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Chikashshaat asilhlhat holissochi [Chickasaws are asking and writing]: Enacting Indigenous protocols in academic research and writing
As Chikashsha (Chickasaw) scholars and Chikashshanompa’ shaali’ (Chickasaw language learners/carriers), we utilize a dialogic and autoethnographic approach to explore the continuance between ancestral and community protocols for research. An account of the Chickasaw Nation’s language revitalization efforts is followed by a discussion of how Indigenous scholars engage in the writing…
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Cultivating enduring and reciprocal relationships in academia: An Indigenous mentor-mentee model
This article takes form following an exchange of letters in which the Chickasaw and Hopi authors reflected on an Indigenous mentorship relationship in higher education as the embodiment of a carved-out space for Indigenous ways of knowing and being. They begin the story of their faculty mentor-doctoral mentee relationship with…
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Storying an interconnected web of relationships in Indigenous language reclamation work and scholarship
Indigenous language work is manifested in a diversity of community-led responses of resilience and persistence. Indigenous persons who are reclaiming their languages have entered academia with goals of contributing to community language reclamation efforts and broader resurgence movements. Adapting Archibald’s (2008) concept of storywork—experiential narratives that privilege a cultural lens—we…
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Indigenous language learning impacts, challenges and opportunities in COVID19 times
In March 2020, the COVID-19 global health crisis caused disruption to the daily lives and regular practices of most human populations. Indigenous language revitalization (ILR) work is often undertaken face-to-face and regularly includes the most elderly populations in our communities. Therefore, ILR activities that were not already online were vastly…
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Letter from the Indigenous guest editor
This Indigenous-led issue is itself unprecedented, and has also come together under unprecedented circumstances. Our undergraduate authors completed their submissions during an ongoing global pandemic and urgent Black Lives Matter movement, white supremacy, and colonization. We stand with the Indigenous Nations and communities of colour that are being impacted by…
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Enacting hope through narratives of Indigenous language and culture reclamation
In globalizing landscapes, Indigenous ways of knowing and being persist in their connectedness to specific geographies, even as they are transformed by migrations, both forced and voluntary, and dynamic exchanges. This paper presents narratives of Indigenous and ally scholars which explore what it means to enact language and culture reclamation…
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Weaving words: Conceptualizing language reclamation through culturally-significant metaphor
When the Creator called us to our homelands to become a distinct people, Chickasaws received the gift of our language—Chikashshanompa’—with which to speak to each other, the land, the plants, the animals, and the Creator. Chickasaws have held sacred the gift of our living language, passing it from generation to…
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Hear our languages, hear our voices: Stories of resilience and justice in Indigenous-language reclamation
Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to examine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in diverse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mohawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving…
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Teaching from a place of hope in Indigenous education
The Council on Anthropology and Education’s Standing Committee on Indigenous Education has had a presence at the Annual Meetings of the American Anthropology Association over the past decade. Member activities focus on engaging in theoretical and methodological discussions central to the field of Indigenous education, particularly those related to power…
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Claiming space: An autoethnographic study of Indigenous graduate students engaged in language reclamation
This article explores the critical role of an emerging generation of Indigenous scholars and activists in ensuring the continuity of their endangered heritage languages. Using collaborative autoethnography as a research method, the authors present personal accounts of their pursuit of language reclamation through graduate degree programs. These accounts speak to…