Webcast sponsored by the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre and hosted by the UBC Museum of Anthropology. This panel followed a screening of Banchi Hanuse’s film ‘Cry Rock’.
Chair: Kate Hennessy.
Panelists: Candace Galla, David Nathan, Mark Turin, Clyde Tallio.
As documentary and archiving technologies rapidly change, we ask: What role does the digital play in the preservation––or conversely, the loss––of documentary media? What uses and reuses of language documentation are appropriate and who, ultimately, are the beneficiaries of these documentary initiatives? Has digital technology facilitated community access and control of language archives and served the ongoing project of endangered language revitalization? How might this be either complicated or enlivened by the politics and practices of digital circulation and remix?
About the Participants:
Candace Kaleimamoowahinekapu Galla (Native Hawaiian) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Language & Literacy Education at the University of British Columbia. Her research areas are in language revitalization and education, specifically exploring how technology and media are used to revitalize, perpetuate and promote Indigenous languages.
Kate Hennessy is a media anthropologist and Assistant Professor at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. As Director of the Making Culture Lab, she studies the role of new technologies and collaborative research practices in the documentation and safeguarding of cultural heritage. She is a co-founder of the Ethnographic Terminalia Curatorial Collective, which curates exhibitions at the intersection of ethnography and contemporary art.
David Nathan is Director of the Endangered Languages Archive at SOAS, University of London, where his team has developed new approaches to archiving language resources. With 20 years experience in education and electronic publishing for endangered languages, he is interested in the connections between language documentation, research andrevitalisation, and how media technologies can support these connections.
Clyde Tallio is a Nuxalk language and oral history teacher, from Bella Coola B.C. He is featured prominently in Banchi Hanuse’s film Cry Rock.
Mark Turin is a linguist and anthropologist of Italo-Dutch origin. He is Program Director of the Yale Himalaya Initiative, and Director of the World Oral Literature Project and the Digital Himalaya Project. He will join UBC as Chair of the First Nations Languages Program in July 2014.
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The public symposium ‘On Endangered Languages: Indigeneity, Community, and Creative Practice’ took place at the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia on Sept. 14th, 2013. It was co-organized by Karen Duffek, Kate Hennessy, Tyler Peterson, and John Wynne.
Symposium Description:
As the multi-sensory installation Anspayaxw opens for exhibition in the Satellite Gallery in Vancouver, we bring artist John Wynne, linguist Tyler Peterson, anthropologist Kate Hennessy, Musqueam elder Larry Grant, and Gitxsan participants Louise Wilson and Barbara Harris into conversation with scholars and artists on the preservation of endangered languages, the interconnected role of digital media, and engagements with artistic practice.
Linda Tuhiwai Smith has described research as “probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary” – but as she also acknowledges, “at some points there is, there has to be, dialogue across the boundaries of oppositions.” Beyond the customary exploration of academic interests and language maintenance efforts, this symposium will problematize research and raise questions about the opportunities and consequences of language documentation for local communities and collaborating outsiders.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has drawn attention to the enduring significance of Indigenous languages. Against this backdrop we will explore some of the ways in which language documentation is being used by speakers to communicate identity, sovereignty, and contemporary representations of community. We will further examine the ethical and moral obligations created in the act of documentation, while questioning how research relationships and collaborations might raise awareness of the status of endangered languages. As documentary and archiving technologies rapidly change, we ask what role digital technology plays in the preservation––or conversely, the loss––of documentary media. What are appropriate uses and reuses of language documentation, and who, ultimately, are the beneficiaries of these documentary initiatives? In the context of Anspayaxw, are creative and artistic explorations of language documentation at odds with the goal of revitalization, or do they open up new possibilities for understanding the complex social and historical territory of ongoing colonial relationships?
Wynne’s Anspayaxw (2010) is a 12-channel sound and photography installation based on his collaborations with Tyler Peterson, artist/photographer Denise Hawrysio, and members of the Gitxsan community at Kispiox, British Columbia. Using innovative sound technology, the installation merges recordings of the endangered Gitxsanimaax language, oral histories, and songs with situational portraits of the participants and photographs of hand-made street signs on the reserve made by one of the participants in the 1970s. The work highlights the subjective nature of language documentation, interpretation, and creative expression. The complex relationships between linguistic researchers and language speakers are recognized and represented in image and sound, cut through by questions of power, ownership, and the desire to document, preserve, and revitalize endangered languages.
Select Articles Available at UBC Library
Hennessy, K. (2012). Cultural heritage on the web: Applied digital visual anthropology and local cultural property rights discourse. International Journal of Cultural Property, 19(3), 345-369. doi:10.1017/S0940739112000288. [Link]
Turin, M., Zeisler, B., & Ebrary Academic Complete (Canada) Subscription Collection. (2011). Himalayan languages and linguistics: Studies in phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax. Boston; Leiden: Brill. [Link]
Turin, M. (2012). A grammar of the Thangmi language: With an ethnolinguistic introduction to the speakers and their culture. Boston; Leiden: Brill.
Turin, M. (2012). Voices of vanishing worlds: Endangered languages, orality, and cognition. Análise Social, 47(205), 846-869. [Link]
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