Description
Engaging Native American Publics considers the increasing influence of Indigenous groups as key audiences, collaborators, and authors with regards to their own linguistic documentation and representation. The chapters critically examine a variety of North American case studies to reflect on the forms and effects of new collaborations between language researchers and Indigenous communities, as well as the types and uses of products that emerge with notions of cultural maintenance and linguistic revitalization in mind. In assessing the nature and degree of change from an early period of "salvage" research to a period of greater Indigenous "self-determination," the volume addresses whether increased empowerment and accountability has truly transformed the terms of engagement and what the implications for the future might be.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Native American Languages and Linguistic Anthropology: From the Legacy of Salvage Anthropology to the Promise of Linguistic Self-Determination
Barbra A. Meek
Part I: Collaboration
2. There’s No Easy Way to Talk about Language Change or Language Loss: The Difficulties and Rewards of Linguistic Collaboration
Gus Palmer, Jr.
3. Recontextualizing Kumeyaay Oral Literature for the Twenty-First Century
Margaret Field
4. “You Shall Not Become This Kind of People”: Indigenous Political Argument in Maidu Linguistic Text Collections
M. Eleanor Nevins
5. To “We” (+inclusive) or Not to “We” (–inclusive): The CD-ROM Taitaduhaan (Our Language) and Western Mono Future Publics
Paul V. Kroskrity
Part II: Circulation
6. Future Imperfect: Advocacy, Rhetoric, and Public Anxiety over Maliseet Language Life and Death
Bernard C. Perley
7. Perfecting Publics: Future Audiences and the Aesthetics of Refinement
Erin Debenport
Part III: Scaling Publics
8. “I Don’t Write Navajo Poetry, I Just Speak the Poetry in Navajo”: Ethical Listeners, Poetic Communion, and Imagined Future Publics of Navajo Poetry
Anthony K. Webster
9. Reflections on Navajo Publics, “New” Media, and Documentary Futures
Leighton Peterson
10. Labelling Knowledge: The Semiotics of Immaterial Cultural Property and the Production of New Indigenous Publics
Jane Anderson, Hannah McElgunn, and Justin Richland
