Although more than a million people still speak Nahuatl, this number is rapidly diminishing. Historically, Nahuatl was the dominant language of Coatepec de los Costales, a small village in Guerrero, Mexico. The last 50 years have seen a pronounced shift there from Nahuatl to Spanish. The ultimate cause of language shift is a disruption in…

This paper describes a collaborative project between Tsuut'ina Education and St. Mary's University, Faculty of Education. The project addresses the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) (2015) "Calls to Action" in reference to language and culture. Our work with the Gunaha instructors of Tsuut'ina Education was carried out with the…

This article describes how cellphone technology, specifically cellphilms -- films of varying lengths made with cellphones by everyday people -- are being taken up in the community of Union Hidalgo as a platform to foster an intergenerational dialogue between youth and Elders, with the specific goal of preserving the Zapotec language and ancestral…

This study took place in a village in Yucatan, Mexico in the context of two adult education programs in Yucatan [Plaza Comunitaria and Preparatoria Abierta]. I interacted in "convivencia" with bilingual (Mayan-Spanish) Yucatec Mayan women who took on the challenge of completing their formal schooling through those adult education…

In response to widespread language loss, many Native American communities are engaged in revitalizing their languages. This dissertation is a systematic account of a tribal member learning Mutsun in the context of a language reclamation project. The last fluent speaker of Mutsun, a Costanoan language of central California, died in 1930. This study…

Context: Transnational emergent multilingual (TEM) adolescents are young people who maintain emotional, social, economic, and physical connections and networks to more than one country, often a home country and a host country. Because of their linguistic identities and varied schooling experiences, when they enroll in U.S. public schools, many are…

When Shirley Chisholm (in 1972) and then Hillary Clinton (in 2008, and again in 2016) ran for president, there was great excitement. Indeed, electing the "first woman" to the Office of the President would be an important milestone. Yet, Indigenous women have long held positions of leadership, including the position of President,…

The importance of learning an Aboriginal language has been documented, yet associations with positive educational outcomes are inconclusive. Previous research in the area has been limited by small sample studies, lack of comparison groups, and the omission of the consideration of socio-demographic factors and cultural activity participation. This…

The seventh edition of this bestselling textbook has been extensively revised and updated to provide a comprehensive and accessible introduction to bilingualism and bilingual education in an ever-changing world. Written in a compact and clear style, the book covers all the crucial issues in bilingualism and multilingualism at individual, group and…

The purpose of this article is to justify the value of Indigenous research paradigms, specifically in the context of research on language acquisition. This argument has implications not only for research on language acquisition and the practice of language instruction but also for qualitative research, more broadly. Specifically, depending on the…

Indigenous methodologies for guiding, advising, and educating children have been in place since time immemorial. Those well-honed approaches to education were built to support whole and healthy individual development while also establishing a lifelong awareness and reverence for community, connection, kinship, and reciprocity. In Western cultures,…

This article uses a classroom experience to exemplify ways in which students as social beings learn English as a foreign language in Colombia and how the teacher uses "trans[cultura]linguación". This is a process of making meaning during English-learning tasks while comparing specific linguistic variations as students learn about both…

As Indigenous communities envision their future, it is without question that the Indigenous youth play a significant role in sustaining their Indigenous lifeways and communities. They will no doubt be faced with the responsibility to navigate socio-cultural, environmental, political and economic issues while simultaneously preserving their…

The Shiwiar are an indigenous nation of Ecuador and Peru, and they are one of five ethnic groups collectively known as the Jivaroan people. In stark contrast to the other Jivaroan groups, the Shiwiar have largely been overlooked by local governments until recently and are still popularly considered to be an offshoot of their closely related…

The use of computing technologies in less commonly taught language (LCTL) and endangered language (EL) learning is different from mainstream computer-assisted language learning (CALL), where several languages, most noticeably English, dominate the literature. Many most commonly taught language (MCTL) learners learn a language for a variety of…