ABSTRACT

In our intelligent and passionate efforts to revitalize our Indigenous languages, we are appropriating technological tools in intended, unintended, and newly imagined ways. This chapter describes some of these efforts. As a group of geographically dispersed scholars, we met virtually to think collectively about ways to categorize this unfolding of events, the technological revolution, as experienced in revitalization. We think of it in ways that we hope are helpful to readers also trying to make sense of this experience. We address these categories: (1) the first steps to enable technology to be useful to the language; (2) using technology to communicate; (3) using technology to learn or teach; and (4) using technology for documentation and preservation. After first writing about the principles and ideas in these areas, we then animate and collapse our categories with site-specific examples. Hawaiian, Cherokee, Ojibwe, and Mohave languages are discussed from our vantage point of experience working to revitalize these languages.