Building Language Movements

Indigenous Languages Now and Forever 
  

Language Reclamation

Movements

Indigenous Language Reclamation Movements involve two major goals:

  1. Protecting the speakers you have while making new ones
  2. Ensuring your Indigenous language is the language of power and use

Evaluating Language Vitality

The state of a language will often determine the general approach to building a language movement. There are many approaches to determining the state of a language, but the most recommended approach from Aanikoobijigeng is one that is centered upon the knowledge and authority of the descendants of a language. When engaging in assessing the health of a language, participants need to be honest about the situation without feeling like it is a terminal diagnosis. This means looking at the number of speakers, their ages, whether new speakers are being made, fluency levels, and the places where the language is spoken. This establishes a benchmark for determining the approach to building a language movement.

Multiple Levels of Movement Building

Language movement building is the overarching term for all the work done with a given language to keep it alive and healthy now and build it stronger in the future. This involves a wide variety of activities, ranging from language documentation and publication, to developing educational programs and institutions, to implementing philosophies of learning, correcting, sharing, and changing along with the surrounding world.

Definitions

There are many approaches, and our intention is not to prescribe activities or methods, but instead to offer definitions to the types of activities and approaches you might develop. Here are two terms for us to start with:

Indigenous Language
Movement Building

A collective social movement of Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples and institutions with the intention of re-establishing and/or maintaining Indigenous language presence and prestige.

Indigenous Language Reclamation

A collective intention of taking back land, time, space, and education for Indigenous language empowerment.