Conference at IU focuses on preserving indigenous languages and cultures of Latin America (fwd)

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Last modified: Thursday, August 14, 2008

Conference at IU focuses on preserving indigenous languages and cultures of
Latin America

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 14, 2008
http://newsinfo.iu.edu/news/page/normal/8662.html

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- More than 200 experts who study indigenous languages spoken
in Latin America will come to Indiana University's Bloomington campus today
(August 14) through Saturday for the first biennial Symposium on Teaching
Indigenous Languages of Latin America or STILLA.

Conference organizers in the IU School of Education, the IU Department of
Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and the IU Center for Latin American and
Caribbean Studies call this the first meeting of its scope in the world. The
conference brings together scholars with practitioners, activists, indigenous
leaders and others to discuss and study the region's diverse languages and
cultures. With such a cross-disciplinary group for presentations, discussions
and workshops, the organizers hope to contribute toward preserving some of the
languages.

"There are numerous indigenous languages," said Serafin Coronel-Molina,
assistant professor of language education at the IU School of Education, "but
some of them are in the process of extinction. Some languages are not taught
any more, or were never taught in a formal way, so they remain oral languages,"
he said.

Coronel-Molina is originally from Peru and a native speaker of Quechua, a
language he said is widely spoken -- by about 14 million around the Andes
mountain range.

Research reveals the peril facing many indigenous languages. The Archive of the
Indigenous Languages of Latin America at the University of Texas reports that
many of the hundreds of languages still spoken are spoken by fewer than 5,000
people.

Coronel-Molina is the founder and principal convener of STILLA. The co-conveners
are John McDowell, director of the IU Minority Languages and Cultures of Latin
America Program and professor of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and Jeffrey
Gould, the director of the Central American and Mexican Video Archive Project
in the IU Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. The Department of
Folklore and Ethnomusicology and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean
Studies are all housed within the College of Arts and Sciences.

McDowell said the first discussions about the conference envisioned something
small, but the final product has become expansive under the leadership of
Coronel-Molina.

"The novelty of this gathering is that it integrates all of the indigenous
communities in Latin America," McDowell said. "It brings together the
Mesoamerican scene with the scene from the Andes, and really creates a kind of
crossroads. We started out thinking that we would just maybe bring professors
of Quechua and people who were active in working with Quechuan-speaking
communities. Then we started to think, 'Well, why limit it to that?'

More than 60 sessions over three days will focus on the issues surrounding Latin
American languages. Experts in fields ranging from anthropology to linguistics
to folklore will be in Bloomington from as far away as England and Argentina.
On the final day, participants will hold a teleconference with colleagues in
Peru. After this year's conference, summaries of presentations will be
published. Every two years, STILLA will go to another host campus.

Apart from the organizing IU institutions, this event is being held in
partnership and sponsorship with centers, programs and international studies
devoted to Latin America and the Caribbean regions of the following academic
institutions: University of Michigan, University of Illinois at Urbana
Champaign, University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University, University of
Chicago and University of Wisconsin.

STILLA also received monetary contributions from the IU Office of the Vice
President for International Affairs, Department of Language Education, Indiana
University Foundation, Office of the Provost, departments of History,
Anthropology, Folklore and Ethnomusicology, and Spanish and Portuguese.