Indigenous education increasingly seeks to reclaim the institutions of state assimilation as spaces for the dissemination and support of localized forms of knowledge and language use and the valorization of alternative citizenship identities. In this study, I compare two schools in Ecuador to show how divergent ways of teaching Kichwa promote or…

This article presents critical intercultural dialogue as a necessary curricular, pedagogical, and decolonial practice to engage and value Indigenous students' cultural semiotic resources in higher education. Drawing from social semiotics, critical interculturality, and decolonial theory, the article analyzes Indigenous students' structural…

Yupana Inca Tawa Pukllay (YITP) is a ludic didactic resource based on semiotic alternation that, using the reading of numbers in the Inca numeral system, improves its equivalent Indo-Arabic reading. Twelve children from first to fourth grade of a bilingual (Spanish-Quechua), multi-grade elementary school in a small rural Peruvian community were…

This study examines the motivations of learners studying Welsh in the city of Esquel, Argentine Patagonia. Welsh is considered a heritage immigrant language in this region, given the fact that a group of Welsh settlers arrived in 1865 and established successful settlements. After a flourishing period, the process of acculturation reduced the…

This article takes a linguistic anthropological approach to analyzing multilingualism in the linguistic landscape of the Amazonian city of Tena, Ecuador, a key locus of indigenous Kichwa language revitalization, identity formation, and politics. Following recent scholarly reconsiderations of multilingual linguistic landscapes as sites of…

Ecological approaches to language learning and materials use represent educational settings as complex and dynamic systems by applying relational perspectives from the natural world in the classroom. For young bilingual Ojibwe learners, the natural world (i.e., local, rural, and reservation land) is a significant language learning resource unto…

Ticuna (ISO: tca) is a language isolate spoken in the northwestern Amazon Basin (Brazil, Colombia, Peru). Ticuna has more speakers than almost all other Indigenous Amazonian languages and -- unlike most languages of the area -- is still learned by children. Yet academic linguists have given it relatively little research attention. Therefore, to…

We present results of a randomized control trial of a two-generation English as a Second Language (ESL) program in which all families participated in Head Start while treatment parents also enrolled in a high dosage, family-focused ESL curriculum with supportive services. Examining 197 parent-child dyads among Spanish- (89%) and Zomi-speaking…

The purpose of this essay is to introduce nativist expression, historic practices, and perceptions in describing an important approach to exercising language revitalization based on traditional fundamentals and operational ownership in Native organizations of these reflections. Information is presented to enhance the understanding of how Native…

Lexical tone is a linguistic feature which can present difficulties for second language learners wanting to revitalize their heritage language. This is true not only from the standpoint of understanding and pronunciation, but also because tone is often under-documented and resources are limited or too technical to be useful to community members.…

Working from the premise that learning to live well in our places is quickly becoming a necessity of human survival, in this article we weave together divergent experiences of our shared place, the Wabanaki Confederacy or Eastern Canada, and literatures and literacies of that place. This article is methodologically framed using the concept of…

In Nahuatl-speaking villages located in the north of the state of Puebla, family and community educational practices adhere to the Learning by Observing and Pitching In to family and community endeavours model (LOPI). Attentive observation is encouraged as children's principal method of learning. Co-presence is favoured by the adult educators as a…

This dissertation examines the relative effects of phonetic salience and phonological prominence on speech sound processing. Three test cases, respectively, investigate the processing of consonants versus vowels by speakers of German, Hebrew, and Amharic; the processing of aspirated versus unaspirated stops by speaker of Spanish and Thai; and the…

This paper outlines the design, development, and preliminary usability study of a system comprising (1) a web-based Indigenous lesson-creation interface and (2) an accompanying mobile app for studying the lessons. The Nisotak project was developed in response to the need for the preservation of Indigenous languages and to support reconciliation…

When Vernon Lambert and Lorraine Greybear graduated from the Fort Totten, North Dakota, Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) community school in 1957 and 1959, respectively, Dakota language and culture were not even taught. Lambert's mother had stopped speaking Dakota to him at home so he wouldn't have to learn English the hard way at school as she had.…