At 8 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, I log into a remote Anishinaabemowin class from my home on Duwamish, Salish, and Stillaguamish territory in Seattle, Washington. At the same time, Isadore Toulouse starts up his camera from his kitchen thousands of miles away on Ottawa and Chippewa land in Suttons Bay, Michigan.
上午8点在最近的一个星期二，我登录到远程Anishinaabemowin类从我家Duwamish的，萨利希和Stillaguamish领土在华盛顿州西雅图。 同时，伊萨多尔·图卢兹(Isadore Toulouse)从位于数千英里之外的密歇根州萨顿斯湾(Suttons Bay)渥太华和奇珀瓦(Chippewa)的厨房启动相机。
“Ah, there are my learners!” he beams at the camera. “Wenesh edigwonman pii minikweyin mkadeyaaboo?” he asks slowly, holding up his cup of coffee. “It means, ‘how do you take your coffee?’” He takes a sip, grimaces, and shakes his head. “Maandaagami. Bleh. Means ‘it tastes terrible.’ There is no cream in the house today,” he laughs. Thirty students smile back at him from all over the United States and Canada. It’s a light-hearted interaction, but virtual classes like these represent a partial solution to a sobering problem.
“啊，有我的学习者！” 他在梁凸轮ê岭。 “ Wenesh edigwonman pii minikweyin mkadeyaaboo吗？” 他慢慢地问，举起咖啡。 “这意味着，'你怎么喝咖啡？'”他takes了一口，做了个鬼脸，摇了摇头。 ” Maandaagami 。 eh 表示“味道不好”。 今天房子里没有奶油，”他笑着说。 来自美国和加拿大各地的30名学生对他微笑。 这是轻松的交互，但是像这样的虚拟类代表了一个发人深省的问题的部分解决方案。
Indigenous languages worldwide are in danger of extinction. UNESCO estimates that without active effort, 90% of the world’s 7,000 languages will be gone by the end of the century. In the United States and Canada, the decline in Indigenous languages wasn’t accidental: It was a colonialist policy of cultural genocide. It’s estimated that 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada alone were sent to residential boarding schools from the 1870s until 1996, where they were punished for speaking their language and practicing cultural traditions. Even after they were closed, the “sixties scoop” — where thousands more Native children were removed from their communities and adopted into white families — stripped many Indigenous people of their language and their culture.
世界各地的土著语言正面临灭绝的危险。 联合国教科文组织估计，如果不积极努力，到本世纪末，世界上7,000种语言中的90％将消失。 在美国和加拿大，土著语言的减少并不是偶然的：这是殖民主义的种族灭绝政策。 据估计，仅在加拿大，从1870年代到1996年，就有15万名土著儿童被送到寄宿制学校，在那里他们因讲语言和践行文化传统而受到惩罚。 甚至在他们关门之后，“六十瓢”(成千上万的土著儿童被从社区中移出并被收养到白人家庭中)剥夺了许多土著人民的语言和文化。
My own mother was one of these children, and that’s how she lost her language. My grandmother — an Ojibwe woman from the Brunswick House Band in Ontario — tried furiously to teach my mother the language, even though she knew she was slowly dying from tuberculosis. By the time my grandmother finally passed away, all my mother could remember were the words for “butter” and “naughty little boy” — and she’s already forgotten those over the years. By taking classes like Toulouse’s, I’m able to start restoring what was lost to our family and do my own small part to reverse the decline in Indigenous languages.
我自己的母亲是这些孩子之一，这就是她失去语言的原因。 我的祖母-来自安大略省不伦瑞克故居乐队(Brunswick House Band)的奥吉布族妇女-疯狂地试图向我的母亲传授这种语言，尽管她知道她正在慢慢死于结核病。 当我的祖母最终去世时，我母亲只记得“黄油”和“顽皮的小男孩”这两个词，而这些年来，她已经忘记了这些。 通过参加像图卢兹的课程，我能够开始恢复失去给我们家庭的东西，并尽我的一小部分来扭转土著语言的下降。
“People living off-territory, we have a right to our language and sometimes for economic reasons or family reasons or whatever, we can’t be at home.”
“居住在境外的人们有权使用我们的语言，有时出于经济原因或家庭原因或其他原因，我们不能在家中生活。”
One of the unexpected side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Indigenous language instructors say, is that more people like me are seeking out their virtual courses. “I started to really look for [the classes], and I don’t think I would have necessarily if things hadn’t been moving more online,” says Carmen Craig, who is a member of the Hiawatha First Nations Ojibwe band in Ontario and a fellow student in Toulouse’s course.
土著语言教师说，Covid-19大流行的意外副作用之一是，越来越多的像我这样的人正在寻找虚拟课程。 “我开始真正地寻找[课程]，如果事情没有在网上发展，我认为我不一定会，”安大略省Hiawatha First Nations Ojibwe乐队的成员Carmen Craig说和图卢兹课程的同学。
While online courses of all kinds are booming as Covid-19 keeps people at home, virtual learning is particularly important for Indigenous languages. That is because these classes, when offered in person, tend to be located only on or near tribal lands — as do partners for practicing the language and immersion opportunities. But according to the most recent U.S. census, only 22% of Indigenous people live on tribal land. “[With virtual classes] we can reach people in urban areas or who are outside of Ojibwe’s speaking communities in a way that was harder to do before, and that’s a benefit,” says Anton Treuer, PhD, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and an active proponent of language revitalization.
尽管随着Covid-19将人们留在家中，各种在线课程都在蓬勃发展，但虚拟学习对土著语言尤为重要。 这是因为这些课程当面授课时，往往只位于部落地区或附近，而练习语言和沉浸机会的伙伴也是如此。 但是根据最近的美国人口普查，只有22％的土著居民生活在部落土地上。 “ [通过虚拟课堂]，我们可以以以前难以做到的方式吸引城市地区或奥吉布语社区之外的人，这是一种好处，”贝米吉州立大学奥吉布韦教授安东·特劳尔博士说大学和语言振兴的积极支持者。
While Toulouse’s class, for instance, had been offered online before the pandemic, many classes that were once only available in certain communities are now available online. For example, Craig is applying for a coveted spot in an Ojibwe immersion course that used to be only available in-person in Minnesota but is now open to students everywhere virtually. “I feel like people living off-territory, we have a right to our language and sometimes for economic reasons or family reasons or whatever, we can’t be at home,” she says. This is my case as well — in one of the true twists of colonialism, I grew up only a few hours from my grandmother’s community yet have never been there because an international border crossed between us.
例如，虽然图卢兹的课程在大流行之前就已经在线提供，但许多以前仅在某些社区开放的课程现在可以在线获得。 例如，克雷格(Craig)正在为奥吉布威(Ojibwe)浸入式课程申请一个令人垂涎的地点，该课程过去仅在明尼苏达州面授，但现在几乎对所有学生开放。 她说：“我觉得人们生活在地域之外，我们有权使用自己的语言，有时出于经济原因，家庭原因或其他原因，我们不能在家。” 这也是我的情况-在殖民主义的真正转折之一中，我在祖母所在社区仅几个小时长大，但由于我们之间跨越了国际边界，所以从未去过那里。
转载自原文链接, 如需删除请联系管理员。
原文链接：虚拟学习正在帮助土著语言抵抗灭绝，转载请注明来源！