Abstract
Meek addresses the complexities of learning an endangered language in the classroom and beyond. Using the case of Kaska, an Athabaskan language spoken by approximately 300 people, she shows how an aboriginal-focused curriculum can facilitate the remediation of a history of institutional oppression experienced by aboriginal and other indigenous groups. To enhance the impact of an aboriginal orientation, she argues that a mixed methods approach is necessary for language planning, including ethnographic and experimental techniques. Her methods reveal that ideologies and norms influence Kaska language learning in both expected and unexpected ways.
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- 1.
Stick gambling is a traditional aboriginal hand game and is very popular among Yukon First Nations. Playing involves hand signals, drumming, small tokens, sticks, and a clever intuition. Two teams kneel across from each other with the team captain in the middle. The captain is responsible for predicting the pattern of tokens in the fists of the opposing team. The better the captain’s predictions, the more likely the team is to earn a stick and win. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeXAkC7xhPk for an example from the 21st Annual Yukon Stick Gambling Competition held in Watson Lake, YT in 2008.
- 2.
The morphemes are glossed as follows: 2sS “second person singular subject,” 3sS “third person singular subject,” 1sO “first person singular object,” 3sO “third person object,” PP “postposition,” AP “areal prefix,” TAM “tense/aspect/mode,” Cl “classifier.”
- 3.
The verb forms used (“carry X”) are not necessarily familiar to the participants, and are not used in any of the Kaska educational materials. To identify the pictures these forms referenced, participants must have knowledge of the individual stems’ meanings.
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Meek, B.A. (2018). Learning a New Routine: Kaska Language Development and the Convergence of Styles. In: Wigglesworth, G., Simpson, J., Vaughan, J. (eds) Language Practices of Indigenous Children and Youth. Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60120-9_13
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