Remaking Kichwa: Language and Indigenous Pluralism in Amazonian Ecuador

Description

Investigating the efforts of the Kichwa of Tena, Ecuador to reverse language shift to Spanish, this book examines the ways in which Indigenous language can be revitalized and how creative bilingual forms of discourse can reshape the identities and futures of local populations. Based on deep ethnographic fieldwork among urban, periurban, and rural indigenous Kichwa communities, Michael Wroblewski explores adaptations to culture contact, language revitalization, and political mobilization through discourse. Expanding the ethnographic picture of native Amazonians and their traditional discourse practices, this book focuses attention on Kichwas' diverse engagements with rural and urban ways of living, local and global ways of speaking, and Indigenous and dominant intellectual traditions. Wroblewski reveals the composite nature of indigenous words and worlds through conversational interviews, oral history narratives, political speechmaking, and urban performance media, showing how discourse is a critical focal point for studying cultural adaptation. Highlighting how Kichwas assert autonomy through creative forms of self-representation, Remaking Kichwa moves the study of Indigenous language into the globalized era and offers innovative reconsiderations of Indigeneity, discourse, and identity.

Michael Wroblewski is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University, USA.

A valuable explication and analysis of urban interculturality and dynamic discourse through ethnographic insights into indigenous Tena Kichwa lifeways and speech patterns. This work takes Amazonian cultural exposition to a new level. * Norman E. Whitten, Jr., Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies and Curator of the Spurlock Museum University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA * Clearly written and engaging, this book brilliantly describes a plural sociolinguistic world through the words and multi-generational experiences of Tena Kichwa people. It shows how medicinal plants, bilingual education, TV shows and beauty pageants - among other things - are all part of the dynamism of ethnolinguistic identities in urban Amazonia. * Casey High, Senior Lecturer of Social Anthropology, University of Edinburgh, UK * Expertly marshalling cutting-edge semiotic and linguistic anthropology, Wroblewski beautifully illuminates the complexity and paradoxes of contemporary language and culture revitalization while probing the intricacies of rural and urban Indigeneity among the Ecuadorian Tena Kichwa. Remaking Kichwa's rich ethnographic analysis resonates well beyond the Amazon region. * Laura R. Graham, Professor of Anthropology, University of Iowa, USA *