Chapter 6: Shifting Frames: Language Revitalization in Support of Tribal Sovereignty

Indigenous communities have resisted colonial linguicide through reclaiming control of education and language revitalization, an historic tool of assimilation in the United States. While language revitalization work can support tribal sovereignty, it can also reify colonial systems if communities and researchers do not consciously confront ideologies or fail to critically engage with the concept of tribal sovereignty. Tribal sovereignty, broadened from Cobb’s (2005) definition, is self-governance, externally recognized, with the goal of community continuance, and emerging from within and justified by community. Emergence from within the community supports cultural match—the agreement between systems/services/processes and contemporary community values and norms—and contributes to cultural/political intervention success (Begay, Cornell, Jorgensen, & Kalt, 2007), which in turn, may make language revitalization efforts more successful. Flipping the historical researcher–community member relationship can support cultural match, cultural continuance, and tribal sovereignty. We provide a review of the literature concerning language revitalization as relates to tribal sovereignty, situate linguistic sovereignty—a community’s enactment of the right to govern language and language-related activities—within an integrated, holistic system of tribal sovereignty, present a case study from the American Southwest illustrating how supporting tribal sovereignty supports cultural match, and discuss the implications of tribal sovereignty on language research and evaluation practice.