Category Archives: K. David Harrison

Endangered Language Activism, Enduring Voices Project, Indigenous Language Activists, K. David Harrison, Launches and Public Events, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages, Talking Dictionaries

Press Release: Smithsonian Folklife Festival Program to Raise Awareness of Global Language Loss

The United Nation’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization estimates that of the more than 7,000 languages in the world, nearly half of them are in danger of becoming extinct by the end of this century. The Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival program “One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage” will focus attention on this urgent issue of global language loss by bringing together communities from around the world that are fighting to save their native tongues and cultural traditions.

“One World, Many Voices” is produced in collaboration with UNESCO, the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project and the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Initiative.

The Festival will be held Wednesday, June 26, through Sunday, June 30, and Wednesday, July 3, through Sunday, July 7, outdoors on the National Mall between Seventh and 14th streets. All events are free. Festival hours are from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. each day with evening events such as concerts and dance parties beginning at 6 p.m. The Festival is co-sponsored by the National Park Service.

“Language is a vital part of our human heritage and it is important to the culture and history of the people that speak it,” said program co-curator Marjorie Hunt. “The Festival provides a powerful platform for speakers of different languages to share their cultures and worldview with a large public audience on the National Mall.”

Hunt is co-curating the program with K. David Harrison, professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, and author of When Languages Die. Harrison has spent his career documenting and helping to revitalize languages.

Festival visitors will get the chance to hear and learn from participants representing 15 cultures working to preserve their languages. Musicians, storytellers, singers, dancers, poets, culinary experts, and craftspeople will share how language embodies cultural knowledge, identity, values, technologies and arts. The program will include performances, craft demonstrations, interactive discussion sessions, community celebrations and hands-on family activities.

Native Hawaiians will demonstrate hula and discuss the role language has played in passing down the dance to the next generation. Native Americans from the Maine’s Passamaquoddy tribe will demonstrate how basket weaving is used to keep language alive, while participants from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians in Oregon will perform the traditional Feather Dance and discuss how an online talking dictionary is helping to revitalize the tribes’ language.

Indigenous groups from Colombia—including the Wayuu, Palenque and Kamsá—will demonstrate native crafts, music and poetry while the Koro people of India will build bamboo spirit houses and share with visitors how they help ensure a good harvest. Internationally known Klezmer pioneer Michael Alpert will perform for visitors during the Festival.

Sponsors

Major support for “One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage” is provided by the Dr. Frederik Paulsen Foundation, the Microsoft Local Language Program, the Embassy of Colombia in Washington, D.C., the Ministry of Culture of Colombia, the Caro y Cuervo Institute, the U.S. State Department Fund for Innovation in Public Diplomacy, the United States Embassy in Bolivia, the Inter-American Foundation, the Hawaii Tourism Authority, the University of Hawaii System and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.

About the Festival

The 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will feature three programs. In addition to “One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage,” the programs are “Hungarian Heritage: Roots to Revival” and “The Will to Adorn: African American Diversity, Style, and Identity.”

The Folklife Festival, inaugurated in 1967, honors people from across the United States and around the world. With approximately 1 million visitors each year, the Festival unites presenters and performers in the nation’s capital to celebrate the diversity of cultural traditions. It is produced by the Smithsonian’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

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Media Only

Amy Kehs (202) 390-5543; kehsa@si.edu

Becky Haberacker 202) 633-5183; haberackerb@si.edu

Media website

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Endangered Language Activism, Enduring Voices Project, Gregory D. S. Anderson, Indigenous Language Activists, K. David Harrison, Language Hotspots, Launches and Public Events, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages

Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival

One World, Many Voices

Of the nearly 7,000 languages spoken in the world today—many of them unrecorded—up to half may disappear in this century. As languages vanish, communities lose a wealth of knowledge about history, culture, the natural environment, and the human mind.

 

The One World, Many Voices: Endangered Languages and Cultural Heritage program at the 2013 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will highlight language diversity as a vital part of our human heritage. Cultural experts from communities around the world will demonstrate how their ancestral tongues embody cultural knowledge, identity, values, technologies, and arts.

Through performances, craft demonstrations, interactive discussion sessions, community celebrations, and hands-on educational activities, highly skilled musicians, storytellers, singers, dancers, craftspeople, language educators, and other cultural practitioners will come together on the National Mall to share their artistry, knowledge, and traditions; to discuss the meaning and value of their languages to their cultural heritage and ways of life; and to address the challenges they face in maintaining the vitality of their languages in today’s world.

ImageFestival visitors will be able to talk with Kalmyk epic singers and Tuvan stone carvers from Russia, Koro rice farmers from India, Passamaquoddy basketmakers from Maine, Kallawaya medicinal healers and textile artists from Bolivia, Garifuna drummers and dancers from Los Angeles and New York, and many others.

When a language disappears, unique ways of knowing, understanding, and experiencing the world are lost forever. The expert culture bearers participating in the One World, Many Voices program will richly illustrate these different ways of knowing and show how cultural and language diversity enrich the world.

The One World, Many Voices program is produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in collaboration with UNESCO, the National Geographic Society’s Enduring Voices Project, and the Smithsonian’s Recovering Voices Initiative.

2013 Festival Schedule

47th Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall,

Washington D.C., USA.

June 26-June 30 and July 3-July 7, 2013

Open daily 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Evening events 5:30 p.m.

A full schedule will be available in June 2013.

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Digital Resources, Endangered Language Activism, K. David Harrison, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages

Learn and Preserve Tuvan

Half of the world’s languages are facing extinction. In an effort to preserve Tuvan, Mango Languages developed an introductory course in partnership with our Director of Research, Dr. K. David Harrison, a leading specialist in the study of endangered languages.

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Become an advocate for language preservation. Create a profile on Mango Languages to gain access to the Tuvan course and share it with your campus or community!

Endangered Language Activism, Enduring Voices Project, K. David Harrison, Language Hotspots, Launches and Public Events, Media and Publicity, Support Endangered Languages

K. David Harrison at the University of Montana

On Wednesday, 17 April, Mizuki Miyashita of the UM Linguistics Program hosted a series of events with Dr. K. David Harrison, an Associate Professor of Linguistics at Swarthmore College and a National Geographic fellow. Two days before Dr. Harrison’s visit, there was a viewing of the documentary “The Linguists” (in which Dr. Harrison is featured). At Q&A event following the film, Dr. Harrison updated his audience on his most recent projects: Enduring Voices, jointly ventured at National Geographic, and Talking Dictionaries at the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages.

Dr. Harrison’s public lecture, “Endangered Languages: Local and Global Perspectives,” was very well-attended, and every copy of his book “When Languages Die” was purchased at the book-signing. Dr. Harrison explains that out of approximately 7,000 world languages, 83 are spoken by 80% of the world’s population, and the rest by indigenous or small language communities around the globe in regions which he calls “Language Hotspots.” For example, the Ös language (also known as Chulym) of the remotest regions of Siberia is currently spoken by only 7 people. Dr. Harrison has made the very first recordings of some of these languages. In some cases, these recordings are of the last speaker’s speech. For instance, one of his Talking Dictionaries is of the Siletz Dee-Ni language in Oregon, currently spoken by only one person. Harrison describes how language death eventually leads to intellectual impoverishment in all fields of science and culture. These endangered languages contain “traditional knowledge” of plants, animal species, ecosystems and medicinal remedies. Sometimes language loss translates to the loss of worldviews.

At his talk, he also discussed efforts to sustain, value and revitalize linguistic diversity worldwide and showed the audience original field materials and recordings of “language warriors” to illustrate local perspectives on language endangerment and extinction. As Dr. Harrison stated, “speakers generally love their languages, and want to keep them.” One of the video clips Harrison shared was of a young man singing a hip hop song in Aka (spoken in Northeastern India). Some Aka elders disapprove of the language being used in this way, but according to Harrison these young speakers are a “key to keeping the language.”

About half of world’s languages are predicted to become extinct in this century, including Native American languages of Montana. This event also raised an awareness of endangered indigenous knowledge encoded in languages of Montana, and brought together a diverse group of people: faculty and students of Linguistics, Anthropology, Native American Studies, Communication Studies, Environmental Studies and Music, as well as members of local Indigenous communities including Salish, Kootenai and Blackfeet.

The event was supported by the Office of the Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Department of Anthropology, Department of Environmental Studies, Department of Communication Studies, and Department of Native American Studies, Department of Society and Conservation in the College of Forestry and Conservation, Green Thread, the UM Linguistics Club, and the Linguistics Program.

Here are some photos from K. David Harrison’s trip:

ImageDr. Harrison at the University of Montana.

ImageK. David Harrison with Salish tribal linguists Germaine White and Tom Smith.

For more details about his lecture at the University of Montana, check out this article published in the Missoulian. Thanks for reading!