Stories and storytelling about language initiatives are an important political device in constructing and perpetuating language status planning and policies. However, little attention has been given to meta-discursive practices by institutions about Indigenous language revitalization in the U.S. as well as how music can play important roles in…

This article traces the various ways that 'languages at risk' in the Yukon Territory, Canada, are imagined and managed across a range of 'stakeholders.' Predicated on a history of oppression and the management of risk in the U.S. and Canada, aboriginal language endangerment has arisen from insecurities about communicative diversity. Conversely…

This paper uses the themes of language rights, language choice, and language risk to consider linguistic insecurity in the Northwest Amazon (Upper Negro river) region of Brazil. Because the region is home to a large number of languages (c. two dozen), the idea of preserving this diversity is a popular theme in discourses about language in the…

In this paper we provide a critical account of selected key linguistic and cultural revitalisation experiences in Mexico. For this aim, the project entitled Proyecto de Revitalización, Mantenimiento y Desarrollo Lingüístico y Cultural (Linguistic and Cultural Revitalisation, Maintenance and Development Project), which has been developed for over…

The younger generations are considered one of the principal agents in the maintenance or shift of any language. In the cycle of the language maintenance, children learn their mother tongue, and pass it on to the future generations. The cycle is broken when they no longer speak the mother tongue. The language choices they make are particularly…

Mapoyo, a Carib language of Venezuela with only one native language speaker, is very close to becoming dormant. Recent interest in the revitalisation of the language has led to classes being imparted in the elementary school and to teachers trying to learn the language and to reinforce it in the school. However, in 2013 when there were 3 speakers…

Indigenous communities worldwide face threats to their linguistic and epistemic heritage with the unabated spread of dominant colonial languages and global monocultures, such as English and the neoliberal, imperialistic worldview. There is considerable strain on the relatively few Elders and speakers of Indigenous languages to maintain cultures…

This article offers a critical appraisal of "educación intercultural bilingüe," an educational model with at least five decades of implementation. When this term was coined, Indigenous populations were mostly monolingual and their settlements mostly rural and distant from the seats of cultural hegemony and power. The situation is now…