Language restoration is tied to on-the-land cultural practice and generational succession

Evidence

Since 1995, the WELRP has worked on a range of language restoration projects. The WELRP’s Wadiswaan Project is an earlychildhood language-revitalization program in one of the tribal schools. The WELRP also organizes adult/family languageimmersion retreats and takes children out of school into the woods, the sugarbush, the com fields, and the heart of cultural practice. All of this is a slow process, but in the WELRP philosophy it is thought that these children will be leading our community in 20 or 30 years and that we need to ensure that they know something about who they are, why we are here, and how we talk to the Creator. Renewal is a central part of each generation’s responsibility. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 680

Categorization

• XREF: Concrete eco-justice pedagogy prototype: curriculum rooted in sugarbush, corn fields, and ceremony rather than classroom abstraction. — connects to: Most North American Indigenous languages will be extinct by 2050 — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 679; Anishinaabeg cultural revival adapts the ancestral lifeway to present circumstances — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 690; Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Cultural origin connections must be actively recreated rather than inherited naturally #corroborates (0.82)
• Cultural analysis must trace routes of transformation rather than roots of continuity #corroborates (0.70)