Table Of ContentINDIGENOUS YOUTH AND
MULTILINGUALISM
“… a much-needed exploration of language practices, policy implementa-
tion, and advocacy eff orts among Indigenous youth living in the United States
and around the world. The ethnographies will challenge readers to engage in
socially conscious ethnographic research and consider their responsibility to
support ongoing language revitalization eff orts around the globe.”
Guadalupe Valdés, Stanford University, USA
“Finally, scholars and students have a resource that accounts for the vitality and
massive diversity of Indigenous youth communicative repertoires. This path-
breaking volume tackles the important and neglected work of exploring the
relationship between ever-morphing Indigenous youth cultural practice and
the traditional goals of language policy and planning.”
Betsy Rymes, The University of Pennsylvania, USA
“This book raises important questions about existing conceptualizations of lan-
guage maintenance and language shift. It fi lls a gap in our knowledge of Indig-
enous youth and provides important insights about language and identity.”
Ariana Mangual Figueroa, Rutgers University, USA
“Throughout the book, young people’s love of their language expresses itself,
whether that love is there from the beginning or learned later. The future of
their Indigenous languages is in their hands. Thanks to the editors and authors
in this volume, the literature on language loss and revitalization now includes
the voices of this critical young generation.”
Leanne Hinton, University of California-Berkeley, USA,
from the Foreword
Bridging the fi elds of youth studies and language planning and policy, this
book takes a close, nuanced look at Indigenous youth bi/multilingualism across
diverse cultural and linguistic settings, drawing out comparisons, contrasts,
and important implications for language planning and policy and for projects
designed to curtail language loss and promote intergenerational learning and
understanding.
Within the book, Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars with longstanding
ties to language planning eff orts in diverse Indigenous communities exam-
ine language policy and planning as de facto and de jure—as covert and overt,
bottom-up and top-down. This approach illuminates crosscutting themes of
language identity and ideology, cultural confl ict, linguistic survivance, con-
tinuance, and linguistic human rights as youth negotiate these issues within
rapidly changing sociolinguistic contexts. A distinctive feature of the book is
its chapters and commentaries by Indigenous scholars writing about their own
communities.
This landmark volume stands alone in off ering a look at diverse Indigenous
youth in multiple endangered language communities; related theoretical,
empirical, and methodological insights; and lessons for intergenerational lan-
guage planning in dynamic sociocultural contexts.
Leisy T. Wyman is Associate Professor in the Language, Reading and Cul-
ture Program, and affi liate faculty in the American Indian Studies and Second
Language Acquisition and Teaching Programs at the University of Arizona,
USA.
Teresa L. McCarty is the George F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthro-
pology at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Alice Wiley Snell
Professor Emerita of Education Policy Studies at Arizona State University,
USA.
Sheilah E. Nicholas (Hopi) is Assistant Professor in the Language, Read-
ing, and Culture Program, and affi liate faculty in the American Indian Studies
and Second Language Acquisition and Teaching Programs at the University of
Arizona, USA.
INDIGENOUS YOUTH
AND MULTILINGUALISM
Language Identity, Ideology,
and Practice in Dynamic Cultural
Worlds
Edited by
Leisy T. Wyman, Teresa L. McCarty,
and Sheilah E. Nicholas
First published 2014
by Routledge
711 Th ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Simultaneously published in the UK
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
Th e right of the editors to be identifi ed as the authors of the editorial material, and of the
authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77
and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any
form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereaft er invented,
including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered
trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to
infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Indigenous youth and bi/multilingualism : language identity, ideology, and practice in
dynamic cultural worlds / edited by Leisy T. Wyman, Teresa L. McCarty, and Sheilah
E. Nicholas.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Indians of North America —Languages. 2. Indian youth—North America—
Languages. 3. Bilingualism—North America. 4. Multilingualistm—North America. 5.
Language shift —North America. 6. Language renewal—North America.
7. Anthropological linguistics—North America. I. Wyman, Leisy Th ornton.
PM206.I54 2013
497—dc23
2013004960
ISBN: 978-0-415-52242-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-415-52243-4 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-203-12143-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo and Stone Sans
by EvS Communication Networx, Inc.
To Indigenous youth everywhere, who, through their innovative
language practices and activism, are shaping the future of Indigenous
languages and communities.
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CONTENTS
Foreword, Leanne Hinton ix
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xxiii
1: Beyond Endangerment: Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism 1
Leisy T. Wyman, Teresa L. McCarty, and Sheilah E. Nicholas
2 Genealogies of Language Loss and Recovery—Native Youth
Language Practices and Cultural Continuance 26
Teresa L. McCarty, Mary Eunice Romero-Little, Larisa Warhol, and
Ofelia Zepeda
3 Just Keep Expanding Outwards: Embodied Space as Cultural
Critique in the Life and Work of a Navajo Hip Hop Artist 48
Brendan H. O’Connor and Gilbert Brown
4 “Being” Hopi by “Living” Hopi—Redefi ning and Reasserting
Cultural and Linguistic Identity: Emergent Hopi Youth Ideologies 70
Sheilah E. Nicholas
5 Youth Linguistic Survivance in Transforming Settings: A Yup’ik
Example 90
Leisy T. Wyman
viii CONTENTS
6 “I Didn’t Know You Knew Mexicano!”: Shifting Ideologies,
Identities, and Ambivalence among Former Youth in Tlaxcala,
Mexico 111
Jacqueline Messing
7 Critical Language Awareness among Native Youth in New Mexico 130
Tiff any S. Lee
8 Igniting a Youth Language Movement: Inuit Youth as Agents of
Circumpolar Language Planning 149
Shelley R. Tulloch
9 Eff orts of the Ree-volution: Revitalizing Arikara Language in an
Endangered Language Context 168
Kuunux Teerit Kroupa
10 Commentary: A Hawaiian Revitalization Perspective on
Indigenous Youth and Bilingualism 187
William H. Wilson and Kauanoe Kamanā
11 Commentary: Indigenous Youth Bilingualism from a Yup’ik
Perspective 201
Walkie Charles
12 Commentary: En/countering Indigenous Bi/Multilingualism 207
Ofelia García
About the Contributors 215
Permissions 219
Author Index 221
Subject Index 224
FOREWORD
Leanne Hinton
The last two decades have seen the fl owering of a new kind of literature. The
literature spans a number of academic fi elds—linguistics and applied linguistics,
anthropology and linguistic anthropology, sociology, education, and Indige-
nous studies—and goes beyond the academy as well, into advocacy and local
practice, with authors and readers ranging from researchers to teachers to fami-
lies. This is the literature on endangered languages, and it is about, by, and for
both university researchers and the communities of people whose languages
they are.
Many interesting trends can be seen in the study of endangered languages
over time. One trend is in the practices of linguistic documentation. Genera-
tions of linguists have documented endangered languages, but earlier genera-
tions, spanning much of the 20th century, were primarily documenting them
for the posterity of linguistic science. Now, although that agenda is still a partial
guide, the needs and demands of the language communities have taken on a
much larger role. Documentation is more massive, with trends toward a greater
emphasis on data over analysis, and on the broad documentation of diff erent
genres and styles of speaking (Hill, 2006; Himmelmann, 2006). Documenta-
tion is more interdisciplinary, more collaborative, and more user-friendly, with
an understanding that both the data and its analysis will be used by the com-
munity for their own needs (Austin, 2003; Flores Farfán & Ramallo, 2010;
Gippert, Nikolaus, Himmelmann, & Mosel, 2006; Woodbury, 2003, 2011).
This gives documentary linguistics more features of applied linguistics and
humanism than it did in the past (Mosel, 2006). This has also led to new ethical
standards for linguistic documentation, with new responsibilities to commu-
nity defi ned, and a change in the researchers’ attitudes away from the notion of
speaker as subject to speaker as research partner (Dwyer, 2006; Mato Nunpa,
