Language Keepers, Episode 1: Colonizing California

09/01/20 • 59 min

1 Listener

Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers,” this six-part podcast series explores the struggle for Indigenous language survival in California. Two centuries ago, as many as ninety languages and three hundred dialects were spoken in California; today, only half of these languages remain. In this series, we delve into the current state of four Indigenous languages which are among the most vulnerable in the world: Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu. Along this journey, we meet and learn from dedicated families and communities across the state who are working to revitalize their Native languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation.

In Episode One, we are introduced to the language revitalization efforts of these four Indigenous communities. Through their experiences, we examine the colonizing histories that brought Indigenous languages to the brink of disappearance and the struggle for Indigenous cultural survival in America today.

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Previous Episode

The Creatures of the World Have Not Been Chastened – Lia Purpura

Lia Purpura is the author of nine collections of essays, poems, and translations, including It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful and All the Fierce Tethers. In this narrated essay, Lia bears witness to the decomposing body of a deer and considers stories of “rightness”: the processes which transform bodies from one state to another and the beginnings that emerge from endings.

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Next Episode

Language Keepers, Episode 2: Tolowa Dee-ni’

Episode Two of our “Language Keepers” podcast series brings you to the redwood forests of Northern California, home to Loren Bommelyn, the sole remaining fluent speaker of the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language. Tolowa, like other Indigenous languages, is interwoven with the ecosystem where it came into being and thus holds the traditional ecological knowledge of the Tolowa people. Along with many Native communities, the Bommelyn family is grappling with what is at stake—for their children, for their culture, and for the land itself—if they lose their language.

Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers,” this six-part podcast series explores the struggle for Indigenous language survival in California. In each episode, we meet and learn from dedicated families and communities across the state who are working to revitalize their Native languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices