CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A group of faculty members and students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is working with the local Maya community to help preserve their Indigenous languages.
The Indigenous Languages on the Move Collective is focused on language reclamation and language justice projects and is led by Korinta Maldonado, a professor of anthropology and of American Indian Studies, and the co-director of the Native American and Indigenous Language Lab. The group works with Pixan Konob’, a group of community interpreters for Indigenous Mayan languages.
The two groups have been working together for several years to provide interpreters for Maya immigrants who speak an Indigenous language but do not also speak Spanish or English, and who need to communicate with school, hospital and local government officials and others providing services.
There are an estimated 8,000 Maya immigrants in central Illinois, Maldonado said, and their numbers are increasing. Most of them speak Q’anjob’al, but there are at least a half-dozen Mayan languages spoken by area residents.
While they have an immediate need for interpreters, Maldonado said the Maya community members also want to maintain their language and see it flourish.
“A lot of the need is to have more resources for young Maya who are born in the U.S. to be able to learn their language and to write it. Most can speak it, but there’s a small percentage of folks who actually can write it. They want to be able to write it and read it and not lose it,” she said.
In May, Indigenous Languages on the Move held a three-day workshop to help Q’anjob’al speakers learn grammar and practice reading and writing their language, led by Eladio Toledo, a Q’anjob’al linguist from the same Guatemalan community as local Maya residents and an expert in creating pedagogical tools for Q’anjob’al language learners. The collective will hold a follow-up workshop in December. The workshops are funded by a grant from the chancellor’s Call to Action to Address Racism and Social Injustice Research Program, as well as American Rescue Plan Act funding administered through the University YMCA’s New American Welcome Center.
The perspective of the language collective is that Indigenous languages and cultures are a community asset, and that work involving language maintenance and interpretation services should be led by the interests of the Maya community members, Maldonado said.
“We strive for the collective work to always hold the Indigenous voices and peoples at the core of the project,” she said.
Illinois faculty members and students are designing a survey with the local Maya community that emerged out of an inaugural workshop with the American Indian Language Development Institute last spring. The survey will document the language status of the Maya residents; understand their concerns, including where they see speech shifting from their Indigenous languages to only English and Spanish; and identify where they need support.
“There are plenty of programs on Indigenous languages maintenance and vitalization around the U.S. that we can emulate,” Maldonado said. “We want to give it a positive framework. Even in Guatemala, speaking Indigenous languages can be a source of shame.”
The faculty members hope to build a research component to the project. Maldonado said data they gather on the local Maya community will help in procuring grant funding. They also hope to make links between Indigenous experiences in the Americas, including those who first lived in central Illinois.
The Call to Action grant from the chancellor’s office, along with the Champaign County ARPA grant, allowed the group to hold a training workshop in late July and early August for local interpreters that was led by Luis López, the director of the Center for Indigenous Languages and Power, part of the Indigenous-led organization Comunidades Indígenas en Liderazgo, and Daniel Serna, a longtime collaborator of the organization and medical interpreter.
The collective’s projects also include a Monday evening radio show in Q’anjob’al on WRFU 104.5 FM hosted by community members and involving undergraduate U. of I. students.
“It’s an exciting moment because the county is willing and knows it’s needed, especially after the pandemic,” Maldonado said. “With the university and community organizations, there is a big synergy, and we are excited to work together.”
Editor’s notes: To contact Korinta Maldonado, email korintam@illinois.edu.
The Champaign County Immigrant Cooperative, which includes The Refugee Center, Immigrant Service of Champaign-Urbana, Pixan Konob’, the Immigration Project, the Collaborative Indigenous Research Pedagogy Program and the Center for Latin American Studies, also supported the workshops.
