Respecting indigenous/local sign langauges (was: @ handed in oz)

[Angus B. Grieve-Smith]

On Fri, 12 Feb 1999, BARBARA GERNER DE GARCIA wrote:

> Why is it that the enslaved Deaf Mexicans in NY were repeatedly
> described as unable to communicate when the key to the uncovering of
> their situation was that some of those very people went repeatedly to
> the police and finally found a way to reveal the scheme that was
> imprisoning them. They saved themselves but they were never perceived as
> capable of solving their own dilemma.


        This is a good point.  Also, last year my ASL teacher passed out a
newsletter that reprinted a press release from the US Immigration and
Naturalization Service.  Probably as fallout from the situation you
mentioned, La Migra was trying to increase the ability of its agents to
communicate with Deaf travellers from Mexico, so they set up free classes
for the agents to learn ...ASL.


                                -Angus B. Grieve-Smith
                                Linguistics Department
                                The University of New Mexico
                                grvsmth at unm.edu