Abstract
This chapter explores the complexities of how Indigenous language speakers construct and negotiate identities while creating digital learning materials to promote Indigenous literacies in Mexico’s multilingual context, where Indigenous languages hold different positions and their vitality situations vary widely. These identity processes involve ideas about how to contribute to interculturality in the language community when dealing with new contexts and modes of reading, writing, and communication in online spaces. The findings are based on a project called Storybooks Mexico, which aims to harness the power of multimodal digital storytelling to promote Indigenous literacies. In particular, we discuss the experiences in the translation of stories into Maayat’aan (Yucatec Maya). With it, we reflect on the intersections between digital technologies, Indigenous literacies development, and the role of young Indigenous language speakers in language reclamation projects.
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Notes
- 1.
The numbers may vary from one official source to another. The available information on Maya speakers reflects self-reporting of speakers ages five and up, not actual assessment. It does not regard the varying degrees of abilities and uses of the language. In Mexico, where people are repressed for their ethnicity, the numbers of Indigenous language speakers are usually underrepresented.
- 2.
Of the 364 language varieties, 64 are moribund (i.e., coping with extreme risk), 43 are seriously endangered (high risk), 72 are endangered (medium risk), and 185 are potentially endangered (no immediate risk) (INALI, 2014a).
- 3.
Darvin and Norton (2019) study the relationship of language learners to the target language through the sociological construct of investment, which takes up the commitment of people to learn a language while navigating conditions of power in the process. It calls attention to the inequalities of the lived experiences of diverse language learners. See also (Norton Peirce, 1995).
- 4.
- 5.
- 6.
- 7.
https://global-asp.github.io/storybooks-mexico/stories/yua/. Hilario gave permission to publish this experience here. To ensure privacy, the names of the students were anonymized.
- 8.
The INALI also directs standardization projects and considers these to be fundamental instruments to enhance the status of the Indigenous languages and their speakers, and counter language shift (INALI, 2012). These standardization efforts face several challenges, which cannot be discussed in this chapter (on this topic see, e.g., De Korne, 2018; Flores Farfán, 2014; Gal, 2018; Shah & Brenzinger, 2021).
- 9.
First published in 1980, research for this almost 1400-page dictionary was directed by anthropologist and linguist Alfredo Barrera Vázquez, who was the founder of the Academy of the Maya language in 1937.
- 10.
The discussion of Mayan as an ethnic category is ongoing. Most specialists, however, consider Maya to be an ethnic identification historically imposed by outsiders—starting with the Spanish colonization-, which was adopted only recently by Mayan people, who mainly use self-referents based on class, dress, and linguistic markers, rather than ethnicity (Castellanos, 2010).
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Acknowledgements
We thank Hilario and his students for sharing their perspectives on writing their language with us. Our thanks go also to Bonny Norton for her support and to Liam Doherty who guided the workflow and managed the platform. The development of the Storybooks Mexico project was made possible in part through a Mitacs Accelerate grant and support from UBC Language Sciences Initiative.
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van ’t Hooft, A. (2022). Connecting the Old and the New. Identities, Indigenous Literacies, and the Creation of Digital Learning Materials in Mexico. In: Fielding, R. (eds) Multilingualism, Identity and Interculturality in Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-5848-9_4
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