#indigenous linguicide

[blacklinguist]

bling’s notes #1: where have all the languages gone?

initially, i thought of doing a more cohesive summary for these chapters. but as i tend to post handwritten notes (and not easily readable), i thought i would just throw up my notes from my reading of vanishing voices through this semester. i may or may not make separate posts about what i write, but please feel free to engage with anything i put down. :-] bolded points are for my own clarity for assignments

Language death is occurring more rapidly in the last five hundred years (Ubkyh, Manx, Catwaba Sioux). Even 100 years can be the difference between a thriving language, and a dead one. page 2

Languages begin to die once younger generations do not speak it at home in lieu of another dominant tongue. In the case of Esenc, his sons did not speak his, but Turkish. Irish was a stable language, with the third greatest collection of literature after latin and greek in west europe, but lack of home usage has brought uncertainty to the language's future. page 4

point 1 : The terms of language death. do languages die naturally ? should we characterize these extinctions as murders ? linguicide? (language suicide also noted, but that places the onus on the community, where most times, it is the devouring from another language that wipes out a community // self correct: natural disasters / disease can also contribute). death is not random nor sudden page 5 & page 7

el salvador in 1932, stopped speaking native tongues to not be identified as indigenous, but that contributed to a loss of heritage (page 5)

point 2 : linguistic diversity = cultural diversity, conversely, linguistic homogenity is cultural homogenity page 7

Paraguay only south american country with indigenous language retained by most of population, guaraní (page 8)

diversity in language study gives us more information about the linguistic and cultural experiences that humans have had worldwide page 11

smaller languages lend themselves to more grammatical complexity, especially when retained with in group communication (no need for 'simplification' for the masses?, can be more detailed with ideas) .. likened to jargon in subject circles to be more accurate (page 12)

point 3: do plants / animals hold more weight over languages when it comes to preservation ? are languages not seen as sacred? (page 15)

usefulness of language = west economic value (page 16)

the privilege of monolingualism, and the unsurprising and violent emergence of english as the world's lingua franca (page 18) // unity in tongue is not unity in thought

Rupert Murdoch responsible for spread of Hindi through asian tv channel Star (page 19)

politics are involved in eventual language death, stemming from linguistic persecution through laws (page 22)

point 4: page 23 : to preserve ourselves, our language, our heritage, is a selfish goal ... challenging that ... why is it selfish to preserve ourselves ? who are we if we are not ourselves ? if we do not care for ourselves ? how can we tend to others if we do not also tend to our own needs? there must be a boundary for caring for oneself vs indulging oneself ALWAYS before someone else // this seems like a privileged stance, especially when there are so many peoples fighting for their languages to be left alone, fighting for validity, fighting for the chance to raise their children in their own tongues.

where is the public perception of the importance of preventing language extinction, allowing those on the brink to be saved, and ending the persecution of languages that are not the Big 3?

[hcalderon17]

As Mexicans, born of this land, this continent and this hemisphere, it is not our citizenship or nationality in the country of Mexico that establishes the immutable characteristic of our identity and indigeneity, it is our origins, our family's origins, our pueblo's origins. This is not subject to approval or denial by anyone else but ourselves, our families, our pueblos.

Often, social theory is affirmed in the absence of real politics, and politics are imagined in the absence of any theory. Such is often the case of anti-indigenous and anti-miscegenation biases and discrimination at play in academia, on social media and in the nonprofit industry today.

Besides internationally affirmed rights such as those upheld by the #UNDRIP and the #OIT169, for Mexicans, the Mexican COnstitution matters. The 2020 reforms of the Mexican Constitution include the affirmation that in Mexico, indigenous peoples "are those who descend from populations that lived in the actual territory of the country at the beginning of the colonization and that preserve their own social, economic, cultural and policies, OR PART OF THEM."

The Constitution goes on to affirm that "Consciousness of one's indigenous identity should be a fundamental criterion in determining to whom the provisions on indigenous peoples apply. ("La conciencia de su identidad indígena deberá ser criterio fundamental para determinar a quiénes se aplican las disposiciones sobre pueblos indígenas.") - Artículo 2o.- Constitucion Politico de la Nación Mexicana.

WHY THEN, IS THE CANCEL CULTURE OF SO-CALLED "MESTIZOS" AS NOT INDIGENOUS, OR WORSE, NOT INDIGENOUS ENOUGH...NOT CLEARLY ALSO SEEN AS RACIST AND DISCRIMINATORY?

Tribal affiliation or community membership can be maintained in innumerable ways in full coherence and alignment with the self-determination of each tribe, community or People. So-called de-indigenized or de-tribalized Indigenous persons in search of Indigenous reaffirmation and cultural or linguistic revitalization, especially children, youth and families who have been subjected to and overcome the forces of migration, urbanization and poverty do not need theories of oppressive relativism to explain to them why they are not Indigenous. Across the hemisphere, Indigenous Peoples mostly live away from homelands and mostly do not speak their mother tongue fluently. This is not a new phenomenon. It is the consequence of a cycle of oppression and domination that began in 1492, and in Mexico in many ways was cemented in history, in 1521.

We need not go so far back in time. At the turn of the 20th century the majority of Mexicans spoke their respective Indigenous language. By the turn of the 21st century, less than 7% do.

For Indigenous Mexicans, the fight for recognition, respect and at times, access and inclusion, is also an internal struggle to decolonize over five hundred years of territorial, political, religious, linguistic, and cultural genocide misrepresented as genetic and cultural miscegenation that has falsely disqualified Indigenous Peoples from being Indigenous. This allows nation-state governments, like Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, to declare that only a small minority of its citizens are members of “Indigenous Peoples.” According to the most recent census, out of Mexico’s 121,000,000 citizens, only less than a quarter of these self-identify as “Indigenous” and to underscore, less than 7% speak an Indigenous language.

Meanwhile, in the US, the census identifies “Mexican Indians” and “Latin American Indians” as the fifth largest “tribe” in the country. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec capital invaded and colonized by the Spaniards in 1519, is spoken today fluently by almost 2,000,000 Mexicans. Communities, such ours organized around Anahuacalmecac World School, are demonstrating that we can exert our right to self-determination and engage in all levels of cultural revitalization locally and internationally. Nahuatl language education and revitalization initiatives are growing in both communities and colleges. Semillas del Pueblo SemAnawak contributes no small part to this both in Los Angeles and in Mexico as we organize and uplift education in Nahuatl for Nahuatl speakers across three states in Mexico and have often been called upon by organizations such as the Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales to help provide for Nahuatl language court interpreters. In Mexico, our Nahuatl language teachers have led Nahuatl language interpreter training since at least the early nineties.

Today, we must be in the practice of recognizing ourselves in each other and of renegotiating our political relationships with all colonial state governments. This requires ikniyiotl - kinship.

But, beyond who is and who is not Indigenous or Mestizo I wonder...

If most #IndigenousPeoples in #Mexico are not self-recognized or externally recognized as "tribes", then, how can one speak of "de-tribalized" Indigenous persons in so-called academia?

If we can acknowledge the implicit and explicit racism of dominant Mexican society, then, can we also recognize the implicit racism of misogynistic and miscegenistic affirmations which assert that "mestizos" are not "Indigenas"?

Is the human right to nation, language, land and culture (self-recognition and self-determination) as Indigenous Peoples subject to the say of self-appointed individual gatekeepers and interlocutors?

Can Indigenous Mexicans be disenrolled from their Indigeneity by other Indigenous Mexicans?

Ought Indigenous Mexican children and youth, subjected to migration, deculturalization, and linguicide, also be subjected to Indigenous cancel culture by other Mexican Indigenous persons?

How is human "race" to be understood as a shared Indigenous concept of humanity...politically, naturally, spiritually, if not through each of our own distinct cosmovisions?

"Your right to self-determination does not extend itself to deny my right to self-determination."

[whittlebaggett8]

China’s Effort to Silence the Sound of Uyghur

A key element of China’s marketing campaign from Uyghur id is a crackdown on the Uyghur language.

By Rustem Shir for The Diplomat

May 16, 2019

Abduweli Ayup fled Xinjiang (also recognised as East Turkestan) in August 2015 to escape persecution from the Chinese Communist Get together. His official crime was “abusing community money” in the operation of schools, but this fraudulent charge hid his genuine affront to the Chinese federal government – resistance to the condition approach to advance Mandarin language assimilation.

In 2011, Mr. Ayup established a college in the southwestern town of Kashgar that used Uyghur, Mandarin, and English to apply a culturally relevant instruction. He and his associates ended up mindful that, by supplying instruction in Uyghur, they were being at odds with the Chinese government’s aim to marginalize minority languages. They also realized that by affirming the standing of Uyghur as legitimate for tutorial uses, they had been demanding the government’s language ideology, which depicts the Uyghur language as backward and unpatriotic.

Scholars figure out that mother tongue-primarily based multilingual schooling has a good effects on students’ cognitive and sociocultural progress. For the ethnic minorities of Xinjiang, it also had well known attraction. At the ask for of Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Mongol group members, Mr. Ayup was preparing to open up extra educational institutions that provided minority language instruction in the regional capital of Urumqi.

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Even so, Mr. Ayup’s attractiveness aroused the Chinese government’s worry of ethnic nationalism. He and his associates had been interrogated on many instances and arrested in August 2013. When incarcerated, Mr. Ayup was sexually assaulted by police officers and suffered psychological and bodily abuse from inmates. He was launched in November 2014, but Chinese protection personnel ongoing to torment him with arbitrary beatings and confinement. Not able to endure this treatment, Mr. Ayup escaped to Turkey. His spouse and children adopted, and they lived in Ankara as stateless refugees for virtually four decades, just before relocating to France in April 2019.

In the Chinese Communist Party’s generate to erase markers of Uyghur id, the Uyghur language is a focus on since it is a Turkic language with several terms of Arabic origin, and loanwords from Persian, and created in an Arabic-dependent script. These factors of the Uyghur language provide to link Uyghurs with Turkic and Islamic communities. The CCP seeks to sever these affinities and is working with Mandarin language assimilation as a software to reorient Uyghur id.

This motive serves as the basis of the Chinese government’s decades-extended tactic to normalize Mandarin as the key language of conversation for the ethnic minority communities of Xinjiang. As section of this system, CCP language coverage on training has shifted from the tolerance of ethnic minority languages to their prohibition, concurrent with the marketing of Mandarin.

The CCP’s most pervasive language policy in the location problems “bilingual” education for ethnic minority pupils. While the identify of this policy may possibly counsel that students retain their native language though incorporating another language, “bilingual” education in Xinjiang subtracts native language capabilities en route to Mandarin language assimilation. This mode of training experienced expanded, by 2014, to educational institutions serving 2 million major and secondary pupils, which include 480,000 preschool students. The Chinese govt is advancing towards their purpose to institute “bilingual” education in above 90 p.c of ethnic minority primary and secondary schools by 2020.

The Chinese government’s homestay application also performs a position in the marketing campaign for Mandarin language assimilation. By 2017, much more than a million Chinese cadres had been implanted in the households of rural Xinjiang inhabitants for at the very least 5 days each and every two months. Tasked with observing Turkic Muslim family members, the cadres also report the Mandarin proficiency concentrations of Uyghur household associates and their general use of Mandarin. Consequently, language abilities and methods provide as points of proof when determining who should be proposed for “re-education” at an internment camp.

In the community of internment camps of Xinjiang, the place shut to 3 million Turkic Muslims are remaining held, internees are expected to communicate in Mandarin and prohibited from utilizing their indigenous languages. In a white paper, the Chinese govt stated that “trainees” wanted to master Mandarin to “acquire modern knowledge and information” for the reason that “only by mastering standard Chinese language can they improved adapt to up to date culture.” This argument implies that the minority languages of Xinjiang are deficient for conversation, a politically practical but scientifically untrue assertion.

Some may well argue that the Chinese federal government is justified in their use of internment camps to get rid of the danger of anti-govt sentiment. Other people may perhaps contend that this act of ethnocide is no various than the U.S. campaign from Indigenous Americans, the Canadian marketing campaign in opposition to Very first Nation communities, and the Australian campaign against Aboriginal communities. But, it is hard to visualize that cultural trauma will engender optimistic emotions toward the source of that trauma. And historic scenarios of cultural assimilation do not justify their repetition.

The prospect of opposing governments that threaten minority cultures might appear challenging, but those fascinated in tough Chinese linguistic imperialism can take action by pressuring U.S. politicians to assist the Uyghur Human Rights Plan Act of 2019 (Household Resolution H.R. 649 and Senate Resolution S. 178). This act condemns the “elimination of the Uyghur language as a medium of instruction in Xinjiang faculties and universities.” Fascinated functions can also support the UYGHUR Act of 2019 (Home Resolution H.R. 1025), which has a portion devoted to the preservation and advertising of the Uyghur language. Citizens throughout the world ought to encourage their governments to use instruments like the World Magnitsky Act to impose financial sanctions and travel penalties on Chinese officers liable for human rights abuses in northwest China.

The Chinese governing administration is intensely invested in silencing the audio of Uyghur. Opponents of linguicide in Xinjiang are urged to publicize, condemn, and resist this violation of human rights.

Rustem Shir is a Research Associate for the Uyghur Human Rights Venture.

The post China’s Effort to Silence the Sound of Uyghur appeared first on Defence Online.

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[ara-la]

Decolonization and Wall Street

Decolonization and ‘Occupy Wall Street’

by Robert Desjarlait

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protest has become a matter of debate in Indian country. Some have chosen to be included under the slogan “We Are The 99%”; others, like me, have not. Many of those who support OWS have come up with their own slogan: “Decolonize Wall Street.” But I simply don’t believe that the indigenous nations on Turtle Island are a part of that 99% equation, let alone that the OWS movement is about decolonization.

 One protester, Brendan Burke, said: “Everyone has this problem. White, black. Rich or poor. Where you live. Everyone has a financial inequity oppressing them.”

 I assume from his statement that Burke only sees things in white and black. Apparently he is color blind when it comes to red and brown.

 As far as financial inequity is concerned, we, the red and the brown peoples of the Americas, have suffered financial inequity ever since the oppressors first invaded our shores. Socio-economic inequity began with the subjugation of our lands through treaties. Annuity payments were late and never the amount negotiated under the treaty. Supplies and food rations that were part of annuity payments were often appropriated by Indian agents and resold for higher prices.

 The tragedy at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag (Sandy Lake) exemplifies the socio-economic inequity of annuity payments. In the fall of 1850, nineteen Anishinaabeg bands from Wisconsin journeyed to Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag for annual annuity payments and supplies. The annuity payments and supplies were late and the people had to wait until early December before they received limited sums of money and available supplies. Trying to survive on spoiled and inadequate government rations while waiting for the annuities, 150 Anishinaabeg people died from dysentery and measles at Gaa-mitaawangaagamaag. 250 more, mostly women, children and elders, died on their way back home to Wisconsin. This is but one example of the economic inequity that has been part of the indigenous experience in the United  States.

 OWS organizers have repeatedly stated the inspiration for their protest is the Arab Spring movement. If this is the case, one may ask how did the indigenous peoples of the Middle East fare from the Arab Spring?

 In September 2011, Daniel Gabriel, the SUA Human Rights and UN NGO Director, stated: “While the media focuses all its energy on the Palestinian search for Statehood and the ‘Arab Spring’, it is the reduced indigenous populations of the Middle East who continue to lose out. Time and time again, the world demands justice, democracy and freedom in the Middle East, but it fails in its obligation to demand the same for the minority groups like the Arameans. Today we barely survive in our homeland. But tomorrow we may silently vanish from existence.”

 If Arab Spring didn’t flourish for indigenous peoples in the Middle East, how can we expect it to flourish here? If the indigenous peoples in the Middle East are barely surviving in their homelands, can we expect the Arab Spring inspired movement on Wall Street to lessen the oppression in our homelands? Will the actions on Wall Street abate our youth crisis, our teen suicide rate, our domestic and sexual abuse, or our alcohol and substance abuse in Indian Country? Will it heal our broken families and communities? Will [Occupy] Wall Street stop the rape and plunder of Mother Earth by the mining, oil and energy interests? Will it halt the ecocide, ethnocide, linguicide, and genocide of the indigenous peoples in North America? If Gabriel’s words offer any insight, then our historical trauma will not lessen but increase. It will increase in the present generation to the Seventh Generation—and beyond.

 Then there is the matter of decolonization. The question is: the decolonization of what, of whom? How can decolonization be a part of the process if the occupiers are occupying occupied land?

 The dominance of a white majority involved with the OWS movement explains why decolonization isn’t included in the proposed list of demands issued on September 3. The list of demands includes

     Separate Investment Banking from Commercial Banks;

   Use Congressional authority to prosecute the Wall Street criminals responsible for 2008 crisis;

   Cap the ability of corporations to contribute to political campaigns;

   Congress pass the Buffett Rule, i.e., fair taxation of the rich and corporations;

   Revamping Securities and Exchange Commission;

   Pass effective law to limit the influence of lobbyists;

   Pass law prohibiting former regulators to join corporations later.

 Where in this proposed list of demands is there anything remotely connected to decolonization? At its core, OWS is about corporate greed, financial accountability, and economic inequity. It’s about a change in the system, although, as Gabriel points out, an Arab Spring doesn’t bring change to the voices of the indigenous. If change is the basic tenant of the OWS movement, then this change should not be the exclusion of indigenous populations in the United  States, rather, change should be inclusive.

 The OWS movement is, at the present time, about money. The core message seems to be that corporate America and the wealthy need to share the profits. But the question is: How are those profits made? The profits of the wealthy are made through the industries they own. These industries fuel and generate profits. And they create jobs and programs.

 The mining, oil, and energy industries generate enormous profits. Those profits come at a cost to Indian country, to say nothing of the environment in general. The new Indian Wars are about the opposition to ecocidal legislative policies and industries that endanger our homelands and our Mother Earth. Part of the struggle is trying to rise above the marginalization that began with colonization and continues through the corporate policies of the mining, oil, and energy industries.

 According to Belinda Morris, ”Marginalization is as much a result of colonialism as it is corporatism. One is social, the other economic. From the indigenous standpoint … the struggle does not and cannot exist in a vacuum, it must not allow itself to be subsumed by a movement that, to date, has shown little—if any—recognition of it, let alone respect for it.”

 As evidenced by their proposed list of demands, the OWS movement has no intentions of recognizing indigenous concerns or demarginalizing indigenous peoples in the United States. And that’s because the mindset of the majority of occupiers is an intergenerational extension of a colonized mindset. In her Foreword to The New Resource Wars, Winona LaDuke provides insight into the colonized mindset. Regarding “Industrial society, or as some call it, ‘settler society,’” LaDuke writes:

 “In industrial society, ‘man’s dominion over nature,’ has preempted the perception of Natural Law as central. Linear concepts of ‘progress’ dominate this worldview. From this perception of ‘progress’ as an essential component of societal development comes the perception of the natural world as a wilderness. This, of course, is the philosophical underpinning of colonialism and ‘conquest.’”

 This way of thinking is also present in scientific systems of thought like ‘Darwinism,’ as well as in social interpretations of human behavior such as ‘Manifest Destiny,’ with its belief in some god-ordained right of some humans to dominate the earth. These concepts are central to the … present state of relations between native and settler in North America and elsewhere.”

 The “settler society” that LaDuke refers to isn’t from the historical past. It is present in non-indigenous society today. It is the mentality of this “settler society” permeating the mindset of the OWS movement. Their demands aren’t about decolonization. Rather, their demands are about wanting a share of the profits, profits that come from the rape and plunder of the earth and our indigenous homelands.

 This isn’t to say that the OWS movement lacks merit. Economic inequities, corporate greed, the mortgage crisis, the unequal distribution of wealth are legitimate concerns. But those concerns have nothing to do with decolonization no environmental justice. As such, the 99% slogan is not inclusive of the myriad of environmental problems that plague both indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in the US.

 Wendy Makoons Geniusz writes: “Because of the colonization process, many of us no longer see the strength of our indigenous knowledge. Our minds have been colonized along with our land, resources, people. For us Anishinaabeg, the decolonization of gikendaasowin (Anishinaabe knowledge) is also part of the decolonization of ourselves.”

 Geniusz points out that biskaabiiyang means to “to return to ourselves, to decolonize ourselves.”

 For many of us, biskaabiiyang is a lifelong process. It is a journey to heal our traumatized inner spirit of the historical past and the historical present. For many of us, our involvement in the struggles that our communities and our homelands face is a part of that healing journey. From this prism, the Occupy movement can be viewed as recognizing the national trauma endured under Corporate America. But it isn’t about the biskaabiiyang of the American people. Rather, it’s about the collusion of corporations and the government to keep us under the yoke of economic inequity and the public’s demand for reformation of a corrupt capitalist system that has infested the world under the umbrella of globalization. And it is the reformation of this system that has led to the present movement of people on the streets of America.

 However, should any kind of reformation occur, indigenous peoples will undoubtedly continue to be marginalized and their natural resources exploited. And, as before, we will continue our struggles in the shadows of democracy.

 We will need to do this lest we silently vanish from existence.

 Robert Desjarlait is from the Red Lake Ojibwe Reservation. He is a free-lance journalist and has been published on issues regarding Indian country. He is a co-founder of Protect Our Manoomin, an Anishinaabe grassroots organization battling against copper mining in northern Minnesota. This piece is reprinted from Indian Country Today, 590 Madison  Avenue, New York, NY 10022    (646) 459-2326

 http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/ict_sbc/decolonization-and-occupy-wall-street#ixzz1fPd6PPns