Becoming Indigenous language speakers and writers in higher education

Across the world, Across the world, Indigenous teacher education programs constitute important sites for the creation of Indigenous language speakers, writers and future language teachers. Such speakers are key agents for the reclamation and revitalization of threatened Indigenous languages.

Peru and Norway are interesting sites as both countries have established and support teacher training programs in Indigenous languages.

Because of weakened intergenerational transmission of Indigenous languages, and limited opportunities to learn in Indigenous languages in schooling, as is the case with the Quechua language in Peru, youth with a wide range of oral and written Indigenous language abilities enter such programs.

Many identify as speakers and writers for the first time in university, but little is known about how gender and Indigeneity shape the higher education trajectories of new minority language speakers and writers.

Through ethnographic and participatory fieldwork, this action seeks to understand the experiences of women Quechua speakers in an IBE program in Peru as they become speakers and writers in university.

Indigenous research methodologies will guide fieldwork, data collection methods include language portraits, photovoice workshops and a language policy action.

BSW will benefit from the supervision of Professor Pia Lane and the support of the Center for Multilingualism in Society across the Lifespan, a Center of Excellence at the University of Oslo.

BSW will provide theoretical contributions to the sociolinguistic framework of new speakers and novel multimodal methods for multilingualism research drawing on comparative analysis of data on Quechua and Sámi new speakers in Peru and Norway.

A broader objective of this action is to inform Indigenous language revitalization research and practice in Europe and Peru, global social issues that are the focus of the UN International Decade on Indigenous Languages (2022-2032) and the Sustainable Development Goals.