A Language Fair, a Community and a Museum

Founded in 2003 the Oklahoma Native American Youth Language Fair (ONAYLF) has become one of the largest gatherings of Native American language learners in the United States. The Fair is unquestionably the most significant and sustained interaction with Native American communities in the history of the Sam Noble Museum, quickly becoming a signature event that contributes to the museum’s reputation and stature. As the Fair gained increased prominence and importance in the Native American communities of Oklahoma and the surrounding regions it was consistently marginalized within the institutional culture of the museum. Over the course of our respective leadership of the ONAYLF we encountered the continued need for anthropological intervention to “re-institutionalize” a very successful program. In this report we focus on specific impacts of this failed ownership and the anthropological methods employed to address them. We conclude with an assessment of the ONAYLF in terms of on-going efforts to decolonize museum practice.

Scribal Culture, Indigenous Modes, and Nahuatl-Language Sources from the 16th to 18th Centuries

While several indigenous languages from the Americas have been alphabetized and written, no Native American language has such an extensive corpus of historical texts as Nahuatl, the language of the Nahuas or Aztecs of central Mexico. Writing in Nahuatl but using Latin letters, colonial Nahua scribes or tlahcuilohqueh produced an unparalleled outpouring of texts throughout the colonial period. Prior to the Conquest, the Nahuas recorded information in codices, which consisted of pictographic glyphs painted on sheets of bark paper, analogous to European books. They thus readily perceived the parallels between their pictographic codices and European alphabetic texts and quickly saw the utility and potential of the new technology. All that was needed was an introduction to European writing techniques. For the most part, this came in the form of friars, some of whom established schools for elite Nahuas, such as the Colegio de Santa Cruz de Tlatelolco in the latter part of the 1530s. Some Nahuas likely also learned writing from professional Spanish scribes as well. These students of the friars and lay Spaniards would soon teach other Nahuas to write, such that only a few years after the opening of the Colegio, Nahua scribes, working entirely on their own, were producing written texts. These scribes then taught others, and by the 1550s Nahuatl alphabetic writing became a self-sustaining, independent tradition that touched nearly every corner of the Nahua world. Alphabetic writing overtook indigenous glyphs, and by the 17th century most Nahuatl texts were entirely alphabetic. Last wills and testaments made up the bulk of scribal output, along with other “mundane” Nahuatl documents of financial, legal, or governmental matters, which have proven highly illuminating to historians. There were also annals; local histories stretching back to preconquest times; and plays, songs, and speeches (huehuehtlahtolli). Nahua scribal culture thrived until the 19th century, when opposition to it from both the Spanish Crown and, later, the independent Mexican nation made Nahuatl texts obsolete and superfluous.

Musings on Native American language reclamation and sociolinguistics

Sociolinguistic approaches to Native American languages are best conducted as part of a project of “language reclamation,” argues Wesley Y. Leonard. He discusses how framings of Indigenous languages as “endangered,” while in some ways well-intentioned, replicate the distance of language communities from scholarly research. An emphasis on reclamation – “efforts by Indigenous communities to claim the right to speak their heritage languages” – highlights the role of the community members in the production of knowledge on and the revival of Native American languages.

Respecting the language: digitizing Native American language materials

Purpose Many academic libraries use digital humanities projects to disseminate unique materials in their collections; during project planning, librarians will consider platforms, scanning rates and project sustainability. Rarely, though, will academic librarians consider how members from the communities that created the materials can contribute to digitization projects. The purpose of this study is to explain how collaboration with Zuni Pueblo (a Native American tribe in the southwest) community members improved a digital humanities project to disseminate Zuni language learning materials. Design/methodology/approach Methodologically relying on critical making, which involved community member feedback throughout the process, the Zuni Language Materials Collection will provide digital access to 35 language learning items. Findings The authors argue that collaboration with members of the community of creation dramatically improved item description, collection discoverability and collection interactivity. This study historicizes CONTENTdm and describes how the team modified this content management system to meet user needs. This project produced a prototype digital collection, collaboratively authored metadata and an interactive portal that invites users to engage with the collection. Practical implications Libraries continue to struggle to reach and reflect their diverse users. This study describes a process that others may use and modify to engage nearby Native American communities. Originality/value This piece shares a unique strategy of partnering with Native American community members on all aspects of digital humanities project development and design. This case study attempts to fill a gap in the literature as the first study to describe a digitization process using CONTENTdm with a Native American community.

The African Diaspora and Language

Nowhere in the Americas is any African language used for routine communicative purposes. But fossilized spoken texts, songs, and chants are still performed for rituals, largely but not exclusively of a religious nature. Such events exist in non-mainstream cultural spaces. However, African lexical items and phrases have been retained in the lingua francas of the Americas, languages which have themselves been shaped by the confluence of African, European, and Native American language speakers. Most of these languages are considered “creoles.” They contain not only lexical but also syntactic, phonological, semantic, and idiomatic residues of various West African and West Central African languages. In a reverse movement of language diffusion, English-lexified creole speakers have influenced the formation of Krio in Sierra Leone and its offshoot “pidgins.”