Struggling Indigenous languages and immersion

[Renato Corsetti]

From the Indig'enaj Popoloj Project of the Esperanto Movement! Freedom for all languages!

>Date: Fri, 21 Oct 2005 14:10:21 +0200
>From: Tove Skutnabb-Kangas <skutnab...@gmail.com>
>To: lingvo-...@helsinki.fi
>Subject: [lingvo-politiko] Struggling Indigenous languages and immersion
>Sender: owner-ling...@helsinki.fi
>Reply-To: lingvo-...@helsinki.fi
>
>As you know, Indigenous languages almost everywhere in the world are
>struggling for survival. Several have started languages nest and
>immersion programmes, so that children can relearn their parents or
>grandparents languages. Robert and I attended a fantastic conference
>om this in Canada, Fredericton, two weeks ago, organised by Andrea
>Bear Nicolas, Chair of Native Studies at St Thomas University,
>Fredericton. I hope I can persuade Robert to send you a personal
>account he wrote about it. (I just asked, and he promised! There is
>one very small mistake in his - he says it was some 70 participants -
>it was around 200 but all were not there at the same time). The
>organisers are following it up. Andrea, together with her students,
>has prepared a short list of points, to support the participants with
>arguments for immersion. (I commented extensively, after they asked me
>to do that). It is now going to all the participants so that they can
>add things if they want to. It will probably later also have a small
>Preface, to explain the context, but Andrea is already taking it with
>her to an Indigenous education conference in Argentina next week.
>
>I would like to share it with you, so that you can see how people who
>are really struggling see things, and what they see as really
>important. I think people on this list would understand it all much
>more than most linguists. I'm, for instance, shocked to see that even
>if GURT 2006 (the Georgetown Round Table)
>http://www.georgetown.edu/events/gurt/2006/
>is about Endangered and Minority Languages, there is not one
>Indigenous person among the keynote speakers or even organisers of
>major workshops/panels, at least so far. It is still Us researching
>Them and talking about them. - Andrea is a Maliseet herself, and all
>the participants were First Nation people except four (the two of us
>and a constitutional lawyer and a man married to a Cree woman,
>speaking Cree well (and they are home schooling their 11-year old son
>through the medium of Cree, with the help of her fluent Cree-speaking
>mother who lives with them).
>
>A question: obviously Andrea et al.'s text should get circulated
>widely. Any ideas? Humhrey & probal - is it too "popular" for LPLP? I
>think it should come in several places.
>
>Tove
>
>--
>Dr Tove Skutnabb-Kangas
>Roskilde University, Dept of Languages and Culture, Denmark
>Åbo Akademi University Vasa, Dept of Education, Finland
>Use only home address: Tronninge Mose 3, DK-4420 Regstrup, Denmark
>email:SkutnabbKangas followed by @gmail.com
>home page: http://akira.ruc.dk/~tovesk/
>
>