Teresa L. McCarty

Reclaiming Indigenous Languages: A Reconsideration of the Roles and Responsibilities of Schools.

In this chapter, we offer a critical examination of a growing field of educational inquiry and social practice: the reclamation of Indigenous mother tongues. We use the term reclamation purposefully to denote that these are languages that have been forcibly subordinated in contexts of colonization (Hinton, 2011; Leonard, 2007). Language reclamation includes revival of a language no longer spoken as a first language, revitalization of a language already in use, and reversal of language shift (RLS), a term popularized by Joshua Fishman (1991) to describe the reengineering of social supports for intergenerational mother tongue transmission. All of these processes involve what Māori scholar Margie Kahukura Hohepa (2006) calls language regeneration, a term that speaks of “growth and regrowth,” recognizing that nothing “regrows in exactly the same shape that it had previously, or in exactly the same direction” (p. 294).

50(0) Years Out and Counting: Native American Language Education and the Four Rs

Fifty years after the U.S. Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA), Native Americans continue to fight for the right “to remain an Indian” (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006) against a backdrop of test-driven language policies that threaten to destabilize proven bilingual programs and violate hard-fought language rights protections such as the Native American Languages Act of 1990/1992. In this article we focus on the “four Rs” of Indigenous language education—rights, resources, responsibilities, and reclamation—forefronting the inherent sovereignty of Indigenous peoples in language education decision making. Drawing on our work together and our individual long-term ethnographic work with Native American communities, we present three case studies that illuminate larger issues of language rights, resources, responsibilities, and reclamation as they are realized in these communities. We conclude by “reflecting forward” (Winn, 2014) on language education possibilities and tensions, 50 years out from passage of the CRA and more than 500 years out from the original Indigenous-colonial encounter.

The Role of Schools in Native American Language and Culture Revitalization: A Vision of Linguistic and Educational Sovereignty

This chapter takes as its starting point the status of Indigenous peoples as sovereigns and tribal sovereignty as the bedrock of self-government, self-education, and self-determination. We explore the implications of tribal sovereignty for policy and practice in Indigenous schooling, focusing on school-based language reclamation and maintenance. This is illustrated first through a historical discussion of Navajo- and Hawaiian-medium schooling, and then through two in-depth contemporary case studies of bi/multilingual education in the Southwestern United States: the Native American Community Academy and Puente de Hozhǫ Trilingual Public Magnet School. By creating new opportunities for children to learn in and through their heritage language and culture, these schools are elevating the scale or status of Indigenous languages in contemporary contexts and demonstrably changing expectations for Indigenous languages as vital, dynamic carriers of distinct Indigenous knowledge systems. The chapter concludes with a vision of Indigenous linguistic and educational sovereignty as a tool for and expression of self-determination and cultural continuance and survival.

Negotiating Sociolinguistic Borderlands--Native Youth Language Practices in Space, Time, and Place.

Drawing on the work of Philip Deloria (2004) and recent explorations of “American Indian languages in unexpected places” (Webster & Peterson, 2011a), this article challenges received expectations of Native American languages and language users as “rural” and physically distant and of “urban” Indigenous language practices as anomalous. With a focus on Native American youth, I develop the notion of sociolinguistic borderlands—spatial, temporal, and ideological spaces of sociolinguistic hybridity and diversity—as a lens into the grounded realities of language in the lives of contemporary Native youth. The article first contextualizes the current situation of Native American languages and language users within dynamic linguistic ecologies, then presents 4 ethnographic vignettes that illustrate the ways in which youth use their knowledge and claims to heritage languages to negotiate, cross, and occupy sociolinguistic borderlands. I conclude by suggesting the ways in which language planners and educators can reorganize received expectations about youth language practices and ideologies, thereby opening new possibilities for Indigenous language reclamation and youth self-empowerment.

Comparing ‘new speakerhood’: context, positionality, and power in the new sociolinguistic order

Individually and collectively, the cases gathered in this special issue offer ethnographically rich and theoretically compelling insights into what O’Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo (2015) call the ‘new sociolinguistic order’. As they explain, this new order is based on linguistic economies undergoing profound transformation ‘in which the sources of [linguistic] authority are being displaced as we move towards a... post-national’ modernity (2015, 15). Front and centre in this new order are new speakers of minoritised and endangered languages, whose profiles, O’Rourke, Pujolar, and Ramallo stress, ‘can no longer be ignored’ (2015, 16). As the authors in this special issue show, addressing these new speaker profiles forces us to rethink static labels of ‘second-language learner’ in order to engage social contexts characterised by communicative hybridity and mobility. Exemplifying this new sociolinguistic scholarship, the authors tackle hegemonic notions of ‘nativeness’ and authenticity that fossilise speakers in time and space (O’Rourke and Walsh 2017). In so doing they also illuminate the challenges and possibilities in revitalising and sustaining minoritised languages. By definition, language revitalisation is about the cultivation of new speakers, and there are many connections in this work to research and practice in Indigenous language planning and policy (see, e.g. Coronel-Molina and McCarty 2016; Hinton 2013; Hinton and Hale 2001; Hornberger 2008; King 2001; Meek 2010; Olthuis, Kivelä, and Skutnabb-Kangas 2013). Yet there are important differences between Indigenous settings and those of new speakers in Europe and European heritage communities. The distinctive qualities of the cases examined here, as well as shared experiences across minoritised and endangered-language communities, constitute the focus of this commentary.

Concluding commentary: reimagining education research from indigenous elsewheres

The articles in this special issue resonate with and expand upon the work of Sandy Grande in the lead article, helping to reimagine how we understand relations of care, reciprocity, and mutuality i...

Twelfth Annual Brown Lecture in Education Research: So That Any Child May Succeed: Indigenous Pathways Toward Justice and the Promise of Brown:

As the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to rehear for the second time the case of Brown v. Board of Education in 1953, the 83rd Congress passed House Concurrent Resolution 108 and Public Law 280—policies that would terminate federal treaty and trust responsibilities to Native Americans. Even as post-Brown desegregation went into effect, thousands of Native American children continued to attend segregated, English-only federal boarding schools. This lecture considers the Brown legacy and broader issues of education equality in the context of research, policy, and practice in Indigenous education. Focusing on a core argument in Brown—that equality of opportunity is a prerequisite “so that any child may succeed”—I examine hard-fought pathways toward education justice forged by Indigenous educators, parents, leaders, and allies; the larger settler colonial project in which those efforts are embedded; and the ways in which Indigenous initiatives are braided with those of other racialized groups. Key to this analysis is recognition that equal access and uniformity of education approach are not synchronous with equity. I conclude with the ongoing challenges in fulfilling the promise of Brown—in particular, the simultaneous homogenizing and stratifying effects of current education policies—and what can be learned from diverse models of contemporary Indigenous education practice.

Tsé Ch’ízhí Diné Bi’ólta’ —Rough Rock, The People’s School: Reflections on a Half-Century of Navajo Community-Controlled Education (U.S. 1966)

This chapter provides an account of the first contemporary American Indian community-controlled school. Established in 1966 in the heart of the Navajo Nation, the Rough Rock Demonstration School (now Rough Rock Community School) was the first to have an all-Navajo governing board and to teach in and through the Native language. We begin with the demographic, economic, and historical antecedents that laid the foundation for the modern school. We then discuss the school’s early programs in culturally based education and Navajo community control. In the context of these programs, Rough Rock emerged as a model of American Indian self-determination, paving the way for some of the most significant federal Indian education policies of the twentieth century. We also explore an exemplary bilingual-bicultural initiative at the school, and the tensions and possibilities inherent in “doing” school in such a radically new way. Looking back nearly 50 years after the demonstration began, we conclude by discussing the current situation at Rough Rock, its efforts to sustain and revitalize the Navajo language, and the larger lessons the Rough Rock experience teaches.

A “Rightful Place” in the World of Languages: Rethinking Discourses of Dis-Ability in Indigenous Language Planning and Policy

The labels used to name, classify, and analyze language varieties and competencies construct realities that enable or disable the (re)acquisition of those languages and the empowerment of their speakers. Focusing on Indigenous American languages, I first consider the classificatory schemas used to assign linguistic vitality hierarchies. I then examine parallel discourses of linguistic “dysfluency” (Meek, 2011)and disinterest often assigned to younger members of Indigenous speech communities. Expanding upon Ramanathans (2010, 2013) notion of dis-citizenship, I argue that linguistic naming and classification, while foregrounding important issues of endangerment, can create a logic whereby threatened languages are viewed as “dis-citizens” in the world of languages—incomplete, non-normative, and disabled—potentially undermining revitalization efforts. Drawing on comparative ethnographic research on Native American language loss and reclamation, I explore the ways in which Indigenous communities are interrupting these discourses. I conclude with the implications for language rights.