Field reports: Enduring Voices expeditions and workshops
From 2007 to 2013, Living Tongues ran the Enduring Voices Project with the National Geographic Society. Linguists Dr. Gregory D. S. Anderson and Dr. K. David Harrison, with photographer Chris Rainier and other team members, travelled to language hotspots to record little-documented languages and meet the people working to keep them alive. Language activists we met on these trips then came to our digital skills workshops, where they were trained in recording, video and Talking Dictionaries. These are the reports from those trips and workshops.
Enduring Voices expeditions
June 2007 · Bolivia
Kallawaya, the secret language of Bolivia’s healers
Herbalist healers who kept their plant knowledge in a language passed only within their families.
August 2007 · Australia
Aboriginal languages of northern Australia
Elders shared their knowledge of language, plants, animals and survival in a harsh land.
March 2008 · India
Arunachal Pradesh
First-ever recordings of several languages in India’s far northeast, the trip that led to Koro.
July 2008 · Siberia, Russia
Chulym (Ös) on the Chulym River
A language of hunter-gatherers and fishers, with fewer than ten fluent speakers.
June 2009 · Paraguay
Ishir, Toba-Qom and Maká
Three small languages from three language families in the Central South America hotspot.
June 2009 · California, USA
Winnemem Wintu near Mount Shasta
A grassroots revitalization effort in a tribe the United States does not recognize.
July–August 2009 · Papua New Guinea
The most linguistically diverse nation on earth
Assessing endangered languages and meeting local activists among PNG’s 830 languages.
January 2011 · Chile
Huilliche
Fewer speakers than reported, and more than one Huilliche language, in Osorno and on Chiloé.
August–September 2011 · Peru and Chile
Yanesha archives and language technology kits
Anna Luisa Daigneault’s trip: the Yanesha oral history archive, kit recipients and an Yshyr dictionary.
May 2012 · Republic of Khakassia, Russia
Recording Xyzyl
A “hidden” language, officially called a dialect of Xakas: five villages, fifty to sixty speakers.
June 2012 · Republic of Kalmykia, Russia
Cultural revival in Europe’s only Buddhist region
K. David Harrison’s live blog from the field.
Digital skills workshops
April 2010 · New Mexico, USA
Language revitalization workshop in Santa Fe
Ten days at the Indigenous Language Institute: storytelling, video, publishing and technology kits.
2011 · Meghalaya, India
Language revitalization workshop in Shillong
A workshop for language activists of northeast India.
2012 · Bogotá, Colombia
Talking Dictionaries workshop
At the Instituto Caro y Cuervo, during its “Festival of Words”.
January 2013 · Santiago, Chile
Voces Duraderas media skills workshop
Speakers of Latin American endangered languages, with National Geographic.
July 2013 · Pohnpei, Micronesia
Language revitalization workshop
Fifteen participants from eight language communities of the Federated States of Micronesia.
2014 · Harare, Zimbabwe
Digital skills workshop
At the African Language Research Institute, University of Zimbabwe.
2014 · Guatemala City
Mayan languages Talking Dictionaries workshop
At the Academy of Mayan Languages of Guatemala (ALMG).
2014–2015 · Lae, Papua New Guinea
Traditional ecological knowledge workshops
Two workshops at the PNG University of Technology (UNITECH).
More: the full list of digital skills workshops, and our newsletters from 2008 to 2014, which followed these trips as they happened.