Abstract
This photo essay describes a collaboration to support two Indigenous communities in Taiwan in combating language loss. Both communities speak the Atayal language. Drawing on a six-year relationship with educators in two communities, where Hsin had developed and implemented curricula that reflected Atayal culture, we sought local knowledge to design and produce books to introduce young children (ages four to six years) to simple phrases, vocabulary, and basic conversational Atayal language. To do this, we participated in a series of conversations with tribal leaders. The interviews were conducted in Mandarin, and English translations were provided by Hsin to facilitate communication between tribal leaders and Compton-Lilly.
We focused on listening and learning to identify topics and simple sentences to include in the texts. Our goal was to counteract “the thousands of ways in which indigenous languages, knowledges and cultures have been silenced or misrepresented, ridiculed or condemned in academic and popular discourses” (Smith, 2012, p. 21). In other words, we drew upon the Community Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) of the Atayal people to honor the“array of cultural knowledge, skills, abilities, and contacts possessed by socially marginalized groups that often go unrecognized and unacknowledged” (p. 69). This process meant creating books for young children that drew on the knowledge of Atayal communities and provided tools for sustaining the Atayal language (Paris & Alim, 2014). By drawing on community strengths, these books not only challenge deficit assumptions about tribal communities but also “carry a sense of community history, memory and cultural intuition”(Yosso, 2005, p. 79).
We present this photo essay as an imperfect example of possibilities for being intentionally culturally