Remembering and Reclaiming: Reviving the Endangered Hoche Language through Children's Voices

• In Event: Amplifying Children's Voices for Transformative Early Childhood Education

Abstract

By reflecting critically on the issues surrounding the Hoche language curriculum and pedagogy, this presentation aims to amplify children’s voices to understand how they negotiate Indigenous language learning. It advocates pivoting from a deficit view of teaching and learners, which misrepresents Hoche children and undervalues the Hoche language, histories, and traditions. Particularly, I challenge the efficacy of Hoche language education in the oppressive context of the Chinese public schooling system, joining with Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators in China and across the world who are recognizing the urgency of reclaiming this endangered language and the power of Indigenous oral literary traditions—viewed expansively—in understanding Indigenous ways of knowing, belonging, and becoming.

Author

• Jue Wang, University of Idaho