Introducing New Terralingua Project « Voices of the Earth

Photo: Tania Aguila

www.terralingua.org/voicesoftheearth

Indige­nous oral lit­er­a­tures con­tain a wealth of responses to this fun­da­men­tal chal­lenge of the human spirit. Oral his­to­ries, myths, leg­ends, poems, epics, proverbs and say­ings, songs, rit­ual chants, and more—speak of the sacred­ness of Mother Earth and how to care for her, so that she will care for us. It’s a story told in many voices—the Voices of the Earth.

Tra­di­tional knowl­edge is not just what to know about a place you live in; it’s wis­dom about how to live in a place you know. This col­lec­tive wis­dom is vital for the sur­vival and well-being of each and every human soci­ety and of all other species with which we share our earthly home. This is the very heart of the idea of “bio­cul­tural diver­sity” that Ter­ralin­gua stands for. It reminds us of our inescapable inter­con­nect­ed­ness and inter­de­pen­dence with all of life. It spurs us to ful­fill our duty to respect nature and live in har­mony with it. It warns us of the con­se­quences if we neglect this pri­mary duty.

Indige­nous Peo­ples the world over are seek­ing to hold on or recon­nect to their oral tra­di­tions, in order to main­tain or rebuild their iden­ti­ties, their sense of place, and their abil­ity to forge their own des­tiny and “walk to the future in the foot­prints of their ances­tors”. There is a lot every­one can learn, or re-learn, from the wis­dom of indige­nous oral tra­di­tions. That is why Ter­ralin­gua is at work to ensure that these tra­di­tions are not fur­ther depleted and that the liv­ing cho­rus of Voices of the Earth can still be heard loud and clear.

In the ini­tial stages of the Voices of the Earth project, we are part­ner­ing with two Cana­dian First Nations, the Saanich (W̱SÁNEĆ) Peo­ple of Coastal British Colum­bia (BC) and the Chilcotin (Tsilhqot’in) Peo­ple of the BC Inte­rior. We are pro­vid­ing small start-up grants to enable them to develop their own oral lit­er­a­ture doc­u­men­ta­tion projects. The result­ing mate­ri­als will con­tribute to their lan­guage and cul­ture revi­tal­iza­tion pro­grams, edu­ca­tional cur­ricu­lum, recon­nec­tion to the land and ances­tral ways of life, and affir­ma­tion of their iden­tity and rights. We will also pro­vide train­ing assis­tance as needed, and work with them for the long-term sus­tain­abil­ity of these efforts. Over time, we expect to estab­lish fur­ther part­ner­ships of this kind with Indige­nous Peo­ples in other parts of the world.

Visit the link below to review the full project website:

 « Voices of the Earth.