My current projects:

1. Pedagogical translanguaging in the Arhuaco indigenous community in Santa Marta, Colombia

This project was funded by the FONCIENCIAS research grant at Universidad del Magdalena.

All photos were taken by Alexander Moreno Bermúdez with the permission of each person.

Teaching English in the arhuaco community in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

This project emerged in 2019, just before the pandemic, when I was approached by leaders of three of the indigenous communities here in the SNSM. They explained to me that they needed to learn English as a response to the threat of globalisation and the increased contact with global communities, so that they could, in their words, 'defend themselves' and maintain their culture.

Why teach English in an indigenous community in Colombia?

This was one of the biggest issues that we faced when confronted with this project: in a context of linguistic diversity in which Spanish has traditionally held a hegemonic position over indigenous Colombian languages, how could we, as linguists and language teachers, justify adding ANOTHER dominant language to the mix? At first, I was against the idea. However, upon further reflection I realised that it is not up to us to determine what is best or not for any given culture. As an applied linguist, I believe we ought to try and guide communities to make what we believe to be the best decision linguistically speaking, but we cannot impose our stance upon anybody, even if we believe decisions communities make to be mistakes. I am certain that other linguists would assert otherwise, stating that our role is to actively seek to change positions via intervention, but I prefer to be somewhat more moderate in this sense. Therefore, I respect and understand the position of the communities in seeking to defend themselves linguistically in international contexts, however it clearly would requiere careful planning and thought in the implementation of the project.

The map shows you where the SNSM is located, near the city of Santa Marta in Colombia.

Learn more about our project here (in Spanish, ikʉn, and English):

2. Linguistic vitality in the Departamento del Magdalena

This project is currently in the design phase. From the Pedagogical Translanguaging project with the arhuacos, something became strikingly evident in our contact with the community: that is, the urgent need to reevaluate and reconceptualise the (allegedly) bilingual models of education in the etnocolegios de la Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta. However, before delving head-first into the world of bilingual education, first we need more accurate data on who speaks what, where, and with whom. Therefore, the objective of this new project is to attempt to measure (to a degree) the vitality of the indigenous languages in the Department (State) of Magdalena. This includes the following languages and peoples:

The arhuaco people, who speak ikʉn
The ette ennaka people (also known as chimila), who speak ette taara
The wiwa people, who speak damana
The kogui people, who speak kaugiañ

One motivation for first exploring the 'state of the art' of the languages and their speakers is the fact that we have such contradictory data on just how many people there are in each community, let alone the number of speakers. Maria Trillos Amaya published some excellent work in 1995 and 1996 describing the multilingualism in the SNSM, but since then, there has been little or no research on the matter. It's time that changed!

TO BE CONTINUED...