Revitalizing Indigenous Languages: How to Recreate a Lost Generation by Marja-Liisa Olthuis, Suvi Kivelä & Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (review)

Written by Marja-Liisa Olthuis and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, two socio-linguistic scholars, and Suvi Kivelä, a student of the Complementary Aanaar Saami Language Education (CASLE) program (2009-2010), this book provides inspiration to indigenous language revitalization movements throughout our global community in its documentation and critical analysis of the CASLE revitalization program. The book documents both individual and collective efforts to revitalize a seriously endangered Eastern Saami Indigenous Tribal Language and the dedication of the individuals who have contributed to its success. It also demonstrates the openness of government agencies in Finland toward the revitalization movement within the Aanaar Saami (AS) community.

Prior to the CASLE program, the inventory of AS speakers was marginal, with only a few native speakers learning AS as their mother tongue and only isolated pockets of young children and other students learning AS in language nests or other language programs. This situation, which is so typical in seriously endangered language communities, meant speaker and knowledge gaps in the age groups 20-29 and 30-39, among parents and younger members of the workforce. To address these language gaps, the CASLE organizers carefully selected participants aged 26-54 and embarked on a year-long comprehensive study of AS to address the instructional gaps and strengthen the language competency of a group of 17 parents and/or professionals who could then take AS back to their community. The book describes a unique comprehensive program of instruction combining theory with practice through (a) second language instruction, (b) California's Master-Apprentice (M-A) model (Hinton, 2002), (c) total immersion programs, (d) partial immersion and bilingual education, (e) community-based non-school language and cultural programs, and, importantly, (f) language documentation to film and capture key events in a program dedicated to the revitalization of Aanaar Saami.

Given their divergent backgrounds, each of the three authors brings to the text a unique perspective on the CASLE program and indigenous language revitalization. The primary author, Marja-Lissa Olthuis, is an Aanaar Saami native and a lecturer at the University of Oulu, Finland. She discusses the genesis of the comprehensive program she developed (Chapter 2.1), facts about Saami languages (Chapter 3.1), an in-depth look at the CASLE method (Chapter 4), as well as an educator/planner's view of the CASLE program (Chapter 5 and 6) and details of the Aanaar Saami Association. The second author, Suvi Kivelä, is a journalist, CASLE student, and parent to two children in the Aanaar Saami community. She provides the reader with perspectives on non-native speakers learning the language in order to recreate AS as a home language for her children and in her professional life as a Saami archivist in Finland. Suvi's experience as a journalist and student of the CASLE program contributes to the reader's understanding of the importance of media to language learning and especially the importance of allowing dedicated non-indigenous speakers into language and cultural circles. The reader learns of Suvi's personal dedication to AS because her children's indigenous background on their father's side through their grandmother, Nuuvdi Ailâ, who at 81 started speaking her family language again after not using it for decades. This change was precipitated through the CASLE program, the interest held by her daughter-in-law Suvi, and the language nest program her grandchildren attended. This vignette allows one to see the strong links between parenting, culture, employment, and language learning as Suvi writes about the program's inception (Chapter 2.3), provides social statistics about Aanaar Saami and other Saami languages (Chapters 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, and 3.5), and offers the student view of the CASLE year (Chapter 5). The third author, Tove Skutnabb-Kangas, is an outsider to the Aanaar Saami language community and brings to the book her research interests, passion, and knowledge of the struggles for...