An ethno-educational project with Wichi communities in Argentina: Acquiring language-in-culture knowledge from traditional practices

UNAMUNO, VIRGINIA; ARGENTER, JOAN

Rejecting Marginalized Status: Educational Projects and Curricula Pushing Back Against Language Endangerment

Multilingual Matters Contract

Año: 2019; p. 106 - 120

The experience of collaborative production of didactic materials with the Wichi people (Chaco, Argentina) here presented bears on the links between formal education and linguistic revitalization. Since language learning is produced through children?s participating in activities culturally meaningful, socially and historically situated, language revitalization confronts indigenous people with bridging the gap between school curriculum and community agenda. Wichi children, accompanied by members of their community, were involved in the circuit of local socioeconomic practices aimed to the production of textile artefacts based on the processing of the chaguar (Bromelia hieronymi). In so doing, they acquired a sequence of skills that frame language and other learning contents in an integrated way: natural sciences, arts, language, technology and narrative altogether. Following this experience a monolingual beautifully illustrated storybook for pre-school and primary education children was elaborated. Two aspects of the production of this book are analysed: firstly, the process of composition and writing of the text?transforming a conversation between a Wichi expert and a Wichi apprentice into a written text?; secondly, the community?s control over the non-Wichi storybook illustrator, who had to rework her drawings according to natives? instructions, making clear the difference between outsider?s and insider?s experience and visual representation.ISBN PROVISORIO