At Our Voices on the Air — a first-time conference for indigenous- radio programming — representatives of 30 endangered languages connected to preserve and revitalize their native cultures.
L
anguage experts believe that by the end of the century, 90 percent of the world’s estimated
6,000 currently spoken languages in practical terms could be extinct — unspoken and, eventually, forgotten. With them would disappear count- less unique cultures and histories. Preserving them was the impetus for Our Voices on the Air: Reaching New Audiences Through Indigenous Radio, a first-ever conference held from July 31 to Aug. 2 at the National Museum of the American Indian at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. The Smithsonian’s Recovering
Voices Initiative teamed up with Cul- tural Survival, an indigenous rights organization, to invite aboriginal radio producers from around the world to gather and share their stories. “We were shooting to bring together a bunch of active radio producers working in endangered languages,” said Michael Mason, director of exhibitions at the Smithsonian National Museum of Nat- ural History. “Providing a space where they can discuss strategies and tools to help them keep their languages alive is really important.”
CROSSING BORDERS Our Voices on the Air was meant to be a small, intimate event focused on one-on-one time for attendees. All of the conference’s 58 delegates — hailing from Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador, Canada, Peru, Colombia, New Zealand, and the United States — were involved in language revitalization, and most were community radio producers eager to swap ideas on how to preserve their native language through radio.
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Out Loud Our Voices on the Air focused on saving native languages.
“We wanted to see a lot of cross-
pollination and a lot of learning,” said Mark Camp, deputy executive direc- tor of Cultural Survival. “Many of the presenters were radio producers who were explaining to everyone else what they’re doing in their community.” When a language becomes endan-
gered it means there are very few fluent speakers; when it becomes extinct, there are none. “A lot of times,” Camp said, “the process starts with the gov- ernment or some other outside force actively discouraging the language being spoken.” The Euchee language of the Native
American Euchee Tribe in Oklahoma, for example, was represented at the conference. Fewer than 50 people in the world now speak Euchee fluently. For decades, native children were removed from their families and cultures and sent to boarding schools where they
were punished for speaking Euchee. There are other languages such as Cakchiquel, spoken in Guatemala, that are not yet endangered, but are deemed by the United Nations as “threatened” because the number of speakers is declining precipitously due to govern- ment intervention. Regions like Hawaii and New Zea-
land have some of the greatest success stories when it comes to language revi- talization, according to Mason. “Both communities,” he said, “have a signifi- cant recovery under way in terms of the numbers of speakers and the extent to which the language is used.” Māori speakers in New Zealand, for
example, have increased from just a few thousand in the 1970s to roughly 140,000 today. This was accomplished through radio and by establishing language-immersion schools for young children. “That story is very inspiring