Lower and Upper Baram Sub-Groups: A Study of Linguistic Affiliation

Author(s):  
Asmah Haji Omar ◽  
◽  
Norazuna Norahim ◽  

It is not possible to determine the exact number of indigenous languages of Sarawak, one reason being the dialect-language dichotomy, as some isolects has not been ascertained. Ethnic labels may not reflect a linguistically homogenous group. That is to say that the language varieties spoken by an ethnic group may have a dialectal relationship with one another, or they may be heterogeneous, which means they are mutually unintelligible. This paper reports on the results of a lexicostatistic study that examines linguistic affiliation of a group of languages found along the Tinjar-Baram river basin, namely Berawan, Bakong, Narom, Kiput, Dali,’ and Miriek, and also their links with Kenyah Long Terawan, Lepo’ Tau and Belait in nearby Brunei. The paper also traces their historical past and describes how languages spoken by these ethnolinguistic groups have become affiliated to each other. For some reason or another, e.g. migration in search of greener pastures, internal rivalry or/and conversion to modern religions, these indigenous communities are forced to move away from their original speech communities, and they call themselves by different names in their new localities, usually after the name of a river or a mountain. These factors and categorisation on the basis of similar cultural attributes have caused misinterpretation of the identity of the indigenous groups in the past. The paper will clarify some of the misconceptions regarding the ethnolinguistic groups in the region.

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-16
Author(s):  
Muhammad Hassan Abbasi ◽  
Maya David

Pakistan is a multilingual state with 74 languages (Siddiqui, 2019), with Urdu being its national language while English is its official language (Article 251 of the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan). However, the linguistic diversity, as per the law, has not been given proper status in Pakistan (Rahman, 2002). In the wake of Covid-19 pandemic, the role of medical health professionals, local police officers, media persons and educationists to create an awareness about the precautionary measures to fight Covid-19 among the indigenous communities in different regions of Pakistan is important. However, there is no practice prescribed in the law, to disseminate awareness in the local languages. Moreover, as most of the lexical items regarding the pandemic have been borrowed, the shift to local languages is more than challenging. In urban areas, indigenous communities are aware of the precautions to be taken during this pandemic as they use the mainstream languages (Ali, 2017 & Abbasi, 2019.) However, in the rural and northern areas of Pakistan this is not so prevalent. Some language activists and concerned members of the community in different parts of the state took this opportunity to educate the masses and started an awareness campaign about coronavirus pandemic in local languages (posters in local languages and short video messages on social media and YouTube). Yet, linguists and community members have not been able to work with many indigenous languages, which Rahman (2004) lists in his study, and these speech communities urgently need the required information in their respective heritage languages. Such small steps by community members and NGOs in providing necessary information in local languages suggest that proper education in the mother tongue can protect communities in times like this. The government has to protect endangered and indigenous languages by an effective law-making process that actively encourages the use of local languages and helps provide information in their respective languages in such situations as this pandemic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Bertus de Villiers

Hungary has, during the past three decades, developed what could arguably be described as one of the most advanced institutional systems of non-territorial autonomy in the world. Being so advanced does not of course mean the system is perfect or beyond criticism. But it does provide potentially useful insights into how non-territorial autonomy can or cannot work in practice. This article reflects on the institutional design of Hungary and asks whether principles can be identified that may be employed by indigenous groups in Australia and beyond in their search for a form of self-government. The theory and practice of non-territorial autonomy has so far been the focus of experts predominately from Central and Eastern Europe and the Russian Federation. This article considers whether any insight can be gained to apply the principles of non-territorial autonomy to other jurisdictions. The institutional design in place in Hungary may offer useful insight into how indigenous communities, particular some Aboriginal communities in Australia, may be bestowed with legal powers as a community to make decisions of a cultural and linguistic nature and to cooperate via the legal entity with local and state authorities. The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples refers to selfdetermination and autonomy without placing those terms into a specific set of institutional arrangements. Whereas non-territorial autonomy may not be suitable for all communities, this article contends that non-territorial arrangements may offer an opportunity for self-government to indigenous (and other) communities that share a strong sense of identity; that do not have a geographical base where they constitute the majority; and where a communal desire for a form of self-government in public law exists.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina de Liberato

This paper will examine how Canadian and Australian picture books about Indigenous peoples have evolved over the past three decades into texts that imagine the survival of Indigenous languages and land despite colonisation. Drawing on a sample of six contemporary picture books about Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada and Australia, I will explore how these works challenge representations of Indigenous peoples as the Other through complimentary textual and visual techniques that instead Other colonists (Nodelman 29). By positioning European colonisers as foreign invaders who fail in their attempts to erase rather than understand vibrant Indigenous cultures, these texts enable Indigenous communities to symbolically reclaim the land, family, language, and identity taken by colonial forces. Contemporary Canadian and Australian picture books about the European colonisation of Indigenous peoples assert the value of Indigeneity by mobilising a juxtaposition of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous through contrasting shapes and colours that enhance textual differences between colonised and coloniser. While Canadian texts highlight the healing capabilities of Indigenous languages, Australian texts emphasise how symbiotic relationships with the land empower Indigenous peoples, reflecting geographical variations between Indigenous histories in each country that ultimately encourage diverse representations of Indigeneity.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina de Liberato

This paper will examine how Canadian and Australian picture books about Indigenous peoples have evolved over the past three decades into texts that imagine the survival of Indigenous languages and land despite colonisation. Drawing on a sample of six contemporary picture books about Indigenous peoples in present-day Canada and Australia, I will explore how these works challenge representations of Indigenous peoples as the Other through complimentary textual and visual techniques that instead Other colonists (Nodelman 29). By positioning European colonisers as foreign invaders who fail in their attempts to erase rather than understand vibrant Indigenous cultures, these texts enable Indigenous communities to symbolically reclaim the land, family, language, and identity taken by colonial forces. Contemporary Canadian and Australian picture books about the European colonisation of Indigenous peoples assert the value of Indigeneity by mobilising a juxtaposition of Indigenous versus non-Indigenous through contrasting shapes and colours that enhance textual differences between colonised and coloniser. While Canadian texts highlight the healing capabilities of Indigenous languages, Australian texts emphasise how symbiotic relationships with the land empower Indigenous peoples, reflecting geographical variations between Indigenous histories in each country that ultimately encourage diverse representations of Indigeneity.


2003 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-157 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Jill Fleuriet

The rural Kumiai community of San Antonio Necua is one of the few remaining indigenous communities in Baja California, Mexico. Necuan health and health care problems are best understood through a consideration of the effects of colonialism and marginalization on indigenous groups in northern Baja California as well as a tradition of medical pluralism in Mexico. The lack of traditional healers and biomedical providers in the community, high rates of preventable or manageable illnesses, and a blend of biomedical, folk mestizo, and traditional indigenous beliefs about health and illness reflect current conditions of rural poverty and economic isolation. Descriptions of health and health care problems are based on ethnographic fieldwork among the Kumiai, their Paipai relatives, and their primary nongovernmental aid organization.


Author(s):  
Magdalena Zarzyka-Ryszka

The paper describes the past and present distribution of Colchicum autumnale in the vicinity of Cracow, highlights the role of Stanisław Dembosz (who published the first locality of C. autumnale near Igołomia in 1841). Gives information about the occurrence of C. autumnale in Krzeszowice in the 19th century (reported by Bronisław Gustawicz), presents new localities noted in 2012–2014 in meadows in the north-eastern part of the Puszcza Niepołomicka forest and adjacent area (between the Vistula and Raba rivers), and gives a locality found in Cracow in 2005 (no longer extant).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Palamarchuk ◽  
◽  
Ekaterina Terenteva ◽  
Sergey Fyodorov ◽  

The monograph is a study of main trends of emergence and evolution of the national historical writing in Western Europe in the XVIIth century. Based on a complex analysis of several phenomena which defined the development of the Early Modern historical writing, it provides a comparative analysis of the regional schools of historical writing (particularly those of the English antiquaries and French érudits) in the process of their respective growth and formation accomplished by the end of XVIIth century with the advent of the national historiography. The conceptual unity of the book is verified within the context of the rise of the national states in England and France, which stipulated a consistent demand for reinforcing the nationally orientated discourses not only in a historical writing but also in legal and political thought. The perception of England as an empire, entrenched in the insular historical and legal consciousness, recurring during the reigns of the Stuarts and extending to the whole British archipelago, determined the establishment of chorography as a prevalent form characteristic of the English historiography. Chorographic structure of the narrative unfolding the space of the territorial “empire” to the reader corresponded to the method of “intellectual appropriation” of the British Isles by the English antiquarians which could be defined as “cultural-historical”. A considerable role was devoted to reactualization of ethnogenetic myths at different levels: while some of them (primarily – the Galfridian myth) were regarded as relevant to the pan-British cultural and historical past, others emphasized autonomous dimensions of the past and present of distinct composites (Scotland, Ireland, Wales) The continental French variant of proto-national historiography also utilized the idea of empire but in a different mode defined by the formula “rex in regno suo imperator est”. The emerging school of érudits modelled principles of its narratives on patrimonial structures rooted in the feudal medieval society (dynasty; royal family; aristocratic lineages; seigneurial rights and vassal obligations; the system of offices created by the monarch stemming from the royal household etc.). The unity of the subjects of the French kingdom was ensured not by the shared territorial commonality but by their loyalty to the king. Therefore, the French variant of “intellectual appropriation” was developed in a socio-political direction in contrast to the territorial.


Museum Worlds ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 136-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Peers

Access to heritage objects in museum collections can play an important role in healing from colonial trauma for indigenous groups by facilitating strengthened connections to heritage, to ancestors, to kin and community members in the present, and to identity. This article analyzes how touch and other forms of sensory engagement with five historic Blackfoot shirts enabled Blackfoot people to address historical traumas and to engage in ‘ceremonies of renewal’, in which knowledge, relationships, and identity are strengthened and made the basis of well-being in the present. The project, which was a museum loan and exhibition with handling sessions before the shirts were placed on displays, implies the obligation of museums to provide culturally relevant forms of access to heritage objects for indigenous communities.


2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-154
Author(s):  
Dimitris Papazachariou ◽  
Anna Fterniati ◽  
Argiris Archakis ◽  
Vasia Tsami

Abstract Over the past decades, contemporary sociolinguistics has challenged the existence of fixed and rigid linguistic boundaries, thus focusing on how the speakers themselves define language varieties and how specific linguistic choices end up being perceived as language varieties. In this light, the present paper explores the influence of metapragmatic stereotypes on elementary school pupils’ attitudes towards geographical varieties. Specifically, we investigate children’s beliefs as to the acceptability of geographical varieties and their perception of the overt and covert prestige of geographical varieties and dialectal speakers. Furthermore, we explore the relationship between the children’s specific beliefs and factors such as gender, the social stratification of the school location and the pupils’ performance in language subjects. The data of the study was collected via questionnaires with closed questions. The research findings indicate that the children of our sample associate geographical varieties with rural settings and informal communicative contexts. Moreover, children recognize a lack of overt prestige in geographical variation; at the same time, they evaluate positively the social attractiveness and the personal reliability of the geographical varieties and their speakers. Our research showed that pupils’ beliefs are in line with the dominant metapragmatic stereotypes which promote language homogeneity.


Author(s):  
Matthew D. O'Hara

This concluding chapter looks at the discovery of a perplexing set of documents created in New Spain. Referred to as títulos primordiales, or primordial titles, the sources described the founding of Indigenous communities in the aftermath of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. The títulos resonate strongly with other colonial documents of futuremaking and the shared ways of relating to time surveyed throughout this book. The Indigenous authors of the primordial titles engaged in a radical act of situating themselves in time: they marshaled the resources of the past, the resources of memory, and the resources of tradition to achieve goals in the present and craft diverse futures. Sometimes they presented their assembled resources as a narrative of the sixteenth-century present, at other times in the form of history or chronicle.


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