This book builds a space in which a diversity of voices – Indigenous teachers, activists and committed academics – are foregrounded in the processes of Indigenous education with the goal of Indigenous language reclamation. It decenters state systems of education (e.g. schooling) and instead considers the efforts of teachers (defined broadly), community activists and scholars who are developing initiatives to support Indigenous language practices in, around and beyond schooling, thereby emphasizing diverse processes of language reclamation in complex and varied settings. The authors invite the reader to reconsider language reclamation in the face of climate change and neocolonial exploitation, offering a source of radical hope for the future. Central to the book are narratives regarding community-based collaborations, which subvert the asymmetrical power relations between academia and educational practitioners and activists, and call into question the categories constructed by a top-down approach, as well as the colonial relationships that linguistic anthropology and linguistics have constructed within the spaces and people they ‘study’.
Julieta Briseņo-Roa is Professor-Researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico. She considers it fundamental to contribute to land-based education as a form of cultural reclamation, defense of the territory and action against the climate catastrophe.
Paulina Griņķ is Professor in the Facultad de Educaciķn, Universidad Autķnoma de Chile. She is part of educational initiatives which reconnect community knowledge with school curricula.
Dr. Vanessa Anthony Steven (White/Settler) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences at the University of Idaho. She is married to Dr. Philip Stevens, and mother to two daughters, Carmen and Hazel Stevens. Vanessa’s research highlights the gifts of Indigenous community centered education and the tenacity of critical participatory research to advance local educational equity. She is most interested in participating in settler-scholar response-ability to change in colonial institutions such as schools and universities, and delights in bending anthropological tools to build anti-oppressive learning communities. Vanessa’s work has been featured in the Journal of Teacher Education, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, the Journal of American Indian Education, and Anthropology & Education Quarterly. Her partnerships have been funded by various entities, including the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Spencer Foundation.
José Antonio Flores Farfán is Professor in the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico. Over several decades he has worked with Indigenous communities to produce materials which vindicate the use of minoritized languages.
