Decolonizing the Indigenous Language Classroom: A Heteroglossia of Ideological Shift in Indigenous Language Revitalization

Abstract

This thesis examines the language ideologies of three Native American language instructors at the University of Oklahoma, looking specifically at the way these ideologies are seen in their pedagogical methodologies. This research is interested in the way colonial education practices contributed to an ideological shift among speakers of indigenous languages and the way that shift is actualized in individual people, particularly language teachers. Rather than a simple shift from an indigenous to Euro-American language ideology as a result of colonization, there is a wide variety of ideological blending among indigenous language teachers. Understanding the multiplicity of ideologies that resulted from the clash between Euro-American and indigenous language ideologies as a heteroglossia helps to avoid essentialization of indigenous language ideologies as a homogenous whole. The complex and varried nature of this ideological heteroglossia plays an important role in indigenous decolonization and continued survivance in a neocolonial world, and as such should be supported in academic settings.