We Are Our Language: An Ethnography of Language Revitalization in a Northern Athabaskan Community – By Barbra A. Meek

The double bind of “Shame”: The colonial ramifications in Tahitian language revitalization

“…Many parents, elders, and caregivers use French for baby talk to children, regardless of their competence in Tahitian, which consolidates French as the appropriate communication medium for children. On the contrary, as previous studies (Meek 2010;Paugh 2012) also show, speaking the language associated with adulthood provides its speakers with adult-like authority and dominance. Children usually talk to each other in French, but when older children try to control younger ones, they sometimes give orders in simple Tahitian words, borrowing the "adult" code to emphasize their authority over others.…”

Language otherwise: Linguistic natures and the ontological challenge

“…It would be hypocritical to reject the desire of Indigenous communities for their children to be educated in a non‐Indigenous language (Horta 2021; Menezes de Souza 2014) as “capitulation” to the Northern hegemon. We also don't need an ontological critique to recognize that there is a big difference between a nation‐state regimenting language use through deprovincializing practices imposing a literate standard on a diverse population (Silverstein 1996), and a small Indigenous village fighting for resources to create a literate standard of their own language (Costa, De Korne, and Lane 2018); that there is a big difference between claims of an intrinsic connection between a national language and national character and interest (Bauman and Briggs 2003, 163–96), and Indigenous claims to a connection between their ways of speaking and their ways of being (Meek 2012); and finally, that there is a big difference between the use of a colonial language by an anthropologist when addressing a non‐Indigenous audience (including in the very practice of writing this article) and an Indigenous leader's use of a colonial language to have their voice heard by the same audience (Cusicanqui 2012; Kopenawa and Albert [2010] 2013; Krenak 2019). Laura Graham (2002) has aptly described the double bind that Indigenous leaders find themselves in, having their authenticity questioned by a white audience when speaking in a colonial language, while compromising their ability to communicate to that audience when speaking in an Indigenous one (see also Horta 2021; Muehlmann 2008).…”

Toward an Anti‐Racist Linguistic Anthropology: An Indigenous Response to White Supremacy

“…This example definition also draws upon a broader theme that I imagine would be central to an Indigenous linguistic anthropology, this being that language and peoplehood are strongly linked, even ontologically co‐dependent (e.g., Clarke 1996; Holm et al. 2003; Meek 2010; Leonard 2017). It follows that there should be celebration of intimate grammars (Webster 2015) and more generally of the “the complex socio‐historical, political, and deeply personal contexts in which [languages] actually occur” (Davis 2017, 40).…”