DECOLONIZING YOUR NEWSFEED
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The Global Indigenous Youth Caucus delivering a formal intervention in response to the International Decade of Indigenous Languages, Monday at the UN
Permanent Forum on the Rights of Indigenous Issues in New York. UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus
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LANGUAGE + LAND | 05.01.22
When it comes to the languages we speak on this planet, it's no secret that the majority of us - more than a billion people, according to Ethnologue - speak English. But we are a polyglot
society and nowhere is that more true than across the Indigenous world where there are literally thousands of non-English speaking communities dotting the global landscape. Another known fact is that many of these languages are, sadly, in danger of disappearing and emerging theory suggests climate change could be a grave accelerator of this problem. On the flip side, Indigenous
languages could also help reverse the impacts of a warming planet - and this kicked off a global conversation at the United Nations this week about the value of these languages.
More on that in a minute, but first...
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I'm writing at the moment while also listening to something I came across while researching Indigenous languages for this weekend's newsletter and I want to invite you to listen along, too - as you read. It's the
latest album from Byron Nicholai of Toksook Bay, Alaska. The Yup'ik artist was recently featured in Rolling Stone (India), and as I type, his album, Ayagnera [The Beginning], currently sits at number
seven on Apple iTunes' Top Ten Worldwide playlist.
| New album cover of "Ayagnera" released March 25. Byron Nicholai
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Not bad for a guy who struggled for at least two years battling a slow Internet in the Bering Sea region to mix his music - a blend of easy hip-hop, pop, R&B, and most importantly, yuraq, the music of his people. His lyrics are entirely in Yup'ik, his Native
language. And as he told Rolling Stone, "I felt like it was the start of Yup'ik modern music," Nicholai said. He's right - there's really nothing else like it and you can take it in here on iTunes or for free (with ads) on YouTube. Enjoy. 🎵
Now back to the newsletter...
Of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken worldwide, more than half of them - around 4,000 - are Indigenous languages. But some fifty percent are under threat, according to UNESCO. More pessimistic outlooks project that ninety percent could be gravely endangered or altogether extinct by the end of this century. The colonization of Indigenous territories is entirely to blame. Fewer fluent speakers are alive among families who grew up communicating in settler tongues, and in many cases, by linguicide, including those who endured abusive assimilation boarding
schools in the US and several other countries around the world - Canada, Australia, and Norway, to name a few.
In recent years, groups such as the Linguist Society of America have begun to take seriously the toll that climate change may have on languages, specifically those spoken by people living in regions threatened by rising sea levels, melting permafrost, and intensifying wildfire zones - those who we know are more likely to be Indigenous.
Yet, when you Google the words 'migration' and 'climate change,' few results include 'language' in the equation, though they should be. Embattled ecosystems and language loss go hand in hand, and this is not mere coincidence. The correlation, rather, resembles
the interconnectedness that is becoming so frequently discussed among climate scientists and others each trying to make sense of our biggest emergency - the climate crisis.
"The importance of the protection of Indigenous languages for the health of the planet is severely under-appreciated, especially in the UN and Member State campaigns against climate change," said Anpo Jensen in a formal intervention that she read at the start of the 21st Session of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York. The Oglala Lakota environmentalist is also a member of the UN Indigenous Youth Delegation, the group that drafted the
message.
This week, Jensen joined a celebrated return of Indigenous Peoples from around the world to the 10-day UNPFII after a two-year hiatus due to Covid-19. The pandemic hit Jensen's extended Lakota community particularly hard - at once, a loss of some of the last living
fluent Oglala speakers. For the recent Stanford graduate, she equates their departure to losing "living libraries" of Indigenous knowledge keepers - Elders who have stewarded ancestral lands like the Black Hills for millenia.
"As Indigenous Peoples lose their languages, they also begin to lose the cultural practices and traditional knowledge which protects the environment," said Jensen in her prepared remarks. Days later, she would return to the Forum to discuss the legacy pollution that
gold mining had left behind on "He Sapa," loosely translated in Lakota as "black ridge."
I spoke with Jensen this week as she and new generation of Indigenous youth advocates navigated their way through their first UNPFII calling on the World Health Organization to fund language revitalization as a way to respond to climate-related health impacts like toxic
waste, among other issues.
You can take in more here:
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Q+A
Save a Language, Save the Planet
Discussing language preservation as a way to advance climate justice with Oglala Lakota Oyaté environmentalist, Anpo Jenson
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Jensen's remarks were timed with the (unofficial) launch of the International Decade of Indigenous Languages 2022-2032, a UNESCO-led initiative that I promote in this week's Endorsement section of the newsletter, down
below. A high-level event in Paris was meant to officially kick off the ten-year language preservation agenda last week ahead of the UNPFII, but it was postponed because few Indigenous people were able to travel to mark the launch. So, stay tuned.
Wrapping things up, here are few extras:
- The UNESCO Atlas of the World's Indigenous Languages in Danger has been a work-in-progress for several years, but it's improving. I can't wait for some cross-mapping to occur to crystallize language loss correlation to the climate crisis
- Another cool project I'm monitoring is the tracking of Indigenous languages on the Internet(s) - not an easy feat. Can you guess where Indigenous languages are most vibrant online? The answer in this week's Indigenously Index
- And two things from my personal archives: first, this heartfelt radio piece I put together a few years back about my grandmother being bullied for how she spoke our Native language, Keres, Ugh. 💔
- And secondly, this dusty old reel from 2007 - a low-budget, high-impact short film about saving the Sauk language on the Sac and Fox Nation that got inducted into the Library of Congress.
Next Thursday is the national day of observing those who have been lost to violence or have disappeared - May 5: "Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day." Last year's observance by the White House was unprecedented given how so many administrations in the
past have discounted the violence over the years. Here's what I wrote then. There'll be more to say, next week.
Til next time, friends,
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Approximate number that are Indigenous languages: 4,000
Estimated number of Indigenous languages in danger: 2680
Approximate number of Indigenous languages that have disappeared in the last century:
600
Percentage of Indigenous languages that UNESCO predicts will vanish or be endangered by the end of the 21st century: 50-90%
Number that are listed as "critically endangered": 75
As totally extinct: 54
As revitalized: 3
Total languages that currently can be experienced online, mostly on Wikipedia, according to a new study: 300
Number of languages used by roughly 75% of the world's population who access the Internet: 10
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Led by UNESCO, the IDIL2022-2032 is designed to inspire a global plan of action that builds across ten years. It could mean any number of steps such as hosting an international theatrical festival asserting marginalized languages, or digitizing Indigenous languages onto online platforms. And through these activities, the idea is for people like you to get
involved, even if your mother tongue is English.
There are lots of ways to engage:
And if you want to be thorough, you can thumb through the essential UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples which, in part, upholds the objectives of the IDIL by
specifically recognizing that "Indigenous Peoples have the [self-determined] right to revitalize, use, develop, and transmit to future generations their histories, languages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures, and to designate and retain their own names for communities, places and persons.”
As a member of the Indigenous Media Caucus, I'm excited to announce that our humble little group will be partnering with UNESCO to chronicle the decade of our languages - so expect more from me and
Indigenously.
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"Thank you for taking us along with you to Alaska."
L.H., Seattle, WA
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| Thank you to L.H. and others who let me know they appreciate my occasional dispatches from Alaska where this newsletter is based. In case you missed last week's drop, we focused on the hard-to-cover visit by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland who toured the state. And did you see, on the heels of that visit the BLM announced it was closing half of Alaska's National Petroleum Reserve to oil drilling? Alaska's Congressional Delegation is fuming.
😤
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