Storying an interconnected web of relationships in Indigenous language reclamation work and scholarship

Abstract

Indigenous language work is manifested in a diversity of community-led responses of resilience and persistence. Indigenous persons who are reclaiming their languages have entered academia with goals of contributing to community language reclamation efforts and broader resurgence movements. Adapting Archibald’s (2008) concept of storywork—experiential narratives that privilege a cultural lens—we take a dialogic approach for scholar-educators to story their Indigenous language work within a web of interrelated relationships. From our positionalities as Chikashsha, Hopisino, Kanaka Hawaiʻi, myaamia, and Brazilian scholars, we ask and reflect on the following questions: Who are we storying with and for? What does language work look like in our community contexts and academic collaborations? How do we define cultural praxis in our work? What principles inform and emerge from our collective work? How do we co-construct knowledge that will sustain our language work and relationships? This reflective and reflexive process engages and maintains a continual balance of the cumulative past and present toward the future. Foremost, we aspire to act and work consistently in ways that are good for our peoples and communities, which includes a view of the research we undertake as purposeful journeying (Hill & Wilkinson, 2014) within our academic contexts and scholarship.