Language is at the intersection of culture, identity, politics, and cognition, and lies at the centre of our distinct and shared humanity. What will future language use—particularly in Indigenous contexts—mean for us and for our communities? Among the many important stories about Indigenous language loss, there are also powerful and affirming stories of revitalization, resurgence, and recovery. Future Speakers highlights both the struggles and the successes of Indigenous language revitalization and looks to a future where these languages are not only spoken, but thrive.

The Museum of Anthropology, the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program, the Department of Linguistics, and the Department of Anthropology present a new lecture series supported by the Dean of Arts, and in partnership with the First Nations House of Learning and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, to spark a conversation about the futures of Indigenous languages in the 21st century.

Leanne Hinton: What counts as “success” in language revitalization?

Journalists, grant givers and an interested public often ask which language revitalization programs and strategies have been successful. But “language revitalization” is a broad term that can include many different possible goals, and “success” is a point of view rather than a concrete fact. This paper is a result of conversations with Indigenous language activists as to what they view as success (or failure) in the language revitalization for themselves and their communities. These conversations lead to the observation that what counts as success is diverse, individualistic, and transitory, since one event perceived as a success immediately leads to changing goals, strategies, and viewpoints. Nor can “success” be seen as an endpoint of effort, since language revitalization is an unending process —the effort must never stop, in a land where another language is the dominant and dominating tongue.  Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Future Speakers: Indigenous Languages in the 21st Century series.
Speaker Bio

Leanne Hinton, professor emerita Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley & Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival Leanne Hinton specializes in endangered languages and is an advocate and practicing trainer in the field of language revitalization. Hinton has helped found several organizations for language revitalization, and has helped design several widely-used revitalization programs and strategies. She has written and edited numerous books and articles on language revitalization, and has won several awards for her work.

The Museum of Anthropology, the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program, the Department of Linguistics, and the Department of Anthropology present a new lecture series supported by the Dean of Arts, and in partnership with the First Nations House of Learning and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, to spark a conversation about the futures of Indigenous languages in the 21st century.

Thursday October 22, 2015, 11.30-1.00PM at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Lillooet Room (Rm 301)

Journalists, grant givers and an interested public often ask which language revitalization programs and strategies have been successful. But “language revitalization” is a broad term that can include many different possible goals, and “success” is a point of view rather than a concrete fact. This paper is a result of conversations with Indigenous language activists as to what they view as success (or failure) in the language revitalization for themselves and their communities. These conversations lead to the observation that what counts as success is diverse, individualistic, and transitory, since one event perceived as a success immediately leads to changing goals, strategies, and viewpoints. Nor can “success” be seen as an endpoint of effort, since language revitalization is an unending process —the effort must never stop, in a land where another language is the dominant and dominating tongue.  Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the Future Speakers: Indigenous Languages in the 21st Century series.

Speaker Bio

Leanne Hinton, professor emerita Department of Linguistics, University of California at Berkeley & Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival Leanne Hinton specializes in endangered languages and is an advocate and practicing trainer in the field of language revitalization. Hinton has helped found several organizations for language revitalization, and has helped design several widely-used revitalization programs and strategies. She has written and edited numerous books and articles on language revitalization, and has won several awards for her work.

The Museum of Anthropology, the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program, the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program, the Department of Linguistics, and the Department of Anthropology present a new lecture series supported by the Dean of Arts, and in partnership with the First Nations House of Learning and the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, to spark a conversation about the futures of Indigenous languages in the 21st century.

Thursday October 22, 2015, 11.30-1.00PM at the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Lillooet Room (Rm 301).

Select Articles and Books Available at UBC Library

Hinton, L. (2013). Bringing our languages home: Language revitalization for families. Berkeley, California: Heyday. [Available at Koerner Library – P40.5.L356 B75 2013]

Simpson, J., & Wigglesworth, G. (2008). Children’s language and multilingualism: Indigenous language use at home and school. New York;London;: Continuum. [Available at Koerner Library – P115.2 .C45 2008]

Tsunoda, T., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2006;2013;). Language endangerment and language revitalization: An introduction Mouton de Gruyter. [Link]

UBC Library Research Guides

Aboriginal Languages

First Nations and Indigenous Studies

First Nations Languages of British Columbia

“We Feel Fine”: Big Data Observations about State Institutions and Social Inclusion
Dr. Victoria L. Lemieux, Associate Professor, University of British Columbia (on leave) and Senior Public Sector Specialist, The World Bank

Event Details

• When: October 20, 2015 | 5:00-6:00pm
• Where: Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Rm 155

Abstract of the Talk: On December 17th, 2010, a Tunisian fruit vendor named Mohammed Bouazizi took a can of gasoline and set himself on fire in front of the local governor’s office. Bouazizi’s actions resulted from having his fruit cart confiscated by local police and his frustration at not obtaining an audience with the local governor; his death is said to have sparked what we now know as the “Arab Spring.” The events leading up to and during the Arab Spring raise questions of what causes citizens to protest against their governments? Theorists from different disciplines have put forward many explanations of such events but in this project, Dr. Lemieux discusses her work leading an international research team investigating the relationship between social protest and citizen trust. Though motivated by the Arab Spring, the study focuses on protests during the 2014 FIFA World Cup Football Event that took place in Brazil from 12 June – 13 July 2014. The study is an exploratory one in which the team has drawn upon public administration and political science literature relating to trust in government, as well as from literature on social protest theory from social psychology and sociology. Operationalizing the construct of trust in the study as a measure of the sentiment expressed in the content of twitter data, the team built a tool for and conducted a visual analysis of sentiment classified Twitter data to derive insights about the following research questions: 1) how did citizens feel about their state institutions around the time of the protests, 2) how did these feelings connect to their sentiments about Brazilian Federal and State Government and politicians and 3) how did such sentiments translate into collective behaviours? The results of the study reveal that the 2014 World Cup protests in Brazil sprang from a wide range of grievances coupled with a relative sense of deprivation compared with emergent comparative ‘standards’.  This sense of grievance gave rise to sentiments that activated online protest and may have led to other forms of social protest, such as street demonstrations.

Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Victoria Lemieux is a Senior Public Sector Specialist (Information Management) and an Associate Professor of Archival Studies at the University of British Columbia (on leave). She has held positions as a professional archivist, records manager and risk manager within the public sector and private sectors, and in higher education as an administrator and educator. She has also consulted previously for the United Nations, the Commonwealth Secretariat, and the World Bank. Her current research is focused on risk to the availability of trustworthy records, in particular in financial contexts, and how these risks impact upon transparency, financial stability, public accountability and human rights. She holds a doctorate from University College London (Archival Studies, 2002), which focused on the information-related causes of the Jamaican Banking Crisis and, since 2005, has been a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). She is also the winner of the 2015 Emmett Leahy Award which recognizes an individual whose contributions and accomplishments have had a major impact on the records and information management profession.