Module 12: Documenting Languages

Breath of Life at UC Berkeley

As we have learned throughout this course, language is an important part of both a person and a community’s identity. For American Indian communities with endangered languages, fluent speakers offer a resource to retain, and potentially reverse the decline of the languages that are so important to their cultural heritage. But what does a community do when the speakers are gone? Are they forced to forget about the language of their grandparents forever? Thankfully, even when the last speaker of a language dies, hope of restoration is not completely lost. One program discussed in this module, the project of Leanne Hinton appropriately named ‘Breath of Life’, has been helping indigenous people rediscover and reinvigorate their native languages, even without fluent speakers, for more than 20 years (Breath of Life).

How does Breath of Life work? Although there may be no current speakers, many ‘dead’ American Indian languages have extensive archived notes, stories, and other materials from the work of linguists over the decades and centuries before they ceased to be spoken. Breath of Life uses these works as a foundation for rebuilding. Every other year, Breath of Life invites community members to the University of California Berkeley to help teach the members how to access and use the language archives, which are often difficult to understand without special linguistic education (Breath of Life). For each session, every language group present is assigned their own expert linguist to work with, who shows them how to find and interpret the archived material, and how to use that material on meaningful projects of their choice. The session itself culminates with participants presenting projects they have worked on during the event. Projects can include both written and oral demonstrations of the language, such as starting a phrase book or telling a story in the native language (Hale and Hinton). The hope is that after a workshop, participants will know how to continue working by themselves, finding their own methods to use and discover their language, and to bring it back to their community. As Hinton herself states, “one of the key lessons taught in these workshops is that any person wanting to do research in the archives of a university has a right to do so.” (Hale and Hinton 421) Linguists are not the only ones with the power to help languages. Thus, the program shows native communities can themselves become the source of energy for, and dictate the terms of, language revitalization.

The success of the Breath of Life program at the University of California Berkeley has led to similar programs beginning across the United States, and participants have been very satisfied with the workshops. The University of Oklahoma also started a Breath of Life program using their language archives, and there is now a national event working with the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (Breath of Life). Both programs run on very similar designs to the original program at Berkeley. For the native tribal members, these sessions can be quite powerful. According to Hinton, archivists often tell her that bringing in the indigenous community members, “[Has] brought life to the collections that has never been there before.” (Hale and Hinton 422). Participants often feel that they are there keeping their heritage alive, so that it can live on for future generations. The archives are not mere books of scrap notes, but instead the key to a people’s identity. Wilfred Starkey, a Northern Sierra Miwok, in a reflective moment during a video interview described the program as making him, “feel more Miwok than I have ever felt, in my whole life.” (qtd. in Maclay). Creating this feeling is part of why Breath of Life exists. With indigenous people armed with new knowledge, and strong passion, ‘dead’ American Indian languages can still find a way back into a meaningful presence in the modern world.

Breath of Life. Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. http://aicls.org/breath-of-life/. Accessed April 10, 2017.

Hale, Kenneth L. and Leanne Hinton. 2001. The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Brill NV. 419-424.

Maclay, Kathleen. 2014. Giving the ‘Breath of Life’ to endangered languages. Berkeley News. UC Regents. http://news.berkeley.edu/2014/08/05/giving-the-breath-of-life-to-endangered-languages/. Accessed April 10, 2017.