No abstract

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.

Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to examine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in diverse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving the abstract entity “language,” but is rather about voice, which encapsulates personal and communal agency and the expression of Indigenous identities, belonging, and responsibility to self and community. Storywork – firsthand narratives through which language reclamation is simultaneously described and practiced – shows that language reclamation simultaneously refuses the dispossession of Indigenous ways of knowing and refuses past, present, and future generations in projects of cultural continuance. Centering Indigenous experiences sheds light on Indigenous community concerns and offers larger lessons on the role of language in well-being, sustainable diversity, and social justice.

No abstract

Sociolinguistic approaches to Native American languages are best conducted as part of a project of “language reclamation,” argues Wesley Y. Leonard. He discusses how framings of Indigenous languages as “endangered,” while in some ways well-intentioned, replicate the distance of language communities from scholarly research. An emphasis on reclamation – “efforts by Indigenous communities to claim the right to speak their heritage languages” – highlights the role of the community members in the production of knowledge on and the revival of Native American languages.