Heritage languages and language as heritage: the language of heritage in Canada and beyond

ABSTRACT

This article draws on recent discourses surrounding intangible cultural heritage (ICH) and its relationship to language preservation, practice, and revitalisation to propose that language be considered a form and practice of heritage in and of itself, not merely a vehicle for the conveyance of ICH. As such, language can serve as a bridge between the often-parallel tracks of tangible and intangible heritage, helping arrive at an understanding of heritage that is broader, more nuanced, and more inclusive. Until now, most scholars have resisted fully characterising language as heritage, viewing ‘heritagisation’ as a threat to the vitality of language rather than embracing language as a boon to the aliveness of heritage. In support of our argument, we draw on examples from Latin America, Asia, and in particular Canada to highlight specific historical and political discourses that determine whose language counts as heritage and whose heritage counts more generally. While certain communities may derive some benefit from an acknowledgement of their language as a form of heritage in service of a language reclamation agenda, the field of heritage will benefit greatly from inviting the vitality of language to enrich its many facets – discourse, practice, materiality, and the interplay among these three.

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage
• language
• settler colonialism
• indigenous
• revitalisation
• Canada

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the Heritage Research Centre at Cambridge University for inviting Turin to deliver a lecture on this topic several years ago, sparking the authors’ first conversations and leading to the development of this contribution. We are also grateful to Sara Shneiderman and Kailey Rocker for their insightful comments on early drafts of this article, and particularly to the two anonymous peer reviewers for IJHS whose specific recommendations and constructive criticism have significantly strengthened this paper. Any remaining errors are the authors’ own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. See https://courses.students.ubc.ca/cs/courseschedule (UBC Course Schedule).

2. As Davis (2017) has argued, the rhetoric of Indigenous language endangerment remains rooted in the persistent colonial trope that Indigenous peoples and cultures are vanishing, thus justifying extractive processes of salvage linguistics and paternalistic scholarship. Similar ideologies of endangerment and salvage were used to fill museum collections with the belongings of so-called ‘vanishing’ Indigenous communities (Brown 2014).

3. Benedict Anderson (2006, 67) recognised the development of a single ‘national print language’ as being of central ideological and political importance to the consolidation of nation-states, and many national anthems and most citizenship processes focus intently on the affective and performative power of competence in the national, official language(s).

4. See https://www.clo-ocol.gc.ca/en/aboutus/mandate (Office of the Commissioner of Official Languages), as well as https://www.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage.html (Canadian Heritage).

5. See https://www.gov.nu.ca/culture-and-heritage/information/official-languages and note also that administration of official languages in Nunavut falls under the purview of the Department of Culture and Heritage.

6. See https://olc-nt.ca/languages/overview/ (Office of the Languages Commissioner of the Northwest Territories).

7. The Stl’atl’imx (or, St’át’imc) people reside within the boundaries of what is today known as British Columbia, in Western Canada. Importantly, they describe their own territory geographically, rather than in relation to the colonial state. According to the website of the St’át’imc government (https://statimc.ca/about-us/), ‘the St’át’imc are the original inhabitants of the territory which extends north to Church Creek and to South French Bar; northwest to the headwaters of Bridge River; north and east towards Hat Creek Valley; east to the Big Slide; south to the Island on Harrison Lake and west of the Fraser River to the headwaters of Lillooet River, Ryan River and Black Tusk.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship] and the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia.

Notes on contributors

Jonathan Eaton

Jonathan Eaton is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of British Columbia with a focus on heritage, the anthropology of space and place, and the anthropology of disaster. In his current work, he is seeking to understand the affective connections among people, heritage, and hazards within the multilayered temporalities of disaster planning in Vancouver, Canada. His past experience as a Fulbright scholar and heritage practitioner in Albania with the organisation Cultural Heritage without Borders taught him to appreciate the importance of everyday moments connecting people and place.

Mark Turin

Mark Turin is an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia cross-appointed between the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of Anthropology. He directs the Digital Himalaya Project which he co-founded in 2000 as a platform to make contemporary and historical multi-media resources from the Himalayan region widely available online. For over twenty years, Turin’s regional focus has been the Himalayan region (particularly Nepal, northern India and Bhutan), and more recently, the Canadian Pacific Northwest. Turin writes about language reclamation, revitalisation, documentation and conservation; language mapping, policies, politics and language rights; orality, archives, digital tools and technology. He is the author or co-author of four books, three travel guides, the editor of 12 volumes, and he edits a series on oral literature.