Against Erasure: Maya Language Revalorization at a K–5 School

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Centering Community and Language Engagement (Table 3)

Abstract

The author discusses the underpinnings of racial and linguistic erasure of Indigenous immigrant students and families through the bureaucracy of schools, particularly during intake and other enrollment processes where they are also typically subsumed under a racialized “Latinx” demographics. Drawing from a 3.5 year longitudinal research led by the author with a base of ethnographic observations, audio and videorecordings at a K-5 school in California with a two-way immersion program (Spanish-English), the paper discusses processes of language purism that supported academic English (and minimized varieties of Spanish, Yucatec Maya and other Indigenous languages). The paper also discusses a university-school partnership at the school which aimed to revalorize/revitalize Indigenous languages. A model for sustaining Indigenous language with specific policy recommendations is discussed.

Author

• Patricia Baquedano-Lopez, University of California - Berkeley