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E.
Annamalai, Ph.D.
(Vice-Chair, 2007-2008), holds a doctorate in Linguistics
from the University of Chicago and is Professor Emeritus of
the Central Institute of Indian Languages (CIIL), Mysore,
India, where he worked for twenty-five years, first as Deputy
Director and then as Director. As Deputy Director, he was
responsible for work relating to indigenous languages and
their use in education, including creation of a writing system
for the pre-literate languages, production of grammars, dictionaries
and educational materials, recording of folklore, designing
pedagogical models, training of teachers, orientation to government
officials and influencing the policies of state governments
about the education of indigenous people. His view on language
policy and programs, which evolved over years of work of the
above kind, integrates the role of the government, the community
and the individual regarding language use and stability of
multilingualism. This view is articulated in Reflections on
a Language Policy for Multilingualism, published in the journal
Language Policy 2:2 (2003). The range of his work
is available in the book Managing Multilingualism in India:
Political and Linguistic Dimensions (2001). His research and
programmatic work for maintaining multilingualism in India
naturally led to his interest in global language diversity
and its relation to other diversities in the world. This interest
is also reflected in his continuing work on the panel of the
Documentation of Endangered Languages Project of the Rausing
Foundation in London. He serves as a member of the National
Council for the Promotion of Indian Languages chaired by the
Prime Minister of India. He is also involved in the creation
of databases and dictionaries of Indian languages, particularly
Tamil, his mother tongue. He currently teaches at Yale University.
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R.
Alan Hedley,
Ph.D. (Secretary and Treasurer, 2006-2008),
is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Victoria,
Canada. His main areas of interest include technology, social
change, and development; formal organizations, transnational
corporations, and non-governmental organizations; comparative
cultures; and general systems theory. For the past decade
he has engaged in research on the consequences of globalization.
His most recent book, Running Out of Control: Dilemmas
of Globalization (Kumarian Press, 2002), argues that
although one of the major objectives of today's technology-based,
corporate-driven globalization is greater control, a single
global system is more vulnerable to unforeseen risks than
are many systems organized independently. Moreover, given
increasing human population, rising human aspirations, and
growing global inequality (and hence instability), all taking
place within a finite global eco-environment, increased human
control from further technological innovation becomes less
and less likely, and ecological crises potentially more devastating.
One very significant counteractive trend against corporate
global concentration and homogenization that Hedley identifies
is the widespread and growing emergence of diverse grassroots
and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). According
to the United Nations Development Programme, NGOs are "effective
advocates for human development, maintaining pressure on national
governments, international agencies, and corporations to live
up to commitments and to protect human rights and environmental
standards." It was this realization that led Hedley to become
actively associated with Terralingua and its promotion of
biocultural diversity, i.e., "diversity in nature and culture,"
as a means to regain a more viable balance between humans
and the planet they inhabit.
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Governors-at-large
Susan
Fassberg (2006-2008), holds
a BA in Psychology with an emphasis in Counseling and Anthropology.
Her strong interest in media and social change led to her
co-facilitation of the Threshold Foundation's Strategic
Media Initiative and to work with IWTnews.com regarding
their fundraising and marketing strategy. Recently she collaborated
on a progressive political activists' handbook, published
in May of 2006. Susan serves on the Board of RockwoodLeadership.org.
As a consultant in marketing, business development and public
relations, she has held senior positions with Salon.com and
AskJeeves.com, and has consulted for LAMagazine and numerous
TV productions with ABC, NBC, NDR, ZDF, and RTL+. With "Linking
people with ideas with people with ideas..." as her motto,
Susan has a passion for start-ups, Connectingdotz.com
being the most recent. She also has a passion for languages
and is fluent in German, French and Spanish.
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Margaret
Florey, Ph.D. (2007-2009), holds
a Doctorate in Linguistics from the University of Hawai'i
at Manoa (1990). She is a Senior Lecturer in the Linguistics
Program at Monash University , Melbourne , Australia . Margaret
has substantial experience in the field of language endangerment
through her research, teaching and capacity building with
indigenous communities. She devised and convenes the postgraduate
Studies in Language Endangerment programs at Monash University
, and is actively involved in teaching both theoretical and
applied aspects of language documentation and revitalisation.
She has also developed and implemented methodologies for training
community language activists and Indigenous linguists in language
documentation and language maintenance strategies in Indonesia
, the Netherlands and Australia . Margaret's research interests
include the minority languages of the Austronesian and Australian
language families, language endangerment, language documentation,
ethnography, ethnobiology, and anthropological linguistics.
She has conducted extensive fieldwork in eastern Indonesia
and in Western Australia . Her doctoral thesis was an examination
of language shift in the Alune language of eastern Indonesia
. Margaret is currently coordinating a collaborative research
project which is documenting four endangered Moluccan languages,
both in the Indonesian homeland and in the Dutch diaspora.
This work is supported by major grants from the Hans Rausing
Endangered Languages Project ( SOAS , UK ) and the Australian
Research Council. Margaret is an editor of Language Documentation
& Conservation, and The Australian Journal of Linguistics.
She is co-founder of the Resource Network for Linguistic
Diversity and chairs the steering committee for the International
Conference on Austronesian Linguistics. She has also contributed
as an international expert at the UNESCO Intangible Cultural
Heritage Section, Experts' Meetings on the Convention on Intangible
Cultural Heritage.
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Eugene
Hunn, Ph.D. (2007-2009),
is Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, University
of Washington, Seattle, where he has taught since 1972. He
received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of
California, Berkeley in 1973. His primary research interests
are ethnobiology, ethnoecology, and cognitive anthropology.
He has conducted field work in Mexico (Tzeltal Maya ethnozoology,
1971; Zapotec natural history, 1996ff) and with Native North
American communities (e.g., Sahaptin, 1976ff). His books include
Tzeltal Folk Zoology: The Classification of Discontinuities
in Nature (Academic Press, 1977), Resource Managers:
North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers , co-edited
with N. M. Williams (Westview, 1981), Nch'i-Wána,
‘The Big River': Mid-Columbia Indians and their Land
(University of Washington Press, 1990), with two books
in press A Zapotec Natural History (University of
Arizona) and Our Land: Tiichamaami: A sahaptian Language
Place Names and Ethnographic Atlas of the Contemporary and
Ceded Homelands of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla
Indian Reservation (co-authored/edited with Thomas Morning
Owl, Modesta Minthorn, and Jennifer Karson; Tamástslikt
Cultural Heritage Center, Mission, OR; Ecotrust, Portland,
OR, and the University of Washington Press). His current research
efforts focus on ongoing ethnobiological research in the Sierra
Sur of Oaxaca, continuing ethnogeographic research on Sahaptin
in the Columbia Plateau of the Pacific Northwest and contract
research on ethnobiology and traditional resource rights among
Native American communities in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
Hunn is immediate past president of the Society of Ethnobiology
and served as editor of the Society's Journal of Ethnobiology
1995-1999. He has served on the Melville Jacobs Research
Fund advisory board since 1985. He is an avid birder and has
long been active in his local Audubon chapter, serving as
its President 1988-1990.
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Rauna
Kuokkanen, Ph.D. (2008-2010) is
Assistant Professor of Pedagogy and Sami Literature at the
Sami University College in Guovdageaidnu, Norway. Her doctoral
dissertation from the University of British Columbia was awarded
the Recognition for Excellence by the American Educational
Research Association (Postsecondary Education) Dissertation
Award Committee in 2004. She is the editor of the anthology
on contemporary Sami literature Juoga mii geasuha (2001)
and author of Reshaping the University. Responsibility,
Indigenous Epistemes and the Logic of the Gift (UBC Press,
forthcoming 2007). Her research interests include indigenous
philosophy, research paradigms, education and critical theory
and indigenous literature. Her current research deals with
intersections of autonomy, indigenous women and the global
political economy. She was the founding chair of the Sami
Youth Organization in Finland, established in 1991, and served
as the Vice-President of the Sami Council, NGO representing
Sami organizations, for two years.
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