At 8 a.m. on a recent Tuesday, I log into a remote Anishinaabemowin class from my home on Duwamish, Salish, and Stillaguamish territory in Seattle, Washington. At the same time, Isadore Toulouse starts up his camera from his kitchen thousands of miles away on Ottawa and Chippewa land in Suttons Bay, Michigan.
上午8点在最近的一个星期二，我登录到远程Anishinaabemowin类从我家Duwamish的，萨利希和Stillaguamish领土在华盛顿州西雅图。 同时，伊萨多尔·图卢兹(Isadore Toulouse)从位于数千英里之外的密歇根州萨顿斯湾(Suttons Bay)渥太华和奇珀瓦(Chippewa)的厨房启动相机。
“Ah, there are my learners!” he beams at the camera. “Wenesh edigwonman pii minikweyin mkadeyaaboo?” he asks slowly, holding up his cup of coffee. “It means, ‘how do you take your coffee?’” He takes a sip, grimaces, and shakes his head. “Maandaagami. Bleh. Means ‘it tastes terrible.’ There is no cream in the house today,” he laughs. Thirty students smile back at him from all over the United States and Canada. It’s a light-hearted interaction, but virtual classes like these represent a partial solution to a sobering problem.
“啊，有我的学习者！” 他在梁凸轮ê岭。 “ Wenesh edigwonman pii minikweyin mkadeyaaboo吗？” 他慢慢地问，举起咖啡。 “这意味着，'你怎么喝咖啡？'”他takes了一口，做了个鬼脸，摇了摇头。 ” Maandaagami 。 eh 表示“味道不好”。 今天房子里没有奶油，”他笑着说。 来自美国和加拿大各地的30名学生对他微笑。 这是轻松的交互，但是像这样的虚拟类代表了一个发人深省的问题的部分解决方案。
Indigenous languages worldwide are in danger of extinction. UNESCO estimates that without active effort, 90% of the world’s 7,000 languages will be gone by the end of the century. In the United States and Canada, the decline in Indigenous languages wasn’t accidental: It was a colonialist policy of cultural genocide. It’s estimated that 150,000 Indigenous children in Canada alone were sent to residential boarding schools from the 1870s until 1996, where they were punished for speaking their language and practicing cultural traditions. Even after they were closed, the “sixties scoop” — where thousands more Native children were removed from their communities and adopted into white families — stripped many Indigenous people of their language and their culture.
世界各地的土著语言正面临灭绝的危险。 联合国教科文组织估计，如果不积极努力，到本世纪末，世界上7,000种语言中的90％将消失。 在美国和加拿大，土著语言的减少并不是偶然的：这是殖民主义的种族灭绝政策。 据估计，仅在加拿大，从1870年代到1996年，就有15万名土著儿童被送到寄宿制学校，在那里他们因讲语言和践行文化传统而受到惩罚。 甚至在他们关门之后，“六十瓢”(成千上万的土著儿童被从社区中移出并被收养到白人家庭中)剥夺了许多土著人民的语言和文化。
My own mother was one of these children, and that’s how she lost her language. My grandmother — an Ojibwe woman from the Brunswick House Band in Ontario — tried furiously to teach my mother the language, even though she knew she was slowly dying from tuberculosis. By the time my grandmother finally passed away, all my mother could remember were the words for “butter” and “naughty little boy” — and she’s already forgotten those over the years. By taking classes like Toulouse’s, I’m able to start restoring what was lost to our family and do my own small part to reverse the decline in Indigenous languages.
我自己的母亲是这些孩子之一，这就是她失去语言的原因。 我的祖母-来自安大略省不伦瑞克故居乐队(Brunswick House Band)的奥吉布族妇女-疯狂地试图向我的母亲传授这种语言，尽管她知道她正在慢慢死于结核病。 当我的祖母最终去世时，我母亲只记得“黄油”和“顽皮的小男孩”这两个词，而这些年来，她已经忘记了这些。 通过参加像图卢兹的课程，我能够开始恢复失去给我们家庭的东西，并尽我的一小部分来扭转土著语言的下降。
“People living off-territory, we have a right to our language and sometimes for economic reasons or family reasons or whatever, we can’t be at home.”
“居住在境外的人们有权使用我们的语言，有时出于经济原因或家庭原因或其他原因，我们不能在家中生活。”
One of the unexpected side effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, Indigenous language instructors say, is that more people like me are seeking out their virtual courses. “I started to really look for [the classes], and I don’t think I would have necessarily if things hadn’t been moving more online,” says Carmen Craig, who is a member of the Hiawatha First Nations Ojibwe band in Ontario and a fellow student in Toulouse’s course.
土著语言教师说，Covid-19大流行的意外副作用之一是，越来越多的像我这样的人正在寻找虚拟课程。 “我开始真正地寻找[课程]，如果事情没有在网上发展，我认为我不一定会，”安大略省Hiawatha First Nations Ojibwe乐队的成员Carmen Craig说和图卢兹课程的同学。
While online courses of all kinds are booming as Covid-19 keeps people at home, virtual learning is particularly important for Indigenous languages. That is because these classes, when offered in person, tend to be located only on or near tribal lands — as do partners for practicing the language and immersion opportunities. But according to the most recent U.S. census, only 22% of Indigenous people live on tribal land. “[With virtual classes] we can reach people in urban areas or who are outside of Ojibwe’s speaking communities in a way that was harder to do before, and that’s a benefit,” says Anton Treuer, PhD, a professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and an active proponent of language revitalization.
尽管随着Covid-19将人们留在家中，各种在线课程都在蓬勃发展，但虚拟学习对土著语言尤为重要。 这是因为这些课程当面授课时，往往只位于部落地区或附近，而练习语言和沉浸机会的伙伴也是如此。 但是根据最近的美国人口普查，只有22％的土著居民生活在部落土地上。 “ [通过虚拟课堂]，我们可以以以前难以做到的方式吸引城市地区或奥吉布语社区之外的人，这是一种好处，”贝米吉州立大学奥吉布韦教授安东·特劳尔博士说大学和语言振兴的积极支持者。
While Toulouse’s class, for instance, had been offered online before the pandemic, many classes that were once only available in certain communities are now available online. For example, Craig is applying for a coveted spot in an Ojibwe immersion course that used to be only available in-person in Minnesota but is now open to students everywhere virtually. “I feel like people living off-territory, we have a right to our language and sometimes for economic reasons or family reasons or whatever, we can’t be at home,” she says. This is my case as well — in one of the true twists of colonialism, I grew up only a few hours from my grandmother’s community yet have never been there because an international border crossed between us.
例如，虽然图卢兹的课程在大流行之前就已经在线提供，但许多以前仅在某些社区开放的课程现在可以在线获得。 例如，克雷格(Craig)正在为奥吉布威(Ojibwe)浸入式课程申请一个令人垂涎的地点，该课程过去仅在明尼苏达州面授，但现在几乎对所有学生开放。 她说：“我觉得人们生活在地域之外，我们有权使用自己的语言，有时出于经济原因，家庭原因或其他原因，我们不能在家。” 这也是我的情况-在殖民主义的真正转折之一中，我在祖母所在社区仅几个小时长大，但由于我们之间跨越了国际边界，所以从未去过那里。
While the pandemic has enabled more people to learn an Indigenous language using technology, it isn’t without problems. For people on tribal lands, internet connectivity remains one of the biggest obstacles. According to a 2018 U.S. census report, just over half of Native Americans living on reservations had access to broadband internet, compared with 83% of non-Native people. Those without good internet access are often simply left out entirely, though some people are still able to access it at local community centers. But with the pandemic, many of those spaces are closed right now too. As classes become more accessible to people living away from tribal lands, they risk becoming less accessible to those living on them.
大流行使更多的人能够使用技术学习土著语言，但这并非没有问题。 对于部落地区的人们来说，互联网连接仍然是最大的障碍之一。 根据2018年美国人口普查报告，仅一半以上居住在保留地上的美洲原住民可以使用宽带互联网，而83％的非原住民则可以使用宽带互联网。 那些没有良好互联网访问权限的人通常被完全排除在外，尽管有些人仍然可以在本地社区中心访问它。 但是随着大流行，许多这些空间现在也都关闭了。 随着远离部落土地的人们能够更容易上课，他们就有可能变得越来越难以生活在部落上。
And even if teachers and students do have good internet and a good computer, there’s another problem that parents around the country are familiar with: Not everyone is great at learning online. Some students learn languages better with in-person interaction. Additionally, many of the traditional keepers of the language are elders or older members of the community, who may not be proficient at managing complicated technology.
即使教师和学生确实拥有良好的互联网和良好的计算机，全国各地的父母也要熟悉另一个问题：并不是每个人都擅长在线学习。 一些学生可以通过面对面的交流更好地学习语言。 此外，该语言的许多传统守护者是社区的长者或长者，他们可能不擅长管理复杂的技术。
“Most of the elders are like, ‘I don’t know how to do that. Send someone to my house and tell them to hook it up,’” says Treuer.
“大多数长者都说，'我不知道该怎么做。 派人到我家，告诉他们把它挂起来。
Toulouse, for example, relies on volunteers to help him manage his online classrooms. “I can barely send an email,” he jokes again in class after thanking his helpers.
例如，图卢兹依靠志愿者来帮助他管理自己的在线教室。 “我几乎无法发送电子邮件，”在感谢他的助手之后，他在课堂上再次开玩笑。
Some virtual learning projects that involve in-person interaction to produce are simply being put on hold. Treuer was previously working on a comprehensive multiyear Rosetta Stone course, but now that’s been put off due to safety concerns of having an outside film crew on the partner reservations.
一些涉及亲自互动以进行生产的虚拟学习项目只是被搁置了。 Treuer以前从事多年罗塞塔石碑综合课程的工作，但由于出于安全考虑，在合作伙伴预定中聘请了外部电影摄制组，因此推迟了该课程。
Other organizations are finding creative ways to adapt. The Language Conservancy (TLC) on the traditional lands of the Miami, Delaware, Potawatomi, and Shawnee people in Bloomington, Indiana works with tribes to create Indigenous language-learning materials. Since they can’t physically travel to reservations to collect recordings of Native language speakers, they’ve tried something new for the first time in working with the Crow tribe on their recent language collection efforts.
其他组织正在寻找创新的适应方法。 位于印第安纳州布卢明顿的迈阿密，特拉华州，波塔瓦托米和肖尼人的传统土地上的语言保护(TLC)与部落合作创建土著语言学习资料。 由于他们无法亲自前往保留地收集以母语为母语的人的录音，因此他们首次与Crow部落合作，尝试了一些新的尝试，以解决他们最近的语言收集工作。
“We sent out the equipment, the mics and everything to where the people could come to the Crow community school and record there, but with just members of the reservation there. So no linguists coming from the outside in,” says Chris Branam, a public relations specialist for the organization. “Our linguists were actually here in the office and they were going over the words via Zoom and getting their recordings from that.”
“我们将设备，麦克风和所有物品都发送到了人们可以到乌鸦社区学校并在那里录音的地方，但那里只有预订人员。 因此，没有语言学家从外面来。”该组织的公共关系专家Chris Branam说。 “我们的语言学家实际上在办公室里，他们正在通过Zoom仔细检查单词，并从中获取录音。”
“Even in terms of gross numbers, I’m not sure that’s a perfect offset for what we’re losing.”
“就总数而言，我不确定这是否能弥补我们正在失去的东西。”
Preserving and teaching Indigenous languages is literally a race against time in many cases, and Covid-19 has made that race even more difficult as it most severely impacts elders. One of Treuer’s other projects is collecting stories from elders to print into books. It’s a task that normally requires convening 50 people, and so it’s been put on hold for now. “In Mille Lacs, one of the elders that was a major contributor on our books just died. So if not for that, we probably would have had another 20 stories from her,” says Treuer.
在许多情况下，保存和讲土著语言实际上是一场与时间的竞赛，而Covid-19使该竞赛更加困难，因为它对老年人的影响最为严重。 Treuer的其他项目之一是从长者那里收集故事，然后印刷成书。 该任务通常需要召集50人，因此暂时搁置。 “在米勒·拉奇(Mille Lacs)，一位对我们的书籍做出重大贡献的长者刚刚去世。 因此，如果不是那样的话，我们可能还会从她那里得到20个故事，” Treuer说。
Indigenous people have been especially hard-hit by the pandemic. According to recent numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the incidence rate of Covid-19 in 23 states was 3.5 times higher among American Indian and Alaska Native communities than among the non-Hispanic white population. The Navajo Nation in particular has suffered incalculable losses, with more than 10,000 diagnosed cases of the disease resulting in over 500 deaths.
大流行给土著人民带来了沉重的打击。 根据疾病预防控制中心的最新数据，在美洲印第安人和阿拉斯加土著社区中，美国23个州的Covid-19发病率是非西班牙裔白人人口的3.5倍。 纳瓦霍族尤其遭受了无法估量的损失，已诊断出10,000多例疾病病例，导致500多人死亡。
Treuer says that any death in the community is a loss for the language. “In the Ojibwe language universe,” he says, “I think losing anybody either as a student, or a teacher, or an elder contributing to developing resources for the language, those are unacceptable losses. And we are taking some. We are gaining a few new students who are able to gain access because of the technological delivery over Zoom. But even in terms of gross numbers, I’m not sure that’s a perfect offset for what we’re losing.”
Treuer说，社区中的任何死亡都是语言的损失。 他说：“在奥吉布韦语言世界中，失去任何人，无论是作为学生，教师还是为开发语言资源做出贡献的长者，都是无法接受的损失。 我们正在拿一些。 由于Zoom的技术交付，我们正在吸引一些新的学生，他们能够获得访问权。 但是即使就总数而言，我也不确定这是否能弥补我们正在失去的东西。”
Virtual classes will never make up for the heartbreaking loss of community members brought by Covid-19. Still, despite the many challenges of moving courses online, there’s plenty of optimism about virtual learning’s role in revitalizing online languages. Treuer is excited for the possibility of new technologies like holographic language tables and rooms with directional audio/visual systems that more closely simulate an in-person learning experience, as well as the eventual release of the Rosetta Stone Ojibwe program. TLC is also currently working with software developers to bring new speech-recognition technology to their language-learning apps that allows learners to check their pronunciation via the software. And finally, many teachers and organizations that have moved online, like TLC, are planning on continuing their online offerings indefinitely in conjunction with their in-person events.
虚拟课程永远无法弥补Covid-19带来的令人心碎的社区损失。 尽管如此，尽管将在线课程转移到许多挑战中，但人们仍然对虚拟学习在振兴在线语言中的作用持乐观态度。 Treuer对诸如全息语言桌子和带有定向视听系统的房间等新技术的可能性感到兴奋，该技术可以更紧密地模拟面对面的学习体验，并最终发布了Rosetta Stone Ojibwe计划。 TLC目前还与软件开发人员合作，将新的语音识别技术引入其语言学习应用程序，使学习者可以通过该软件检查其发音。 最后，许多在线上迁移的教师和组织，例如TLC，都计划结合他们的现场活动无限期地继续在线提供产品。
“I’d rather have no Covid. But any kind of disturbance does create the potential for growth. When there’s a forest fire, it does create the potential for blueberries and under-canopy things to grow,” says Treuer. “I think it’s forced some people to innovate. If it’s getting some people off of their plateau, great. But there are costs and some of the costs are permanent.”
“我宁愿没有Covid。 但是，任何形式的干扰都会创造增长的潜力。 发生森林大火时，确实为蓝莓和树冠下的植物生长提供了潜力。” “我认为这迫使一些人进行创新。 如果这使一些人摆脱了困境，那就太好了。 但是有成本，有些成本是永久性的。”
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