Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Research in Humanities and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Community – Based Teaching Methodologies for The Recovering of Indigenous Languages in Chile: The Case of Chedungun
Elizabeth Quintrileo Llancao
ABSTRACT:
Chedungun is the language spoken by Pewenche indigenous group that lives in the Andean valleys of south-central Chile and adjacent Argentina. Although their native language, Chedungun, has been recognized as a dialect of Mapudungun, some of its features remain understudied and its degree of endangerment underdetermined. A relevant fact about the Pewenche is that they constitute the only indigenous group within the Araucanian sphere that has been said to have an independent origin. Henríquez (2014) suggest that Pewenche people still have a strong cultural identity that let them continue using their language as a means of communication looking for self-determination. In this context of self-determination, they have been proposing, creating, and trying to validate their own teaching methodologies for their language teaching and transmission. Pewenche methodologies are uncover considering a narrative and community-based research (Tuhiwai, 2021; Chilisa, 2020) which aims to validate Pewenche principles and cultural values that guide the methodologies for Chedungun language teaching at primary and secondary schools. Preliminary results confirm that teaching indigenous languages is not same as teaching dominant languages. As stated by Rose (2016); Stucki, (2012) and Redwing (2007) teaching indigenous languages involves a spiritual element which is not present is most of dominant languages. Therefore, these results suggest that dominant languages teaching methods would not become models for Chedungun language and transmission, but a community-based pedagogy is necessary for Pewenche language and culture recovering.
keywords: language revitalization; language teaching; minority languages; intercultural education, bilingual education