Description
Ensuring the survival of Indigenous languages is a critical priority for Native people. Language is more than a symbol of cultural and political identity; it is not simply an historical legacy to be preserved out of sentiment. Rather, as many Indigenous language activists have explained to me, they seek to preserve language because it is the matrix within which their peoplehood is embedded. Culture, belief, relationship to the land and to ancestors live within language. Without language, these components of peoplehood wither; they become folklore, artifacts explained through translation into a language whose reference points, structuring philosophy, grammar are foreign.
For these reasons, many of our applicants for the Indigenous Knowledge Fellowships have been language teachers and activists. 16 of the finalists for the second cohort work in the language area. And three of our initial cohort of fellows focus on language. In order to support their work, and in recognition of the importance of the field to Indigenous knowledge, the Initiative on Native American Intellectual Leadership has also invested and will continue to invest in language projects outside of the Fellowship that have the potential to advance the field.
Northeastern University has proposed one such project. Dr. Ellen Cushman, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a professor of English at Northeastern, has been working to develop an on-line, collective reading environment that will make use of Cherokee-language manuscripts and documents that are not easily accessible to Cherokee people. Cherokee is unusual among Indigenous languages: in the 19th century, Sequoyah, a Cherokee leader, created a syllabary that enabled Cherokee to read and write in their own language.
Cherokee remains a living language but is spoken fluently by only 2500 people, most of whom are elders. Although the several Cherokee nations have invested in language learning, the language is in danger; Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma has identified language survival as a top priority for him and his administration.
Prof. Cushman is developing a prototype that will will enable Cherokee speakers, teachers, learners, and scholars to access, translate, read, understand, and pronounce some of the thousands of historical documents held at Yale, the American Philosophical Society and other archives. Working closely with speakers in Oklahoma and North Carolina, Prof. Cushman is digitizing, transliterating, translating, and annotating a selection of prison letters, diaries, government documents and more. These will be made available through an interface that enables the documents to be used as language learning tools, not simply as historical evidence.
She will use the grant to pay Northeastern students and faculty working on the project, several language consultants, and a large cohort of Cherokee speakers and teachers who will work on translations and provide feedback. Northeastern will absorb any administrative costs that are incurred. At the end of a project, she expects to have a working protype that she can build upon and expand. All of the underlying code is open-source; it is Dr. Cushman’s hope that the framework can be adapted for us by other Indigenous communities.