Global Indigenous Movements

Paper Summary:

The paper relates the problems resulting from indigenous people being pushed out of the places that they traditionally inhabited. As a result of this movement their languages are disappearing. The paper reports that we are losing a language almost every other week because people speaking these languages are dying out and they are not being taught to others before they die. The paper relates the reasons for this phenomenon and highlights specific regions throughout the world where this is occurring. The goal of the research is to record for eternity basic words of these languages to preserve them. These words can teach us much about them, and ultimately about ourselves as well.

From the Paper:

"A story reported in the New York Times last month stated that indigenous people all over the world are finding that they are being pushed out of the places that they inhabited to some degree, but mostly their languages are disappearing (Wilford, 2007). The story addressed the fact that there are approximately 7000 languages still spoken throughout the world. Out of all of those, around half will be gone during this century (Wilford, 2007). We are losing a language about every other week. It seems almost impossible to simply 'lose' a language? Where does it go? More importantly, why does it go? The answer is deceptively simple - the people that speak these languages are dying, and they are not teaching others the language before they go to their graves. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• "The conquest: 1519: There were great empires before the Europeans arrived." (December 31, 1999). The Economist, 353.
• Perkin, Harold. (April 1, 2002). "The rise and fall of empires." History Today, 10.
• Wilford, John Noble (September 19, 2007). "Languages die, but not their last words." The New York Times. Retrieved October 4, 2007, from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/19/sci ence/19language.html

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