Tehatiwennathe’tányons, They shine light on the languages, the Onkwehón:we Language Consortium is a project with the goal of supporting Indigenous language revitalization by sharing information and methods from proven and effective Indigenous language programs. This website acts as a blueprint for the creation of Indigenous language adult immersion programs. This introduction describes the content covered by the blueprint and the process used to create the blueprint. This project began in 2018, funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Tehatiwennathe’tányons is a collaboration between several organizations:
Introduction & history
The programs involved in Tehatiwennathe’tányons have each operated for different lengths of time, and operate in communities of different sizes. These differences affect what resources are available to each program and what each program is capable of achieving. Because language revitalization is sensitive to local conditions, it is important to consider the local conditions of a community where a new language program would be established in order to best achieve what is possible in that community. It should also be noted that, as all of Tehatiwennathe’tányons’ partners are adult language programs based in Canada and the US, the information in this blueprint may be less applicable to language revitalization programs based outside of North America or which do not perform adult language education.
Tehatiwennathe’tányons is named in Kanyen’kéha, Mohawk, because the methods used by the participating programs were originally developed by OK, a Kanyen’kéha language program. Tehatiwennathe’tányons is called the Onkwehón:we Language Consortium because Tehatiwennathe’tányons seeks to support language revitalization performed by all Onkwehón:we, all Indigenous peoples, inside and outside of North America.
Contents of the blueprint
The partners of Tehatiwennathe’tányons have identified several distinct topics into which the information of the blueprint has been separated. These areas are:
For most of the sections, there are separate documents containing information from each of the different language program partners. For some sections, a single document contains all of the information, or most of it, supplemented by additional documents from the partner programs.
The History section includes documents describing the history of each partner program. These documents include information about topics like the circumstances of their founding, the situation of their language in their community before the program, or the development of the program over time.
The Curriculum & Methodology section includes documents describing the content taught by each program, and the daily teaching activities of each program. This includes information on aspects such as the language concepts and material included in the programs, and the teaching techniques and language drills used in the classroom.
The Assessment section includes a single document describing the techniques for student assessments used by the programs. This includes information on various tests administered to evaluate student progress and discussion of the purposes assessments fulfill in the programs.
The Budget & Funding section includes documents describing the budgeting and funding strategies used by the programs. This includes information on notable costs incurred by programs particular to Indigenous language revitalization which may not be considered from perspectives of traditional education, as well as discussion of the challenges of acquiring sufficient funding to continuously operate an adult language program.
The Justification section includes documents describing the reasons language revitalization is a worthwhile undertaking. This includes documents situating each program within the local language situation of their community, as well as a document describing the value of language revitalization in general.
The Tips & tricks section includes a document describing a wide range of additional relevant topics that have been discussed by the members of the project. Aspects of education outside of traditional methodology and curriculum concerns are covered, as well as topics relevant to the running of language revitalization education programs outside of education proper.
Process of blueprint creation
The blueprint was created in several sages, using several collaborative processes. The categorical structure of the blueprint was originally formed by discussions between the partners of the program, primarily over Zoom, augmented by quarterly in-person meetings held at Six Nations of the Grand River. After the categorical structure was established, the discussion at meetings focused on elaborating likely contents for each category and identifying common themes. It was originally expected that each partner program would produce a document in each category, but as the project progressed it became evident that this was not necessary for every category.
In order to facilitate the creation of documents in each category, project organizers Ivona Kucerova and Caroline Vanevery-Lefort created lists of questions for each program partner designed to elicit the appropriate information. In some cases, program partners independently wrote a document containing the elicited information. In other cases, a collaborative process was used whereby project assistant Kurtis Commanda compiled documents based on recordings and transcripts of Zoom meetings held between members of a program partner in which they discussed the question list corresponding to a category of the blueprint. The resulting documents were subjected to revisions and approval by the program partners they were to represent. Finally, some documents were created primarily through review of language revitalization research performed by Kurtis Commanda.
Coming Soon
The three language program partners of Tehatiwennathe’tányons have each written a brief history of their founding and development. These histories can be accessed through the links below: