Category Archives: Indigenous Language Activists

Mapudungun poetry by María Ines Huenuñir Antihuala featured in “Poems from the Edge of Extinction”

We have had the honor of collaborating with the celebrated Mapudungun poet María Ines Huenuñir Antihuala in Chile on several occasions. She laid the groundwork for the first-ever Mapudungun Talking Dictionary and we’ve taken part in events and Living Tongues workshops with her over the years.

Now, she is releasing a new album that includes many songs based on her poetry in Mapudungun. The album title is Kuifike Aukiñ Wiño Choyütelepay. It translates into Spanish as “Ecos ancestrales volviendo al origen” (which means “Ancestral Echoes Returning to the Source” in English). It is available locally in Chile and will be officially launched in Santiago on Saturday, December 14th, 2019.

María Ines Huenuñir Antihuala also just released an official music video for her song, “Mapuche Zomo” (Mapuche Woman), directed by Chilean artist Sergio Infante. It is a beautiful and engaging work and provides a glimpse into Mapuche womanhood and identity. The lyrics are based on Maria Huenuñir’s poem by the the same name. Living Tongues Program Director, Anna Luisa Daigneault, translated this poem into English, and we are providing the poetry in Mapudungun and English below.

Song, poetry and prayers by María Huenuñir
Video directed by Sergio Infante
Photography by Macarena Larrain

And there is more good news on this topic! The poem (and its translation) were included in a wonderful publication called “Poems from the Edge of Extinction” edited by Chris McCabe (Chambers Books) which just came out today in the Americas and is now available for order on Amazon.

The publication features award-winning poets from cultures as diverse as the Ainu people of Japan to the Zoque of Mexico, with languages that range from the indigenous Ahtna of Alaska to the Shetlandic dialect of Scots. This collection gathers together 50 of the finest poems in endangered, or vulnerable, languages from across the continents. We are pleased that Maria Ines Huenuñir Antihuala’s poem “Mapuche Zomo” is included in this landmark publication and hope that the book reaches audiences far and wide.

Mapuche Zomo
(autora: Maria Ines Huenuñir Antihuala)

Weñanküley kiñe zomo
kiñe mapuche ñuke
Kizu ka lelikey antü
ka lelikey trimiñ pun
Fey ta tukuneniekefüy
Kizu ñi chamal mew
weñankülekey
Welu küme tukukey
Ñi trapelakucha ka ñi trarilongko
amun rellmu reke felekey
ñi chapetun
ka kiñe trariwe tukuniekey
küpa yomülkey ñi ange yewekelu
welu küme küzawkey
Cheu ñi amun
müyawkey kizu ñi zungu engu.
Mapuche ñuke
amun manke reke feleami
fey ta yewekelay
ñi kurügen
küme wutrapüralekey
wente mawizantu mew,
eimi niemi küme piwke
küme molfüñ
poyeniekeimi
kom tami pu püñeñ
amuaimi kizu tami lelfün mew.
Tiyewpüle petu rayütukey
kozküya rayen
eimi tami ayen mu
Mañumeyu ñuke.

Mapuche Woman
Author: Maria Ines Huenuñir Antihuala
Translated by Anna Luisa Daigneault

The sad sigh of a woman,
she is a Mapuche woman.
She can see both
the light of day, the dark of night.
The darkness blends
with the dark color of her clothes.
Although she is sad, she proudly wears
her beautiful silver jewelry.
Laces of all colors, in her braids,
she wears a red belt as well.
She wants no more insults!
She works so hard.
Troubled by her dark skin,
No one understands her.
But she wants to defend her culture,
Carry on with her traditional customs.
Mapuche woman, be like the condor!
Despite his dark feathers,
He feels happiness and great honor
He shines proudly on the coat of arms.
You have a sincere and tender heart
That overflows with pure blood
Woman of eternal tenderness
Protect your children with great care!
Beloved mother, don’t be hard on yourself!
Live peacefully, with serenity
There, near the natural world
I will give you a kopiwe flower
To thank you for your kindness.

Thanks for reading!

Speak Volumes: Meet-and-Greet in Seattle on Aug 8th

The Living Tongues Team is coming to Seattle and we would love to meet you! Our “Speak Volumes” event series is all about raising awareness about endangered languages, and why it is important to document them before it’s too late. You are invited to join us for an evening of community-building and engaging discussion at the Wagner Education Center, located at the beautiful Center for Wooden Boats. 

  • Living Tongues founder Dr. Gregory Anderson and Director of Research Dr. K. David Harrison will speak about their work as linguists who have traveled the globe to document dozens of languages on the verge of extinction. 
  • Living Tongues team members will discuss innovative tech solutions such as our Talking Dictionaries mobile software that helps community members easily create tools that help languages live on for generations to come.
  • Video clips from recent fieldwork around the world will be shown.

We are excited to meet passionate individuals who want to get involved with language preservation efforts and support initiatives led by Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages. You will also get the opportunity to meet other avid language enthusiasts and ask questions about our work!

Mark your calendars for Thursday, August 8th from 7:00-9:00PM.

RSVP on Facebook

Not on Facebook? RSVP on our Flipcause event page!

Wagner Education Center
Center for Wooden Boats
1010 Valley Street
Seattle, WA 98109

Questions? Contact Living Tongues Director of Development, Ms. Morgan Mann at morgan@livingtongues.org, 803-920-5227

National Science Foundation Grant for Sora Language Documentation (India)

We are pleased to officially announce that we have received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation Linguistics Program. The project is entitled “Sora Typological Characteristics: Towards a Re-Evaluation of South Asian Human History” and is funded by grant award NSF/BCS #1844532. We are grateful for the support and excited about this undertaking!

The Principal Investigator of this project is Living Tongues Director, Dr. Greg Anderson, and the co-PI is Living Tongues Senior Director in the Asia-Pacific region, Dr. Mark Donohue. Furthermore, the grant includes indigenous scientists such as Dr. Bikram Jora, Dr. Luke Horo and Opino Gomango in key research roles.

This project will provide a comprehensive study of the Sora language, spoken by an indigenous ‘tribal’ people in India with a population of over 300,000. The Sora homeland is located in several districts of southern Odisha State and adjacent parts of northern Andhra Pradesh, with significant clusters in diaspora communities in Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. All of those regions have distinct dialectical zones that we will survey in this study.

We will focus on the features of Sora’s sound system, grammar and vocabulary which stand out in various significant ways, both from related languages and other languages of the region. These analyses will inform (and be informed by) current debates in language contact and language change in the South Asian and Southeast Asian regions, as well as by current work in linguistic typology, and may necessitate a reformulation of the prehistory of South Asia.

Sora presents several challenging features, including a possibly unique form of noun incorporation that has been explicitly predicted to be impossible. Once these details of Sora are better understood, and its changes over time have been analyzed, new insights into the murky linguistic pre-history of South Asia will emerge. The project also offers unique opportunities for indigenous scientists to play major roles in the research as key team members, thus offering capacity building and STEM field research opportunities to some of the most underserved and underrepresented communities of scientists. It also helps promote the visibility of indigenous peoples whose histories have been missing from mainstream accounts of regional South Asian history.

The project will produce A Grammar of Sora (with texts, a comparative lexicon and grammar of the various Sora dialects) and create an exhaustive, annotated archival deposit of the Sora dialect materials. These are to be collected through a combination of spontaneous narrative recordings and targeted elicitation with speakers, recorded in audio and video format. Topics to be explored include the ‘expressive’ lexicon, which is a highly developed system in Sora with many attested complex reduplication patterns, as well as the systems of grammatical agreement seen in different verb classes.

We will also examine the typological shifts that may have accompanied the Dravidian and Aryan migrations into South Asia that marginalized the groups already there, such as the Proto-Munda ancestors to the Sora, and the ancestral language to Kusunda to the periphery. These typological shifts may have submerged or replaced what may have been more widespread older features.

Documenting the Fragile Knowledge Domains of the Birhor People in India

We are pleased to announce that we have been awarded a two-year grant by the Zegar Foundation to document the fragile knowledge domains of the Birhor tribal people.

The Birhor are a Munda-speaking, forest-dependent semi-nomadic tribal community with fewer than 20,000 members concentrated in the eastern central Indian state of Jharkhand and adjacent northern parts of the state of Odisha. Only a few thousand fluent speakers of the Birhor language remain at present as their way of life and their language are both under threat.

Until recently, many Birhor subsisted as hunter-gatherers living in leaf-huts setting up camps at the edge of village market areas, selling rope and rope products in local village markets; many now have been forced to live in settled agricultural communities, as forest degradation and urban encroachment has made hunting and gathering no longer viable as a way of life.

Officially a ‘primitive’ tribal group, the Birhor stand at the very bottom of the complex and multi-tiered ethno-religious and linguistic hierarchies that dominate Indian life. In northern Odisha, two different groups are officially known as ‘monkey-eaters’ and overtly despised. The cultural and environmental context that the Birhor people are living in is changing rapidly and their language and culture are both poorly documented. Both will likely soon disappear without immediate action. Their knowledge of medicinal and nutritional uses of forest products is vast and unrivaled in India.

Our field team, comprised of trained tribal/indigenous Indian linguists, will work closely with Birhor indigenous experts to digitally document their fragile and now disappearing knowledge domains, such as local hunter-gatherer strategies, ethnobotany and rope-making techniques. We will also make strides documenting their rich oral literature, which forms an intimate connection with their traditional subsistence activities and helps shape the social cohesion of the community.

Community empowerment may lead to further development projects and the Birhor people may be able to slowly change their socio-economic context over time, finding new ways to retain their identity. The process of recruiting local Birhor consultants, training them in digital documentation techniques, and collaborating with them in a cultural empowerment project will result in first-time recordings of endangered cultural and linguistic knowledge and first-ever educational materials in the languages, and lead to valuable digital literacy for participating community members assisting them in future socio-economic mobility.

The specific outcomes for this project are:

  • Annotated/translated audio-video collection of traditional Birhor cultural practices;
  • An online, mobile-friendly Birhor Talking Dictionary with images and sounds;
  • Printed primary school bilingual materials & a basic pocket dictionary for Birhor class use.

The annotated, trilingual audiovisual archive of Birhor daily life will be freely available online on Youtube and through the Living Tongues website (of course protected according to the community’s desire). Documentation efforts can continue in the future without the help of outsiders, as can the preservation and celebration of Birhor knowledge and culture in local educational settings. These records would also serve to create positive media visibility for the Birhor and other marginalized tribal peoples in India. 

Questions about this project? Write to annaluisa@livingtongues.org