Erin Katherine Debenport

This research project focuses on the divergent ways that indigenous communities in the Southwest United States are using written ancestral languages, including many groups that have only recently decided to represent their languages in written form. Each component of this project is designed to inform three broad research goals: to explore historical differences among tribes in the region with respect to literacy and ways that textual practice is changing; to study the different social, pedagogical, and political functions of indigenous language texts both within and outside Native communities; and to examine how different approaches to literacy reflect local, regional, and national conceptions of indigenous identity and associated language ideologies.