Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered lan... more Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices that beget language endangerment. The objective of this essay is to promote social justice praxis first by detailing how language shift results from major injustices, and then by offering possible interventions that are accountable to the communities whose languages are endangered. Drawing from my experiences as a member of a Native American community whose language was wrongly labeled “extinct” within this narrative, I begin with an overview of how language endangerment is described to general audiences in the United States and critique ...
The quotation given above is an observation made by a fourteen-year-old Miami girl at the conclus... more The quotation given above is an observation made by a fourteen-year-old Miami girl at the conclusion of an annual Miami language and culture youth summer camp in 2008. Within her statement are three important themes that have emerged from the camp setting. First, there is the question of defining and understanding myaamionki (literally ‘Miami place’),1 a key issue in that the Miami community has long been scattered and many children grow up without regular contact with other Miamis. Second, there is the related question of what it means to be Miami and what sort of value that identity holds. Finally, emerging not from her statement directly, but rather from our reading of it, is a recognition of how experiences at these annual youth camps are adding to a larger narrative of reawakening the Miami language and culture. This paper examines these themes through an investigation of Miami language and culture camps and focuses on how the observations and words of their participants both r...
With origins in colonial logics and institutions, language documentation practices can reinforce ... more With origins in colonial logics and institutions, language documentation practices can reinforce colonial power hierarchies and norms in ways that work against the needs and values of Indigenous language communities. This paper highlights major patterns through which this occurs, along with their effects, and models how language documentation can be structured in ways that are more grounded in the experiences and perspectives of the communities that use it. I propose decolonial interventions that emerge from Indigenous research principles and perspectives, and illustrate how these practices can better support language community needs while also improving the scientific value of language documentation.
Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to... more Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co-naturalization of race and language, to the co-naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis of the hegemony of the “white linguistic anthropologist,” I demonstrate how BIPOC linguistic anthropologists are expected to assimilate to a white normative culture of producing, disseminating, and evaluating anthropological knowledge. Employing ideas from Indigenous research methodologies such as the notion of relational accountability and related “R’s” such as respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and rights; the framework of Radical Indigenism (Garroutte 2003), which argues for research praxis based on Indigenous philosophies of knowledge; and Felt Theory (Million 2009), which asserts the validity of knowledge emerging from experiences that are felt; I offer alternatives that are grounded in Indigenous research principles and protocols. I conclude by outlining a reimagined discipline, a linguistic anthropology built from Indigenous epistemologies and norms of relational knowledge production, and discuss the anti-racist praxis that such a transformation could facilitate.
... Model.....154 5.4.1 Socialization & Lexical Choice.....155 5.4.2 Socialization as Reveale... more ... Model.....154 5.4.1 Socialization & Lexical Choice.....155 5.4.2 Socialization as Revealed Through Code Switching Ideology .....157 5.4.3 ...
Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to N... more Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguistic scholarship reflects colonial norms, which also guide the severe underrepresentation of Native Americans in the discipline. Integrating these ideas into antiracist frameworks facilitates social justice in linguistic science.
Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants , they can als... more Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants , they can also inhibit those who do not identify with the cultural values or practices that these programmes promote. I theorize that this occurs because 'reclamation' programmes evoke an essentialist notion of culture whereby participants feel pressure to act, think or speak in certain ways, particularly those that are deemed to be 'traditional'. However, since participants have also been socialized into the norms of the dominant society, various identity conflicts can arise. This paper investigates this issue through the example of how gender roles are manifested, understood and promoted in the context of Miami language reclamation programmes. I demonstrate how inhibition can arise in the context of these efforts, locate this phenomenon in larger issues of identity and indigenous language reclamation, and conclude with proposals for how reclamation programmes can be framed differently so that they can empower the entire target community.
Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered lan... more Indigenous language endangerment is a global crisis, and in response, a normative “endangered languages” narrative about the crisis has developed. Though seemingly beneficent and accurate in many of its points, this narrative can also cause harm to language communities by furthering colonial logics that repurpose Indigenous languages as objects for wider society's consumption, while deemphasizing or even outright omitting the extreme injustices that beget language endangerment. The objective of this essay is to promote social justice praxis first by detailing how language shift results from major injustices, and then by offering possible interventions that are accountable to the communities whose languages are endangered. Drawing from my experiences as a member of a Native American community whose language was wrongly labeled “extinct” within this narrative, I begin with an overview of how language endangerment is described to general audiences in the United States and critique ...
The quotation given above is an observation made by a fourteen-year-old Miami girl at the conclus... more The quotation given above is an observation made by a fourteen-year-old Miami girl at the conclusion of an annual Miami language and culture youth summer camp in 2008. Within her statement are three important themes that have emerged from the camp setting. First, there is the question of defining and understanding myaamionki (literally ‘Miami place’),1 a key issue in that the Miami community has long been scattered and many children grow up without regular contact with other Miamis. Second, there is the related question of what it means to be Miami and what sort of value that identity holds. Finally, emerging not from her statement directly, but rather from our reading of it, is a recognition of how experiences at these annual youth camps are adding to a larger narrative of reawakening the Miami language and culture. This paper examines these themes through an investigation of Miami language and culture camps and focuses on how the observations and words of their participants both r...
With origins in colonial logics and institutions, language documentation practices can reinforce ... more With origins in colonial logics and institutions, language documentation practices can reinforce colonial power hierarchies and norms in ways that work against the needs and values of Indigenous language communities. This paper highlights major patterns through which this occurs, along with their effects, and models how language documentation can be structured in ways that are more grounded in the experiences and perspectives of the communities that use it. I propose decolonial interventions that emerge from Indigenous research principles and perspectives, and illustrate how these practices can better support language community needs while also improving the scientific value of language documentation.
Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to... more Drawing from my lived experiences as an Indigenous linguist, this article exposes and responds to epistemological racism (Kubota 2020) in the discipline of Linguistic Anthropology, which I argue institutionalizes and reproduces white supremacy. I extend Rosa and Flores’s (2017) raciolinguistic perspective, which examines the co-naturalization of race and language, to the co-naturalization of race and language scholars. Through a critical analysis of the hegemony of the “white linguistic anthropologist,” I demonstrate how BIPOC linguistic anthropologists are expected to assimilate to a white normative culture of producing, disseminating, and evaluating anthropological knowledge. Employing ideas from Indigenous research methodologies such as the notion of relational accountability and related “R’s” such as respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and rights; the framework of Radical Indigenism (Garroutte 2003), which argues for research praxis based on Indigenous philosophies of knowledge; and Felt Theory (Million 2009), which asserts the validity of knowledge emerging from experiences that are felt; I offer alternatives that are grounded in Indigenous research principles and protocols. I conclude by outlining a reimagined discipline, a linguistic anthropology built from Indigenous epistemologies and norms of relational knowledge production, and discuss the anti-racist praxis that such a transformation could facilitate.
... Model.....154 5.4.1 Socialization & Lexical Choice.....155 5.4.2 Socialization as Reveale... more ... Model.....154 5.4.1 Socialization & Lexical Choice.....155 5.4.2 Socialization as Revealed Through Code Switching Ideology .....157 5.4.3 ...
Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to N... more Drawing from Native American Studies, I explore how the LSA Statement on Race (2019) applies to Native Americans, who are unique among racial groups in the United States since ‘Native American’ is also a political status and tribes are nations. Focusing on the fundamental tenet of tribal critical race theory that colonization is endemic to society (Brayboy 2005), I argue that the ways in which Native American languages are represented in linguistic scholarship reflects colonial norms, which also guide the severe underrepresentation of Native Americans in the discipline. Integrating these ideas into antiracist frameworks facilitates social justice in linguistic science.
Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants , they can als... more Although indigenous language reclamation programmes can empower their participants , they can also inhibit those who do not identify with the cultural values or practices that these programmes promote. I theorize that this occurs because 'reclamation' programmes evoke an essentialist notion of culture whereby participants feel pressure to act, think or speak in certain ways, particularly those that are deemed to be 'traditional'. However, since participants have also been socialized into the norms of the dominant society, various identity conflicts can arise. This paper investigates this issue through the example of how gender roles are manifested, understood and promoted in the context of Miami language reclamation programmes. I demonstrate how inhibition can arise in the context of these efforts, locate this phenomenon in larger issues of identity and indigenous language reclamation, and conclude with proposals for how reclamation programmes can be framed differently so that they can empower the entire target community.
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