“I Learned That My Name Is Spelled Wrong”: Lessons from Mexico and Nepal on Teaching Literacy for Indigenous Language Reclamation

Abstract

Globally many minority and Indigenous communities are searching for ways to reclaim languages that have been marginalized by socioeconomic and political processes. These efforts often involve novel literacy practices. In this article, we draw from ethnographic data in Mexico and Nepal to ask, what are the opportunities and constraints of teaching writing in support of Indigenous language reclamation? Writing is simultaneously an attraction and a source of marginalization or discouragement for learners in both settings. Promoting and teaching writing creates opportunities such as raising the status, visibility, and longevity of Indigenous language education initiatives. Challenges include struggles for legitimacy among teachers and learners and the emergence of new hierarchies among dialects. We suggest that language reclamation efforts can benefit from making the most of the material and social nature of writing and from avoiding hard-line purism and a focus on form, while giving greater consideration to meaning and contexts for written expression.

Language Activism

“…European-origin literacy practices remain prominent in formal education, privileging standard forms and limited registers of communication which are endorsed by an official authority (Weth and Juffermans 2018). This can serve to devalue the communication practices of languages without a tradition of writing, and has led to conflicts and debates in the creation of standard writing systems for Indigenous languages in many parts of the world (Hornberger 1993;Costa, De Korne, and Lane 2017;Limerick 2018;Schwartz 2018;De Korne and Weinberg 2021). A paradigm of literacy as 'autonomous' from locallysituated and negotiated meaning-making makes literacy appear neutral, and projects a deficit view of learners who do not produce the designated written standard (Street 1984).…”