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© 2018 by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences doi:10.1162/DAED_a_00499

Hear Our Languages, Hear Our Voices: Storywork as Theory and Praxis in Indigenous-Language Reclamation

Teresa L. McCarty, Sheilah E. Nicholas, Kari A. B. Chew, Natalie G. Diaz, Wesley Y. Leonard & Louellyn White

Abstract: Storywork provides an epistemic, pedagogical, and methodological lens through which to exam- ine Indigenous language reclamation in practice. We theorize the meaning of language reclamation in di- verse Indigenous communities based on firsthand narratives of Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, Mo- hawk, Navajo, and Native Hawaiian language reclamation. Language reclamation is not about preserving the abstract entity “language,” but is rather about voice, which encapsulates personal and communal agen- cy and the expression of Indigenous identities, belonging, and responsibility to self and community. Story- work–firsthand narratives through which language reclamation is simultaneously described and practiced– shows that language reclamation simultaneously refuses the dispossession of Indigenous ways of knowing and re-fuses past, present, and future generations in projects of cultural continuance. Centering Indigenous experiences sheds light on Indigenous community concerns and offers larger lessons on the role of language in well-being, sustainable diversity, and social justice.

In 2007, following twenty-two years of Indigenous activism, the United Nations General Assembly ap- proved the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (undrip). Among its provisions is the right of Indigenous peoples “to revitalize, use, develop and transmit to future generations their histories, lan- guages, oral traditions, philosophies, writing systems and literatures.”1 This right goes unchallenged for speakers of dominant languages, but is systemati- cally violated for speakers of Indigenous languages throughout the world. Of approximately seven thou- sand known spoken languages, 50 to 90 percent are predicted to fall silent by century’s end. Two-thirds of those would be Indigenous languages.2 In these contexts, languages are not replaced but rather dis-

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placed through policies designed to eradi- cate linguistically encoded knowledges and cultural identifications with those associat- ed with dominant-class ideologies. The re- sult of state-sponsored linguicide–which novelist and postcolonial theorist Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has called “the linguistic equiv- alent of genocide”3–is worldwide Indige- nous-language endangerment.

We take as foundational premises the in- herent human right to learn, use, and trans- mit a language of heritage and birth and the fact that linguistic diversity is an enabling resource for individuals and society. Howev- er, more than universalist notions of linguis- tic rights and the quantification of Indige- nous-language endangerment, we valorize an enduring tradition of Indigenous per- sistence in which linguistic diversity is the most reliable guide toward the future for In- digenous peoples. As Mary Hermes and Kei- ki Kawai‘ae‘a write, diverse Indigenous lan- guages have persisted over many centuries, sometimes going “underground” during the most oppressive times; thus, it is ahistori- cal to speak of reclamation as “new.”4 We foreground the possibilities inherent in a vi- tal Indigenous-language reclamation move- ment, which represents the forward-look- ing legacy of the survivors of assimilation programs. Centering Indigenous experi- ences sheds light on Indigenous communi- ty concerns and offers broader lessons on the role of language in individual and com- munal well-being, sustainable diversity, and social justice for all oppressed peoples.

We develop three themes in this essay. First, we privilege what Stó:lō scholar Jo-ann Archibald calls storywork: experiential nar- ratives that constitute epistemic, theoreti- cal, pedagogical, and methodological lens- es through which we can both study and practice language reclamation.5 As meth- od, storywork provides data in the form of firsthand accounts6 through which to gain insight into the meaning of language recla- mation in diverse Indigenous communities.

Lumbee scholar Bryan Brayboy asserts the role of storytelling in theory building: “Lo- cating theory as something absent from sto- ries is problematic. . . . Stories serve as the basis for how our communities work.”7 And Paul Kroskrity notes, Native storytell- ing contains “an action-oriented emphasis on using . . . narratives for moral instruc- tion, healing, and developing culturally rel- evant tribal and social identities.”8

Second, we distinguish between language and voice. Language, bilingual education scholar Richard Ruiz writes, “is general, abstract, and exists even when it is sup- pressed”; in contrast, “when voice is sup- pressed, it is not heard–it does not exist.”9 Like Ruiz, we equate voice with agency; as the storywork that follows illuminates, this is not simply an intellectualized experience of identity (it is not about language in a gen- eral or abstract sense), but an embodied ex- perience of personal belonging and respon- sibility. From this perspective we explore the ways in which language reclamation is part of larger Indigenous projects of resil- ience, rediscovery, sovereignty, and justice.

Third, we argue that language reclama- tion is not about returning to an imagined “pure” form of an ancestral language. In- stead we highlight the dynamic, multisit- ed, heteroglossic, and multivocal character of Indigenous-language reclamation,10 un- derscoring that the “success” of these ef- forts must be locally defined but also ex- ternally shared–a movement toward mo- bilizing strategic new global alliances and protocols of collaboration.11

We first present five narrative accounts of language renewal: Chickasaw, Mojave, Miami, Hopi, and Mohawk. The narratives represent “story work in action”;12 in tell- ing individual and communal journeys, each author demonstrates the significance of stories as empirically grounded cultural re- sources for recovering and sustaining Indig- enous knowledges and identities.13 We con- clude with a final narrative that speaks to our

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anchoring themes and the meaning of story- work for Indigenous language reclamation.

Chikashshanompa’ is a Muskogean language spoken by less than fifty people, most of whom reside within the Chickasaw Nation in south- central Oklahoma. As Kari Chew relates, Chick- asaw people consider Chikashshanompa’ a gift “with which to speak to each other, the land, the plants, the animals, and the Creator.”14 Though centuries of colonization have disrupted the con- tinuity of intergenerational language transmis- sion, the Chickasaw Nation is actively undertak- ing a multipronged language reclamation effort.

The story of language loss and reclama- tion in my family begins in 1837, when the U.S. government forced my great-great- great-grandparents from their Southeast- ern homelands to present-day Oklahoma. Their children, who attended English-lan- guage boarding schools, were the last gen- eration in my family to learn Chikashsha- nompa’ as a first language. I was raised in Los Angeles, where my grandparents re- located after leaving the Chickasaw Na- tion. Though it was important to my fami- ly to visit and maintain a connection “back home,” the language was not spoken or talked about among my relatives.

I did not know my language as a child, but I believe it has always been within me–a gift from my ancestors and Creator–wait- ing to be resurfaced. In my young adulthood, during a college internship with my tribe, I had my first opportunity to take a Chi- kashshanompa’ class. It did not take long for the language–my language–to captivate my soul. One phrase I learned was, “Chi- kashsha saya,” “I am Chickasaw.” Though I had said these words many times in English, they never fully conveyed my sense of who I was: saying them in Chikashshanompa’, I had finally found my voice. The experience inspired me to continue learning the lan- guage and to use my education to support other Chickasaw people in their pursuit of language reclamation.

Throughout my work, I have built rela- tionships with Chickasaw people deeply committed to learning and teaching Chi- kash shanompa’. One was Elder fluent speaker Jerry. While I knew Jerry as a pa- tient and dedicated language teacher, he had not always been that way. For many years, Jerry was skeptical of younger gen- erations’ interest in Chikashshanompa’ because he believed that the language was destined to perish with his generation. He asked those who approached him wanting to learn, “If I teach you, who are you go- ing to speak to? There’s nobody else that speaks it and I’m not going to live forever.”

In time, persistent language learners con- vinced Jerry to teach them. Despite his ini- tial reluctance, Jerry came to embrace lan- guage work as his life’s calling. The young- er people he taught were eager to learn and began to speak the language well. Seeing their dedication and progress made Jerry reconsider his perception of Chikashsha- nompa’ as a “dying” language. He posed his question again: “If I weren’t here any- more, who’s going to carry [Chikashsha- nompa’] on?” But this time he had an an- swer: the younger generations of commit- ted language learners “would carry it on.”

Coming from a family that did not “car- ry” the language, I was thankful that Jerry wanted to give Chikashshanompa’ to learn- ers of my generation. Not only did Jerry teach me Chikashshanompa’, he taught me about what language reclamation means: speaking the language proudly, and, most important, sharing it with others.

One of the ways Jerry envisioned sharing the language with future generations was through children’s books. Inspired by Jer- ry, a small group of language learners and I created stories in Chikashshanompa’ with beginning and youth language learners in mind. I couldn’t wait to show Jerry our work. About two weeks before I planned to see him, however, I received news that Jerry had passed.

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As I mourned the loss of a dear teach- er, I thought also of the hope that Jerry held for the language. When I asked Jerry about what he thought would happen to the language during my lifetime, he said he foresaw a new generation of speakers. “Right now is just the beginning [of our language reclamation story],” he remind- ed me. “There’s a lot more.” While I nev- er had the chance to share our stories with Jerry, I know he would be proud to see lan- guage learners sharing in his vision to give the language to emerging generations of Chika shsha nompa’ speakers.

Pipa Aha Macav, The People With the Riv- er Running Through Their Body and the Land (the Mojave), trace their origins to Spirit Moun- tain near present-day Needles, California. Mo- jave is a Yuman language spoken by peoples in- digenous to the southern California, Nevada, and Arizona desert. At Fort Mojave, there are approximately twenty tribal elders who learned Mojave as a first language. Natalie Diaz is one of a small group of young adults, parents, and youth who embarked on a journey to learn the Mojave language from the elders and to create a repository of language resources for future gen- erations.

In Decolonising the Mind, Ngũgĩ wa Thi- ong’o writes,“the most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized. . . .To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others.”15

Language negotiates the way I know my- self–what I believe I am capable of, how I know myself in relationship to others, what I can offer others, what I deserve from oth- ers in return. Language is where I am con- structed as either possible or impossible.

To lose a language is to lose many things other than vocabulary. To lose a language is also to lose the body, the bodies of our ancestors and of our futures. What I mean is: Language is more than an extension of the body; it is the body, made of the body’s

energy and electricity, developed to carry the body’s memories, desires, needs, and imagination.

When a word is silenced, what happens to the bodies who spoke it? What happens to the bodies once carried in those erased words?

When a verbal expression of love is crushed quiet, how long can the physical gesture of love continue in such oppres- sive silence? How can the gesture answer if nobody calls out for it verbally?

In Mojave, the word kavanaam, which car- ries within it a very physical and caring ges- ture, was lost. We didn’t know it was lost, since we’d never felt it, never had it offered to us or acted out upon us. This is a small story of how we returned to kavanaam– first the word, and eventually the gesture.

In a language class, an adult learner told our Elder teacher, who was her aunt, “I want to tell my son ‘I love you.’” Many of us had already heard the teacher’s reply: “Mo- javes don’t have a phrase for ‘I love you.’” We were given this data by White linguists who had studied our language, and found it scribbled in their numerous notes. Studying a language differs greatly and dangerously from feeling a language. Luckily, the learner did not accept a White linguist’s detached “knowing” of a language built in a Mojave body and meant to be delivered onto anoth- er Mojave body. The learner further shared that she’d never heard her father or moth- er say they loved her. She didn’t want her experience to be her son’s inheritance. She needed to tell him she loved him, in his Mo- jave language.

“What do you really want to say?” the teacher asked.

Emotional beyond words, the learner answered in gesture, reaching her hands out as if her son were in front of her, then returning her hands back to her own body, pressing them to her chest.

“Okay,” the Elder teacher said, “We have many ways to say this.”

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And we learned those ways, none of which translated to “I love you.” Our ways were too urgent to fit within three small English words.

This is how we found kavanaam. Later that evening, the learner stopped by my mother’s house, still wanting to process the emotional moment from class. She shared another story about the last time she and her sister saw her father; he was being wheeled into the emergency room. Her sis- ter said again and again, “I love you, Dad.”

He didn’t reply. He didn’t say, “I love you too.” Instead he reached out and pressed her arm repeatedly, squeezing his large hand around her forearm, wrist, and palm.

After a moment, my mother responded, “He told your sister he loved her, just not with words.”

My mother recounted how her mother, grandmother, and aunts pressed her and her siblings’ legs, shoulders, and arms, as babies in cradleboards and into their teens. My aunt pressed my great-grandmother’s body well past her hundredth birthday. This pressing was a gesture of care, of ten- derness, a conversation between two Mo- jave bodies, a way of saying that was more powerful than words.

The next morning, when I visited my El- der teachers and told them this story, they remembered: kavanaam, to press the body. “I haven’t heard it in a long time,” my teach- er said.

Mojaves didn’t say the English phrase “I love you,” but not because we did not feel tenderness. “I love you” meant little to us–how could we have trusted the En- glish-language expression of love when its speakers had been so unloving to us, our human bodies, and the bodies of our earth and water?

When we lost our languages, we lost many ways of expression. We did not speak the word kavanaam and shortly thereafter we ceased to gesture or enact it. We were al- tered–our bodies were changed because the

ways we knew to care for one another’s bod- ies were changed. We couldn’t say the ten- derness, and soon we began to believe our bodies did not deserve such tendernesses.

American violence inflicted on Indige- nous bodies, throughout history and to- day, doesn’t define our capacity for ten- derness. We found kavanaam where it had been waiting, in our bodies. We took back a part of our culture that held the Mojave way of perceiving ourselves and our rela- tionship to the world. Yes, America has giv- en us violence, and still we deserve tender- ness–moreover, we are as capable of deliv- ering it to one another as we are of receiving it from one another.

To reclaim a language is many things, one of which is to regain the verbal and gestured language of tenderness and the autonomy to love ourselves.

myaamia–Miami–is a major dialect of Miami-Illinois, an Algonquian language spo- ken by peoples indigenous to the Great Lakes re- gion. Multiple forced relocations, first into what is now Kansas and later into Oklahoma (then called “Indian Territory”), left in their wake diaspora, language loss, and massive popula- tion decline. Miami people today reside in forty- seven U.S. states, with approximately five thou- sand citizens enrolled in the Miami Tribe of Okla- homa and an estimated ten thousand more who may claim Miami or Illinois as a heritage lan- guage. This is the context for myaamiaki eemam- wiciki (Miami Awakening), a personal and com- munity-based language and cultural reclamation process, described below by Wesley Leonard.

In his final State of the Nation address to the citizens of the Miami Tribe of Okla- homa in 2007, my grandfather, akima waapimaankwa (Chief Floyd E. Leonard, 1925–2008), called for tribal elders “to teach those who are rising up to become the elders of tomorrow” and recognized the “many middle-age and young people who are working hard to gain knowledge of [Miami] culture, language and traditions.”

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He acknowledged how a series of histori- cal ruptures created a situation in which contemporary Miamis often must actively seek tribal cultural knowledge and learn our language, myaamia, as a second language. These ruptures include the forced removal of part of the Miami community from trib- al homelands in Indiana, U.S.-run boarding schools in which Native American children were not allowed to speak their tribal lan- guages, and the nearly complete silence of myaamia to the point where linguistic sci- ence erroneously labeled it “extinct.”16 In fact, we have been successful in bringing our language back into the community–a process that ironically began by applying tools of linguistic science to analyze archi- val documentation of myaamia.

By acknowledging both this history and the contemporary response, my grandfa- ther referenced a core idea of my tribe and of other Native American groups, which is that the past informs the present and the present looks to the future (that is, today’s tribal youth will become elders). Appropri- ately, within the archival documentation of myaamia was our language’s grammatical particle kati, which marks that something will occur. This gives us the grammar to talk about the future, including learning, speak- ing, transmitting, and expanding myaamia in a way that aligns with changing Miami community needs and values.

My experience with wider society’s view of Native Americans and our many lan- guages is that while nobody forgets the existence of the past (however inaccurate their accounts of it may be), the present and future are comparatively overlooked. While complex forces underlie this phe- nomenon, many of them can be captured by one word: colonization. By extension, our response must be decolonization. To- day’s Miami people are engaged in decol- onization as we reclaim our language, not only by learning and speaking it, but also by identifying beliefs and practices that

perpetuate colonial values and voicing al- ternatives to them, which I will now do.

Much of my work focuses on educat- ing about how colonialism relegates Na- tive Amer ican languages and peoples to the past and thus doubly silences Native languages, first through policies that co- erce communities to replace their languag- es, and then through relegating those lan- guages to “disappearing” or “extinct” sta- tus even when they are still spoken. (The latter sometimes still occurs with myaamia, even though myaamiaataawiaanki noonki kaahkiihkwe–“we speak Miami today”– and myaamiaataawiaanki kati.) Sadly, such erasure is frequently reinforced in academia despite its contemporary calls for inclusion, diversity, responsibility to communities, and broad inquiries into the arts and sciences.

In linguistics, my field of training, erasure can occur when linguists fervently docu- ment “the last speakers” of Indigenous lan- guages and frame this work around preser- vation of the past rather than reclamation, which looks to the future. Though many linguists put significant effort into facilitat- ing community language goals, this work tends to be marginalized within academia as superfluous or unnecessary in compari- son with “pure” scientific work. Still worse is when community goals get removed from the discipline’s focus under the claim that “linguistics is the scientific study of lan- guage,” a phrase that demonstrates a fail- ure to recognize that Indigenous peoples’ engagement with science may offer episte- mologies that can expand the scope of sci- entific inquiry. For example, one myaamia language teacher defines language as “how a community connects to each other and how they express . . . themselves and their culture to each other.” By this definition, “community” becomes a vital part of lan- guage, and, following my grandfather’s call, helping today’s young people become the elders of tomorrow becomes a central part of linguistic inquiry.

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Hopiit, the Hopi people, a kin-based matrilin- eal society, are the westernmost Puebloans, re- siding in their aboriginal lands in what is now northeast Arizona. Contemporary Hopi village life continues to revolve around a rich secular and ceremonial calendar, which is the mainstay of this cultural community. Nevertheless, the Hopi language is rapidly losing ground to English. Here Sheilah Nicholas relates her personal journey to recover Hopi, her language of birth.

“Um tsayniiqe paas Hopiningwu.” (“When you were a child, you were fully Hopi.”) My mother directed these words to me as she observed me struggle to carry on a Hopi conversation as an adult. I recall turning to English and defensively yet feebly respond- ing, “I’m still Hopi.” My mother’s words struck deeply and produced an acute lin- guistic insecurity. This brief linguistic ex- change opened the floodgate to a critical consciousness about the intimate bond be- tween language, culture, and identity and the profoundly affective nature of language.

When my mother reiterated a similar comment on another occasion, I countered with my memory that it was she who ad- vised me to “put away” my Hopi so I could do well in school; yet she was now subject- ing me to comments I interpreted as ques- tioning my Hopi identity. My defensive re- tort was disrespectful, but she acknowl- edged that she should have advised, “Pay um uuHopilavayiy enangni” (“Along with [learning to use English], continue with your Hopi language”).

It would be many years before I would un- derstand that I had misinterpreted her criti- cal comments, which I perceived at the time as an assault on my cultural identity–how could a mother do this? Today, I acknowl- edge she was rightfully perplexed about my struggle to speak Hopi; it was my first lan- guage and I spoke it with ease as a child. My reinterpretation of her statement–“When you were a child, you were a fluent speaker of Hopi”–expressed her astonishment at my loss of fluency. Although initially pain-

ful, my mother’s words became the catalyst for my personal language reclamation jour- ney–to assert that I have remained Hopi and to reclaim the ability to “describe the Hopi world, not only the physical in the sense of touch, sight, and hearing, but also mentally, intellectually, because the words conjure up . . . images that are not necessar- ily borne out by reality.”17 These images al- low us to visualize and conceptualize the ontological perspectives of the Hopi world held by our ancestors transported through time and language.

My journey was inspired by two ques- tions: What happened to my Hopi? Could I claim a Hopi identity if I could no lon- ger speak or think in Hopi? Mentors at the American Indian Language Development Institute propelled me forward in my jour- ney of language reclamation. Akira Yama- moto, in response to my first question, im- parted hope, explaining that Hopi acquired in childhood still resided in the deep recess- es of my mind and body; I only needed to “pull it up and out.” Emory Sekaquaptewa, also my clan uncle, provided the vehicle for my reculturalization: literacy instruction. While this journey has been an immense undertaking, the outcomes include recla- mation of cultural identity and belonging, return and reconnection, responsibility and reciprocity, self-empowerment and self-de- termination, persistence–the right to re- main Hopi–and agency and voice. For the most part, this was a solitary journey to rec- tify my “responsibility” to my children by ensuring that a strong cultural and linguis- tic foundation is there for them when they are ready to seek it out. This responsibility extends to the grandchildren I hope to have. A useful analogy for this pursuit is the emer- gency instructions on a passenger aircraft– you need to place the oxygen mask on your- self before assisting others. I cannot hope to foster Hopi reculturalization in my chil- dren and grandchildren if I have not taken the first steps myself.

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This journey brings a profound under- standing of the Hopi expression “Hak so’on- qa nimangwu” (“One always returns home”), referring to the journey to elderhood and onward toward spiritual eternity. Many in- dividuals in my parents’ and grandparents’ generation who guided me to this milestone have passed on; now it is my generation to which the younger generations will look for guidance. My journey led me back home to undertake the responsibilities of Hopilavay- naa’aya (attending to the Hopi language), and now of becoming family matriarch. I do not view these processes as separate. Both my ongoing work with community lan- guage practitioners and preparation for as- suming the role of matriarch led me to rees- tablish connections in our Hopi world and refurbish my mother’s house in our mater- nal village, thus preparing a cultural place for our family to return to when they begin their journey homeward. In the Hopi per- spective, this trajectory of reclamation is embedded in the Hopi word itumalmakiwa, “my lifework.”

Kanien’ke:ha–Mohawk, a Dutch barbari- zation of an Algonquian term–is a Northern Iroquoian language spoken by peoples indige- nous to what is now upstate New York, south- ern Quebec, and eastern Ontario. As Louellyn White relates, the Indigenous self-referential term is Kanien’keha:ka, People of the Place of the Flint. The Akwesasne Freedom School about which she writes grew out of activist efforts de- termined to prepare Kanien’keha:ka children in the ways of their culture. The school remains one of the leading Indigenous language immersion- revitalization programs today.

“You’re Onkwehon:we18 just like me!” said my three-year-old son to his daycare teach- er. She’s a Kanien’keha:ka substitute teach- er from the community of Kahnawà:ke. He continued to tell her about “bad pipelines” and how they were going to “poison the water and hurt all the Onkwehon:we.” I didn’t think he paid much attention to my

rants about the controversial oil pipeline under construction near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation19 until he made his own “black snake”20 by taping together empty paper towel rolls to resemble the pipeline and loudly sang out in English and Lakota, “WATER IS LIFE . . . MNI WICONI!”

It was a proud moment knowing my son was connecting to our language, Ka- nien’ke:ha, and understanding our rela- tionships and responsibilities to the nat- ural world. I had been consciously trying to use our heritage language at home as much as I could, which was in part a push- back against the French he was learning at daycare (I had migrated back to the North- east after many years away and landed in French-speaking Quebec). I figured if he was going to learn French, I had better teach him what I could of Kanien’ke:ha too. So at bedtime I tell him about Creation and the story of Skywoman. He’s trying to make sense of himself when he says things like: “I came from the Sky” and makes up songs about “Onkwehon:we dogs” or “Onk wehon:we trucks” and Son kwiatisu (Creator). So, in this way, my own jour- ney in language and identity reclamation is reflected through my son’s journey. Like most Kanien’keha:ka, I don’t know how to speak or understand much of our language, but I’m making a conscious effort to pass on what I can in hopes my son will grow up with a stronger sense of self and cultural identity as Onkwehon:we than I did. Our journey of language reclamation goes be- yond the mechanisms of language as com- munication and honors the ways that lan- guage encapsulates culture and identity.

I grew up in the homeland of the Ka- nien’keha:ka in the Mohawk Valley of cen- tral New York. Born to a mother of Euro- pean descent and a Kanien’keha:ha father with roots in the community of Akwesas- ne,21 my upbringing lacked a strong cul- tural and linguistic connection to my In- digenous heritage. My father wasn’t a flu-

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ent speaker of our language but he always made sure I knew my family in Akwesasne and I try to do the same for my son. My parents split before I was born, so growing up as the only Native in a dirt-poor house- hold full of non- Native half-siblings wasn’t easy. The burdens of poverty, abuse, and dysfunction compounded those of being mixed and were often difficult to bear; there was never enough of this, always too much of that. Over the years those burdens were made lighter and my connection to my identity stronger due in part to the re- search I conducted with the Akwesasne Freedom School,22 a pre-K through ninth- grade school with a Mohawk-immersion curriculum, long before my son was born.

Accurate estimates of Kanien’ke:ha flu- ent speakers are hard to come by. Some claim that out of seven Kanien’keha:ka communities within the geopolitical bor- ders of the United States and Canada, con- stituting a population of about twenty-five thousand, 10 percent are fluent speakers.23 Even though the language is currently spo- ken by all generations in some communi- ties, it remains vulnerable. Thus, I became an advocate for Indigenous language recla- mation through my work, which also led me back home to my community and helped strengthen my family connections and sense of belonging.

During my research on the intersections of language and identity within the Akwe- sasne Freedom School community, I was on a parallel path of learning my heritage language and culture, building communi- ty, and developing a stronger sense of my own identity. As this process unfolded, I struggled with the existential questions of life’s meaning. I attempted to shift my fo- cus from my personal struggles with iden- tity to one of a higher purpose of under- standing from a Kanien’keha:ka perspec- tive. I still struggle with the uneasy feelings that accompany the balancing act of grow- ing up without a strong cultural founda-

tion, but through my ongoing work with language and cultural reclamation I have found my way home and feel closer to where I belong.

It’s my responsibility as Onkwehon:we to pass on cultural values to my son so he grows up with a strong sense of who he is, where he comes from, and where he’s go- ing. I have the same difficulties as any par- ent, but I know he’s embodying what it means to be Onkwehone:we when he asks for the story of Skywoman at bedtime and he’s learning about his responsibility to care for the earth when he sings lullabies to the spiders he finds hiding in our house and talks about Standing Rock. After I told him that the pipeline might be rerouted away from Standing Rock, he said, “Yay, I get to drink more water! But, are they going to build it near the elephants, the bugs, and the animals? They need water too.”

We come to our final question: How can storywork help build a theory of language reclamation in practice? Stories and story- telling are central to “explaining and the- ory-building,” Ananda Marin and Megan Bang maintain.24 Theories through stories “are roadmaps for our communities and re- minders of our individual responsibilities to the survival of our communities,” Bryan Brayboy emphasizes.25 The stories shared here possess explanatory power; when we “hear our languages, hear our voices,” we gain insight into what language reclama- tion means in diverse Indigenous commu- nities and for individual community mem- bers. Storywork provides both a theory and a guide for praxis.

It is clear from this storywork that lan- guage reclamation is about much more than matters purely linguistic; as Wesley Leon- ard notes for myaamia, language reclama- tion is not about preserving the past, but rather using accumulated wisdom to in- form present action and future planning. Language reclamation is soulful work; as

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Kari Chew relates her initial encounters in a Chikashshanompa’ language class, “It did not take long for the language–my language–to captivate my soul.” Language reclamation is also embodied work, as re- flected in Natalie Diaz’s account of finding kavanaam, love, “where it had been waiting for us,” in Mojave gestures of tenderness and care. On the surface level we “know” we are Chickasaw, Mojave, myaamia, Hopi, Kanien’keha:ka, but, as the stories show, feeling that identity is deeply experiential. This speaks to a common metaphor in lan- guage reclamation research and practice: “We are our language.”26

Language reclamation is both individu- al and communal–a personal yet commu- nity-oriented responsibility, Sheilah Nich- olas relates. “I was on a parallel path of . . . building community and a stronger sense of my own identity,” Louellyn White re- flects. “Though I had said ‘I am Chickasaw’ many times in English,” Chew stresses, saying those words in Chikashshanompa’, “I felt I had finally found my voice.” Lan- guage reclamation is thus a journey of be- longing, of restoring hope for cultural con- tinuance by connecting youth and parents with the knowledge and wisdom of elders. Finally, language reclamation is decoloniz- ing; it both refuses the dispossession of In- digenous ways of knowing and being,27 and re-fuses and reconnects, pointing “a way home.”

We close with a story from Teresa McCarty, a non-Indigenous scholar-educator and “allied other”28 in this work.

What I share here grows out of teach- ings learned in the context of collaborative work over many years with Indigenous ed- ucators, communities, and schools. One of those teachers was a Navajo Elder, Doro- thy Secody, whom I met early in my work on a bilingual-bicultural curriculum devel- opment project at the Diné (Navajo) Rough Rock Demonstration School. “If a child

learns only English,” Mrs. Secody said in Diné, “you have lost your child.”

Those words have stayed with me over the years. Indigenous-language reclama- tion is multifaceted; there are many path- ways, as we see in the stories shared here and in accounts of language reclamation throughout the world. At the heart of these efforts is an intense desire and commit- ment not to “lose” the next generation– or the next, or the next–and to strength- en intergenerational connections through the ancestral language.

More than thirty years after Mrs. Secody spoke those words, a colleague and I were visiting an Indigenous Hawaiian-language immersion school, one of many Hawai- ian schools dedicated to Indigenous-lan- guage reclamation. On the day of our vis- it, a nine-month-old child had just been en- rolled in the infant and toddler program. As the teacher cradled the sleeping child in her arms, she explained that the infant-toddler program prepares children for the Pūnana Leo or “language nest” preschool. Once children reach preschool, “it only takes a few months for them to become fluent” in Hawaiian, she said. The infant-toddler pro- gram is “like yeast,” we were told, provid- ing the initial leavening for this rapid lan- guage development.

And so, as we listened and were guid- ed through the school, I couldn’t help but think back to the words of Dorothy Secody those many years ago. I wondered, what language and education trajectory awaits this young child, just launched on her first day of school?

If she is like other students we met at this school, she will go on to complete her entire pre-K–12 education there. The stu- dents in her classes will be peers she has known since infancy. “They are like fam- ily,” a teacher told us as she looked out on her ninth-grade class. In her pre-K–12 ed- ucation, I imagine this child will come to appreciate, in a profound way, a lesson we

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heard repeatedly expressed by older stu- dents: “One of the most important things we value is our genealogy.”

As the young child helps tend the gar- dens that produce food for the school, she will learn not only ethnobotany and the scientific language for traditional plants, but reciprocity; responsibility; belonging- ness; a sense of place; and respect for the land, the people, and the language. Those lessons were brought home to us by a se- nior when we asked about her postgrad- uation plans. “I want to start a Hawaiian photography business,” she told us. What motivated that career choice, we asked? Without hesitation, she replied: “I’m just trying to give back to my community and revitalize our language.”

To rephrase Dorothy Secody’s point, with which I began: If a child learns her ancestral

language, you have strengthened the links to countless generations–those who have passed, those present, and those to come.

Nearly twenty years ago Sam No‘eau Warner, a Hawaiian-language scholar, educator, and activist, reminded us that language issues are “always people issues . . . inextricably bound to the people from whom the language and culture evolved.” Language reclamation is not about saving a disembodied thing called language, he in- sisted. Rather, it is about voice, community building, wellness, equality, self-empow- erment, and hope. We leave readers with this broader lesson of language reclama- tion–a lesson, Warner emphasized, that contains within it the seeds of transforma- tion and “social justice for all.”29

author biographies teresa l. mccarty is the G. F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology and Faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of Language Planning and Policy in Native America: History, Theory, Praxis (2013) and A Place to Be Nava- jo: Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling (2002) and editor of In- digenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (with Serafín M. Coronel-Molina, 2016).

sheilah e. nicholas is Associate Professor of Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Stud- ies and Faculty in American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona College of Educa- tion. She is the editor of Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism: Language Identity, Ideology, and Prac- tice in Dynamic Cultural Worlds (with Leisy T. Wyman and Teresa L. McCarty, 2014), and her research has appeared in Review of Research in Education and International Multilingual Research Jour- nal, among other publications.

kari a. b. chew is a Project Coordinator at the Indigenous Teacher Education Project at the University of Arizona College of Education. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Ar- izona College of Education. Her research has appeared in The American Indian Quarterly and In- ternational Journal of Multicultural Education, among other publications.

natalie g. diaz is Assistant Professor of English at Arizona State University. Her work has been featured in Poetry, The New York Times, and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among other pub- lications. She is the author of the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2013).

wesley y. leonard is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the Uni- versity of California, Riverside. His research on language reclamation has appeared in Ameri- can Indian Culture and Research Journal, Gender & Language, and Language Documentation and Conserva- tion, among other publications.

louellyn white is Associate Professor of First Peoples Studies in the School of Communi- ty and Public Affairs at Concordia University Montreal. She is the author of Free to be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School (2015), and her work has appeared in American Indian Culture and Research Journal and Journal of Native American Education, among other publications.

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endnotes 1 United Nations General Assembly, Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (New York: Unit-

ed Nations, 2007). 2 Teresa L. McCarty, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, and Ole Henrik Magga, “Education for Speakers

of Endangered Languages,” in The Handbook of Educational Linguistics, ed. Bernard Spolsky and Francis Hult (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2008), 297–312.

3 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2009), 17.

4 Mary Hermes and Keiki Kawai‘ae‘a, “Revitalizing Indigenous Languages through Indigenous Immersion Education,” Journal of Immersion and Content-Based Language Education 2 (2) (2014): 303–322.

5 Jo-ann Archibald, Indigenous Storywork: Educating the Heart, Mind, Body, and Spirit (Vancouver and Toronto: ubc Press, 2008).

6 Hermes and Kawai‘ae‘a, “Revitalizing Indigenous Languages through Indigenous Immersion Education.”

7 Bryan McKinley Jones Brayboy, “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education,” The Ur- ban Review 37 (5) (December 2005): 425–446.

8 Paul Kroskrity, Telling Stories in the Face of Danger: Language Renewal in Native American Communities (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2011), 3–20.

9 Richard Ruiz, “The Empowerment of Language-Minority Students,” in Empowerment through Multicultural Education, ed. Christine E. Sleeter (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), 217–227.

10 Anthony K. Webster and Leighton C. Peterson, “Introduction: American Indian Languages in Unexpected Places,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 35 (2) (2011): 1–18.

11 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, 2nd ed. (London: Zed Books, 2012).

12 Archibald, Indigenous Storywork. 13 Pausauraq Jana Harcharek and Cathy Tagnak Rexford, “Remembering Their Words, Evoking

Kinuniivut: The Development of the Iñupiaq Learning Framework,” Journal of American Indi- an Education 54 (2) (2015): 9–28.

14 Kari Ann Burris Chew, Chikashshanompa’ Ilanompohóli Bíyyi’ka’chi [We Will Always Speak the Chick- asaw Language]: Considering the Vitality and Efficacy of Chickasaw Language Reclamation (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 2017), 13.

15 Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann, 1986).

16 Wesley Y. Leonard, “When Is an ‘Extinct’ Language Not Extinct? Miami, a Formerly Sleep- ing Language,” in Sustaining Linguistic Diversity: Endangered and Minority Languages and Language Varieties, ed. Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Lyn Fogle, Jia Jackie Lou, and Barbara Soukup (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 2008), 23–33.

17 Emory Sekaquaptewa, personal communication to Sheilah E. Nicholas, September 9, 2004. 18 Onkwehon:we is a Kanien’ke:ha concept meaning “the original people.” 19 Since Spring 2016, thousands of people have gathered near the Standing Rock Sioux reservation

opposing the Dakota Access Pipeline Company oil pipeline (see http://www.sacredstonecamp .org).

20 Many Lakota believe the pipeline represents the “black snake” foretold in their prophecies. See Jeff Brady, “For Many Dakota Access Pipeline Protesters, The Fight is Personal,” npr, Novem-

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ber 26, 2016, https://www.npr.org/2016/11/21/502918072/for-many-dakota-access-pipeline -protesters-the-fight-is-personal.

21 Located where present-day New York, Quebec, and Ontario intersect, Akwesasne means “Land Where the Partridge Drums.”

22 Louellyn White, Free to Be Mohawk: Indigenous Education at the Akwesasne Freedom School (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2015).

23 Kate Freeman, Arlene Stairs, Evelyn Corbière, and Dorothy Lazore, “Ojibway, Mohawk, and Inuktitut: Alive and Well? Issues of Identity, Ownership, and Change,” Bilingual Research Jour- nal 19 (1) (1995): 39–69.

24 Ananda Marin and Megan Bang, “Designing Pedagogies for Indigenous Science Education: Finding Our Way to Storywork,” Journal of American Indian Education 54 (2) (2015): 29–51.

25 Brayboy, “Toward a Tribal Critical Race Theory in Education,” 427. 26 Barbra A. Meek, We Are Our Language: An Ethnography of Language Revitalization in a Northern Atha-

baskan Community (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2010). 27 Audra Simpson, Mohawk Interruptus: Political Life Across the Borders of Settler States (Durham, N.C.

and London: Duke University Press, 2014). 28 Julie Kaomea, “Dilemmas of an Indigenous Academic: A Native Hawaiian Story,” in Decolo-

nizing Research in Cross-Cultural Contexts, ed. Kagendo Mutua and Beth Blue Swadener (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2004), 27–44.

29 Sam L. No‘eau Warner, “Kuleana: The Right, Responsibility, and Authority of Indigenous Peo- ples to Speak and Make Decisions for Themselves in Language and Cultural Revitalization,” Anthropology and Education Quarterly 30 (March 1999): 68–93.