Revitalising indigenous languages

Over the past 30 years there has been a blossoming of education approaches for and by indigenous peoples. Where there are bilingual and intercultural or multicultural programmes for indigenous peoples, indigenous students have achieved higher performance and attendance rates.

For indigenous peoples, efforts to revitalise their languages cannot be separated from struggles for democracy, justice and self-determination. Their actions have led to the 1993 Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which lays out the legal and political demands of indigenous peoples to establish and control education in their own languages (Article 15).

Schooling for indigenous and ethnic minority peoples needs to be relevant and recognise the learners' knowledge and languages. Multilingual and multicultural education programmes must be based on understanding people's language practices and ensuring that education supports the use of national or dominant languages in today's national and global societies.

Using bilingual education only as a bridge to ability in the dominant language undermines the development of the indigenous language and the intellectual, social and cultural resource it represents for the speaker.

Indigenous peoples live in changing, multilingual societies and the complex relationship between ethnic identity and language is a challenge for education programming. Where indigenous people commonly use more than two languages, the 'standard' L1/L2 model (indigenous language as L1 and dominant language as L2) could be seriously questioned.

One approach in Latin America is 'intercultural education'. Originally restricted to education and language learning for indigenous peoples, intercultural education now represents a new social paradigm which values diversity and puts it at the heart of education for all students. Community and family participation ensure that indigenous languages thrive and strengthen schooling and society.

Without participation, mutual understanding is undermined. In Peru, Amazon training colleges criticise the Ministry of Education's implementation of interculturalism because of its failure to address the complex and highly political relations between Peru's different cultural and linguistic traditions.

To respond to these challenges, diversity needs to be the starting point for language policy and planning. Good practice will focus on how people use all their languages in their everyday lives to understand each other, rather than imposing language policy based on a static, formal view of indigenous languages and cultures.

Sheila Aikman
Oxfam GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford OX4 2JY, UK SAikman@oxfam.org.uk

See also

'Indigenous Education: Addressing Current Issues and developments' by Stephen Kay and Sheila Aikman in Comparative Education, Vol 39:2, 2003 (and other articles)
www.journalsonline.tandf.co.uk/link.asp?id=q7hgcwpkt0lk

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