Linguistic Crossroads: Reconciling Indigenous Language Documentation and Community-based Language Programs

Prof. Dr Mindy Morgan (Michigan State University)

This talk looks at the history of Indigenous language reclamation work in the United States and questions how communities use materials, created by scholars to document the linguistic past, to create Indigenous futures. I am particularly interested in the practices of early 20^th century American anthropologists, and how the historical linguistic materials they produced have been used in contemporary language programs. Critically, I consider “documentation” as both a process and as a product and trace how textual materials have been inscribed and reinscribed by various generations of language activists and ‘experts.’  Following along work inspired by Atalay (2019) and Indigenous perspectives on repatriation, I consider the problematic issues that surround the incorporation of linguistic materials into contemporary language programs including the history of acquisition and ideological constructions of authenticity and appropriateness. Central to this concern is access, and the ways in which communities and scholars share Indigenous language material. While my geographic scope is large, I primarily draw examples from my work with language programs among the Anishinaabemowin (Michigan) and Nakoda (Montana) communities over the course of the past two decades.

Mindy Morgan is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and an affiliated faculty member of the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at Michigan State University. Her work lies at the intersection of linguistic and sociocultural anthropology and concerns issues such as Indigenous language use and transmission, literacy practices, and knowledge construction among both historic and contemporary American Indian communities. She is the author of ’The Bearer of this Letter’: Language Ideologies and Literacy Practices among the Fort Belknap Communities (University of Nebraska, 2009). Her ethnohistorical work includes scholarly articles and book chapters related to tribal participation in various Works Project Administration (WPA) programs. She has also written about contemporary efforts to integrate Indigenous languages in university systems, focusing primarily on Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) at Michigan State University. Recently, she turned her attention to the history of the discipline and the ways in which Indigenous communities have responded to anthropological projects in the early 20^thcentury.

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