Language Keepers: The Struggle for Indigenous Language Survival in California (2019)

0

California once had more linguistic variety than all of Europe. “Language Keepers” is a 6-part series following four Indigenous communities in California who are working to revitalize their languages.

The series explores how the loss of a language reaches much further than the disappearance of words.

Part 1: At eighty-five, Marie Wilcox is the only fluent speaker of Wukchumni. Having spent twenty years compiling a Wukchumni dictionary, she and her family are now embarking on a language revitalization project across four generations.

Part 2: The Klamath River is the ancestral home of the Karuk people. Phil Albers, Julian Lang, and Maymi Preston-Donahue are learning to speak Karuk in order to keep the people connected to their language and the river.

Part 3: Julie Girado Turner is the daughter of one of two remaining fluent speakers of Kawaiisu. For sixteen years, she has been documenting the language and stories still alive within the memories of her father and aunt.

Part 4: Loren Bommelyn is the sole fluent speaker of Tolowa Dee-ni’, a language of California’s Pacific coast. Faced with generations of trauma, he is teaching the language and traditions to his children and grandchildren.

Part 5: On a walk through a redwood preserve near Crescent City, the Bommelyn family shares their commitment to carrying on the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language.

Part 6: The Bommelyn family reflects on the knowledge that is held within the Tolowa Dee-ni’ language.

 

Presented by Emergence Magazine, a quarterly online publication featuring innovative stories that explore the threads connecting ecology, culture, and spirituality.

languagekeepers.us
Trending Videos
Born Sexy Yesterday: A Hollywood Movie Trope That Maybe Needs to Die
18 min - "This video essay is about a gendered trope that has bothered me for years but didn’t have a name, so I gave it one: Born Sexy Yesterday. It's a science fiction convention in which the mind of a...
Water Has a Memory (2023)
12 min - Matriarch and Environmental Ambassador for the Ponca Nation, Casey Camp-Horinek takes us through the occupied territory of Ponca City, Oklahoma. Through the ancestral teachings of her Ponca...
Here’s How We Escape Climate Apocalypse
22 min - A look at the importance of speculative climate fiction, sci-fi, and utopias for political movements, from Our Changing Climate.
Carl Sagan's Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1980) (trailer)
5 min - Astronomer Carl Sagan's landmark 13-part science series takes you on an awe-inspiring cosmic journey to the edge of the Universe and back aboard the spaceship of the imagination. The series was...
Imperialism
Gun Violence and Reform
The Bloom Series: A Journey Through Transformational Festivals
Recommended

Films For Action hosts a subscription service that currently offers 55 highly-curated, solutions-oriented feature documentaries to Patron subscribers donating $5 per month. 

Subscribe here. Your support helps grow our 5000+ video library, which is 99% free and contains no ads thanks to our patrons.