Sustaining Indigenous Languages in Cyberspace

Navajo language electronic conferences for students at Diné College’s Kneel Down Bread conference for his social studies education students, and Alhini Yazhi (“little children”) for teachers in reservation Head Start centers and their Diné early childhood faculty. Both conferences develop the users ’ fluency in written Navajo. Because of their specialized topics, both also “expand the Na-vajo language’s capacity to embrace life in the contemporary world ” (personal communication, 2001). There is a paradox in suggesting that technology can be useful in revitaliz-ing indigenous languages and cultures. After all, one kind of technology, televi-sion, has been influential in language and culture loss. An article in my home-town newspaper, The Boston Globe, subtitled a story from Arctic Village, Alaska, “Proud Alaska tribe links loss of its traditions to arrival of televisions”: It was January 1980 when members of the Gwich’in tribe stood in the snow and waited for a plane from Fairbanks to drop off the thing everyone was so curious to see.... “I couldn’t sleep I was so excited b