I went to a large public school 在 East San Francisco Bay Area, and as I progressed through high school, I became more aware that I did not know many of my classmates. This was when I realized that I could begin to form deeper relationships 与 members of my community by starting 与 the ones in my hometown near Oakland, 加州.
Living around an urban center of many Indigenous communities sparked my interest 在 work of 文森特·梅迪纳, a local food activist and member of the Muwekma Ohlone部落 东湾沿岸. Medina spurred the revival of the Chochenyo 语言 — part of a larger dialect continuum that spans from the San Francisco Bay to the Central Coast of 加州 — by co-founding mak - amham, the only Ohlone restaurant 在 world. By cooking and offering food to his community, Medina created a 通路 他的语言.
Chochenyo’s linguistic diversity is comparable to the Romance 语言s spanning the Mediterranean region. Although it was spoken 在 areas now known as Oakland and Berkeley, which sit on the ancestral lands of the Ohlone, 它的大部分 文档 is from when Chochenyo speakers lived around 任务 San Jose in Fremont, 加州.
研究的复兴
It was Medina’s efforts to revive his endangered 语言, and the fact that the Ohlone Tribe is not federally recognized, that inspired my interest in 语言 engineering as a scholar of the Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and 研究 Program at Barnard. The Laidlaw Program accelerated my research by helping me connect 与 my research advisor, 马拉绿色, assistant professor of 人类学. 课程包括 Introduction to Native American Religious Traditions 与 黑尔蒂芙尼 在 宗教 部门和 Ross Perlin’s Endangered 语言s 在 Global City at Columbia have also informed my research by providing me 与 insight into non-Western faiths, 哲学, and linguistic practices.
在我的项目中, I discuss the role of 语言 engineering — the process of inventing new words for a preexisting 语言 — 在 context of education and academia. Many Indigenous 语言s may not have the vocabulary to succinctly describe present-day technical terms or academic jargon, which can be a roadblock to Indigenous 语言 use at the secondary or tertiary level of education.
With 语言 engineering, speakers of Indigenous 语言s can create new ways to describe the objects 在ir daily lives 与out importing countless loanwords. This process supports the preservation of native 语言s and expression, effectively preventing 语言 extinction and the constant need to shift into English.
By deeply exploring 语言 identities through my project, I hope to contribute to the work that Indigenous researchers and linguist-activists are doing — and help promote the healing of historical trauma and loss.
My research suggests that Indigenous 语言 revitalization has the potential to have an incredible impact on educational outcomes. It’s especially compelling that revitalization often leads to demonstrably positive health outcomes.
While working on my research project, I came across 英镑马丁的成员 纳瓦霍语国家. 马丁开始 项目支持 (Enriching Navajo as a Biology 语言 for Education), which aims to expand the scientific vocabulary for Navajo peoples. His work shows that when complex scientific terms are engineered rather than borrowed from English, biological science concepts are much easier to grasp for the nonscientists in his community. Using culturally familiar terms in academic environments, such as a high school science class on a reservation, 促进学习, and these terms can be particularly relevant in medical or healthcare contexts.
Challenges and Looking Ahead
As I continue to collect, 分析, 扩大我的研究范围, I have faced the abstract notion of “practicality” as a challenge to Indigenous linguistic progress. I’ve found that some members of minority-语言 communities, 学校董事会成员, 国会议员, and even some linguists hold the idea that 语言s 与 few speakers are not worth learning and that the utility of a 语言 is determined by its speaker base.
My project will work to counter this notion, especially since this line of thinking is particularly easy to fall into for native English speakers whose lives can be navigated monolingually. The issue of “practicality” is exacerbated by the immense and persisting stigma surrounding Indigenous 语言 和身份.
埃莉安娜·斯蒂尔，26岁 Cites a Source
Over the course of centuries, speakers of 语言s other than English — especially the Indigenous 语言s of 北美 — were violently oppressed. For generations, thousands of Indigenous children were 被迫出席 government-mandated boarding schools where they were subject to a 宽泛的虐待方式 and punished for speaking their native 语言s. The assimilation model employed 在 history of 北美n education drives my research to look closely at the role of local and state-level politics in regulating school curricula to advance oppressive agendas by way of linguistic desecration.
We live in an exciting time for Indigenous 语言 revival, 与 marked turning points, both 在 type of linguistic reclamation found in Indigenous communities and 在 way that academia views endangered 语言s.
