ABSTRACT

This volume traces the theme of the loss of language and culture in numerous post-colonial contexts. It establishes that the aphasia imposed on the indigenous is but a visible symptom of a deeper malaise — the mismatch between the symbiotic relation nurtured by the indigenous with their environment and the idea of development put before them as their future. The essays here show how the cultures and the imaginative expressions of indigenous communities all over the world are undergoing a phase of rapid depletion. They unravel the indifference of market forces to diversity and that of the states, unwilling to protect and safeguard these marginalized communities.

This book will be useful to scholars and researchers of cultural and literary studies, linguistics, sociology and social anthropology, as well as tribal and indigenous studies.

chapter |6 pages

Introduction

Aphasia: the fate of the indigenous languages

chapter 1|13 pages

Symbolic power, nation-state and indigenous language

A sociological analysis of tribes in central India

chapter 3|10 pages

Adivasi art

The convergence of the intangible and the tangible

chapter 4|16 pages

Aesthetics of representation

Media and Canadian Aboriginal resistance

chapter 5|20 pages

The forgotten tribe

The Kuravars of Tamil Nadu

chapter 6|11 pages

Tesu and Jhenjhi

A festival celebrating cultural life

chapter 7|6 pages

Articulating tribal culture

The oral tradition of Lambadas

chapter 10|37 pages

Translating power, gender and caste

Negotiating identity, memory and history: a study of Bama's Sangati

chapter 11|24 pages

Historiography or imagination?

The documentation of traditional Luo cultural memory in Kenyan fiction

chapter 14|14 pages

Towards a revitalization of Urhobo

An endangered language of Delta State, Nigeria

chapter 15|18 pages

Itsekiri

Threatened and endangered

chapter 16|15 pages

Kikuyu phonology and orthography

Any hope for continuity of indigenous languages?

chapter 17|24 pages

Endangered!

The Igbo language dilemma in Nigeria

chapter 18|12 pages

Aspects of discourse structure

A case of particles