup affect, and ingroup ties. The main aim of the present study was to assess...

This essay reviews the following works: The Lords of Tetzcoco: The Transformation of Indigenous Rule in Postconquest Central Mexico. By Bradley Benton. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. viii +195. $99.99 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107190580. Polygamy and the Rise and Demise of the Aztec Empire. By Ross Hassig. Albuquerque: University of New...

Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of the twenty-first century. Languages are endangered by a number of factors, including globalization, education policies, and the political, economic and cultural marginalization of minority groups. This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as w...

Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of the twenty-first century. Languages are endangered by a number of factors, including globalization, education policies, and the political, economic and cultural marginalization of minority groups. This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as w...

Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of the twenty-first century. Languages are endangered by a number of factors, including globalization, education policies, and the political, economic and cultural marginalization of minority groups. This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as w...

Of the approximately 7,000 languages in the world, at least half may no longer be spoken by the end of the twenty-first century. Languages are endangered by a number of factors, including globalization, education policies, and the political, economic and cultural marginalization of minority groups. This guidebook provides ideas and strategies, as w...

The dictionary expands on the original idea of Karttunen and Lockhart to map the usage of loans in Nahuatl, by using a much larger and diversified corpus of sources, and by including contextual use, missing in earlier studies. Most importantly, these sources enrich the colonial corpus with modern data – significantly expanding on our knowledge on l...

Tragic collective events bring about long-term consequences for affected groups. These effects not only affect the immediate victims of trauma, but can also influence subsequent generations. In the present research, we examined the effects of minority language use on historical trauma. In a study of 237 Lemko participants, members of a severely vic...

The paper relates the results of an ethnolinguistic vitality (ELV) survey among the Kashubs in Poland. The results reveal two interrelated layers of ELV: (1) an individual ELV reflected in language use and shaped by personal experience, emotions, and language proficiency; (2) a more collective ELV associated with the perception of the group’s langu...

The cultural, economic and sociolinguistic trajectory of native communities in Mexico can be explained by some aspects of acculturation theory, in which ethnolinguistic vitality is an essential predictive component. I argue that at least in the first two or even three centuries of contact successful integration strategies seem to have co-existed wi...

-Yolia is one of the principal indigenous terms present in Christian Nahua terminology in the first decades of European contact. It is employed for “soul” or “spirit” and often forms a doublet with ánima in Nahuatl texts of an ecclesiastical, devotional, or secular nature. The term -yolia/teyolia has also lived a rich and fascinating life in schola...

https://upcolorado.com/university-press-of-colorado/item/3541-dialogue-with-europe-dialogue-with-the-past Dialogue with Europe, Dialogue with the Past is a critical, annotated anthology of indigenous-authored texts, including the Nahua, Quechua, and Spanish originals, through which native peoples conveyed their own perspectives on different aspect...

This paper focuses on theoretical and practical approaches to decolonizing, participatory research in Indigenous communities and on ways of fostering those decolonizing methodologies in the areas of ethnohistory, sociolinguistics and language revitalization. I discuss the results of several complementary projects involving the Nahuatl language in M...

On February 12, 1543, in the city of Tlaxcala an indigenous governor, don Valeriano Castañeda, issued an order putting local alguaciles in charge of overseeing possible idolatrous or sinful acts in several localities. This document, housed in the Archivo Histórico del Estado de Tlaxcala, is probably the earliest dated Nahuatl document known to date...

This paper is based on extensive team research focusing on the reconstruction of the history of contact-induced change in Nahuatl from the first encounter with Spanish until the present day, taking into account both peripheral and central varieties. We trace the long-term trajectories of several morphosyntactic features that mark typological change...

Heritage languages can be not only objects and spaces of symbolic and physical violence, but also powerful tools of agency, resilience and autonomous intellectual expression and creativity. They carry a still underestimated and underexplored potential for the decolonization of both the academy and speakers’ lives. In this paper I discuss the possib...

Looking at the Spanish impact on Nahuatl both in its full historical trajectory and modern synchronic dimension, I focus on the differentiation between ‘balanced’, long-term language contact and ‘unbalanced’ contact leading to rapid language shift in contemporary indigenous communities. I discuss the connection between accelerated contact-induced l...

The town of Wilamowice (southern Poland) is the unique home to the community of speakers of Wymysiöeryś. The language enclave originates from Colonial Middle High German and – according to diachronic dialectological analyses – is made up of a sub-exclave of the so-called Bielitz-Bialaer Sprachinsel. As a result of social and political cataclysms br...

In this paper we discuss the ways in which the Nahua nobility referred to the past as reflected in the testimonies of the colonial period. The reading of sources allows us to distinguish two perspectives: intellectual and pragmatic. While the first of them was closely linked to attempts of combining the indigenous and European historical traditions...

This paper discusses major historical, cultural, linguistic, social and institutional factors contributing to the shift and endangerment of the Nahuatl language in Mexico. As a practical proposal, we discuss our strategy for its revi-talization, as well as a series of projects and activities we have been carrying out for the last several years. Cru...

http://www.revitalization.al.uw.edu.pl/Content/Uploaded/Documents/integral-strategies-a91f7f0d-ae2f-4977-8615-90e4b7678fcc.pdf

The extensive corpus of colonial Nahuatl texts lights on almost every sphere of colonial life and cross‑cultural interactions between the Europeans/Spaniards and the indigenous world. This corpus contains rich language data related to contact‑induced change that reveal a simultaneous, prolonged use of neologisms and loanwords, a widespread “Nahuatl...

Empire, Colony, and Globalization. A Brief History of the Nahuatl Language This paper is the first attempt to outline the cultural and sociopolitical history of Nahuatl, one of the most important native languages of America, beginning with preconquest times, focusing on its role in the Aztec empire, and continuing through the colonial period until...

This paper discusses major historical, cultural, linguistic, social and institutional factors contributing to the shift and endangerment of the Nahuatl language in Mexico. Our proposal for the revitalization of Nahuatl requires fostering collaboration across academic, social, and ideological boundaries, as well as efficiently combining grassroots a...

This article examines several key gestures and postures documented in the early postconquest Nahua world: the eating of earth, squatting and kneeling, prostration, bowing, and finger pointing. Combining distinct genres of sources, ranging from linguistic evidence to iconographic data, I attempt to reconstruct preconquest practices through postconqu...

This significant work reconstructs the repertory of insignia of rank and the contexts and symbolic meanings of their use, along with their original terminology, among the Nahuatl-speaking communities of Mesoamerica from the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. Attributes of rank carried profound symbolic meaning, encoding subtle messages ab...

For the Nahuas the ability of communication was one of the basic criteria of barbarism and limits of "humanity" projected from an entirely ethnocentric perspective. "Barbarian" and "inhuman" traits, along witth ethnonyms, served to construct negative models of members of the society. This paper shows that ethnic stereotypes registered in the coloni...

Los trabajos de investigación arqueológica realizados en el sitio maya de Nakum (Petén, Guatemala) durante los últimos años, han proporcionado una excelente oportunidad para documentar y estudiar una muestra grande de los graffiti precolombinos en distintos edificios ubicados en el epicentro del sitio. El articulo discute los datos arquitectónicos...

In spite of the wide adoption of European apparel and attempts of indigenous nobility to gain foreign attributes of rank, there is evidence of the persistence of native dress and insignia in early colonial reality. The paper explores extant data that reveal the survival of pre-Hispanic symbols of rank, including both inherited and contemporarily ma...

The claim by certain rulers to universal empire has a long history stretching as far back as the Assyrian and Achaemenid Empires. This book traces its various manifestations in classical antiquity, the Islamic world, Asia and Central America as well as considering seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European discussions of international order. As s...

La muestra conservada de los manuscritos pictográficos del centro de México ofrece numerosas posibilidades de abordar varias líneas de investigación sobre las imágenes de la nobleza indígena que, a su vez, arrojan mucha luz sobre los complejos procesos de transformación y supervivencia de la tradición indígena en un proceso dinámico de interacción...

El artículo discute la evidencia disponible sobre la influencia mexica en manuscritos pictográficos indígenas del período colonial procedentes de distintas regiones del centro de México, incluyendo las provincias imperiales y territorios vecinos. Se trata de discernir los posibles préstamos imperiales de las convenciones y tradiciones locales o reg...

Este trabajo se dedica a un particular esquema del procedimiento esencial en la guerra azteca y realizado por mensajeros reales. Ese procedimiento se suele describir más frecuentemente como advertencia del enemigo o declaración ritualizada de la guerra. El análisis de todas sus ocurrencias y descripciones en las fuentes escritas e iconográficas per...

The article was originally without an abstract. Short description by Editorial Team. Nakum is an archaeological site in northern Guatemala. The geographic setting of the site and the history of research are being described here. Hermes and Calderón provide preliminary ideas about the chronology of the site. Also results of surveys led by Justyna Ol...

"It is generally known that hierogamy or the ritual of sacred marriage was present in some cultures of the Old World. There, its most basic meaning was to regenerate vegetation and thus ensure fertility and abundance for the community. Little attention has been paid to the subject in Mesoamerican studies and, although we possess a considerable body...

La gran importancia de las asociaciones simbólicas y sociopolíticas prestadas a la vestimenta y atributos de rango en la cultura azteca hace el tema del traje elitista un aspecto imprescindible de los estudios sobre la nobleza indígena del México prehispánico. En este trabajo exploro algunos de los significados del traje en la percepción indígena c...