By Maison Ole Nkurrunah, ELP Communications & Storytelling Intern

I watched Mzee Salaton Lenadung’uenkop don his elder’s regalia known as Sampuut - consisting of a furry cap and furry hood made of animal skin draped over his shoulders. As an Ogiek Elder, this is what he wears when performing any service that calls for seriousness that involves the preservation and protection of his People’s ways. He wears this suit with pride and a nostalgic smile to cap it all.

 All along, he has not stopped giving me anecdotes here and there on his people’s history, dating back ages with my own people, the Maasai, as they live side by side. Matter of fact, he reminds me that the language of the Maasai, among other larger Kenyan languages where the Ogiek community is spread, is one of the key assimilators of the Ogiek culture and language. However, all is not lost - as we walk through the trees, he goes on to show me practically the knowledge of his People, explaining what he and other elders in the community are doing to revitalize everything Ogiek to the daily lives of their People. 

He looks up at the trees as we walk towards the Ogiek Cultural Village, as he explains to me in detail the different noises emanating from them. From the variety of bird species, the little monkeys and bushbabies alike all sounded like a cacophony of heavenly melodies that were all making up a single orchestra of nature. 

Every single animal or bird in the Mau Forest ecosystem has a role to play in the life of the Ogiek. Every tree, every plant has a meaning. None is more important than the other. Be it a plant, a root, a leaf, a stream or a bee – they are all fundamental parts of their everyday life and their growth and existence are intertwined with theirs.

Sadly, our conversation is purely in the Maasai language – my own language. This is mainly because Mzee Salaton and other Ogiek community members have been forced to assimilate into the Maasai culture on this side of the Mau Forest belt. This is the same trend on the other side of the forest where the Kalenjin, another bigger community, live side by side with them. The Ogiek language is one of the endangered languages in Kenya, with two of its three dialects being dormant already. 

Through people like Mzee Salaton, the Ogiek People’s Development Program has initiated strategies and systems to revitalize and pass their language down to the younger generations of their people. As a learning camp over the school holidays for Ogiek youth, the Ogiek Cultural Center hosts learners from the community, where they are taken through basic language training and other cultural classes that are essential for everyday life.

 Other initiatives that the Center is carrying out towards revitalization are a music studio where musicians of Ogiek descent can record music in their language for free, a library to document the literature of their people, and an artifact repository to act as a museum for cultural artifacts that are getting lost. They are also in the process of setting up a resource library online for all things Ogiek, as well as initiation of the process of developing an Ogiek Language Dictionary. The dictionary project, according to the center manager, Mr. Samson Luari, is a tedious endeavor that requires resources and a large pool of community effort. It is, however, a task that they are willing to undertake fully for the benefit of future generations of Ogiek people.

Subsequent governments of the Kenyan State have over the years used policy to harass and intimidate the Ogiek people who predominantly reside in forested areas, pushing them out of their ancestral homelands. Years and years of court proceedings, including a historic win in the African Court of Justice at Arusha in 2017, saw the African Court compel the Kenyan government to pay the Ogiek reparations both in monetary form and the delivery of a collective title for land to settle the community members for atrocities meted on them over the years.

You can read both sadness and hope in Mzee Salaton’s eyes as he narrates to me the impact the Center has already had in bringing back all that has been lost by the community through cultural assimilation owing to their small numbers. He has lived through years of forced evictions, targeted marginalization and minimal representation in any level of administration. He knows what his people have gone through and the circumstances that this peril has caused his people. However, he believes that there is hope on the horizon through initiatives like the Ogiek Cultural Center and other community-based solutions that are seeking to restore their almost lost ways and to revitalize their language that is threatened by extinction.

 All is not lost.

Learn more about the Ogiek Cultural Center at http://ogiekpeoples.org 

This International Mother Language Day, February 21, join the Endangered Languages Project and language champions around the world for a screening of digital stories that explore the links between language, life, memory, and community. ⁠

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These short films share the real-life experiences of people working to revitalize and reclaim their languages, offering deeply personal reflections on their relationship to their languages, and sharing the motivations, challenges, and joys in their language work.⁠

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This screening will showcase digital stories created by language champions who participated in an online digital storytelling workshop held by the Endangered Languages Project and facilitated by StoryCenter.

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We invite you to come hear their stories, show them your support and appreciation, and find inspiration and possibilities for your own language work.⁠

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Date: February 21, 2025⁠

Time: 10:00 am Pacific (UTC -8)⁠

Free and online⁠

Register: bit.ly/LanguageAndLife

By Alexandra Philbin

Kneecap movie poster. Image credit: Sony Pictures.

I was delighted to be able to see Kneecap last month in the Babel cinema in València. The film focuses on the Irish-language rap group Kneecap and how the group’s three members, played in the film by the musicians themselves, came together and started making music. It shows the beginning of their journey in Béal Feirste (Belfast) to becoming the hugely successful group that they now are. I had been looking forward to seeing the film as soon as I heard about its development, and was even more excited after the film’s success at the Sundance Film Festival and after hearing the rave reviews of some of my friends back in Ireland when it was released there a few months ago. 

I was doing my undergraduate degree in Corcaigh (Cork) when Kneecap burst onto the Irish-language scene, and their music accompanied me as a young adult finding my way with the language. Last year when I was back in Baile Átha Cliath (Dublin) for a fieldwork stay, I went to one of their concerts. Seeing thousands of young people rapping along with them in Irish is an image that I will always carry with me. I often use their music when I’m teaching Irish, and although the heavy references to drugs and sex aren’t for everybody, it always provokes discussion and a lot of thinking. I can now say the same for the film. Like their music, the film is complicated and thoughtful, and we have a lot to learn from engaging with it.

Here is a list of five things that we can think about from the film, relevant to anyone who is interested in language endangerment and revitalisation. While I’d really recommend watching the film and seeing what you learn from it (it’s now streaming on Amazon), these points are a sneak preview of what you can expect.

1. 1. Kneecap reminds us of the struggles faced by speakers of Indigenous, endangered and minoritised languages

Although the film is packed with fun, it does not shy away from the discrimination that speakers face when trying to speak their language. We see scenes where Irish speakers’ language rights are (violently) repressed, particularly in interactions between the musicians and the police. The film reminds us that language loss is not a natural or neutral process; it is very often a violent process where speakers face oppression and the violation of their human rights.

2. 2. Kneecap shows us that there is no one way to promote a language

The film focuses on the trio’s use of hip-hop music to promote the Irish language, but it also shows some of the wider work happening in the North of Ireland to support Irish-language rights. For example, one of the musicians’ partners is shown to be involved with an Dream Dearg, a group that has campaigned tirelessly in recent years for Irish-language legislation in the North. The film points to a certain tension between the partner’s work and the rappers’ activity, but ultimately shows that there is no one way to fight for our languages: while some people may focus on legislative change, others may focus on cultural activities.

3. 3. Kneecap highlights how language reclamation is about more than words

In the film, we see how rooted the members of Kneecap are in their local community. Their background is inseparable from their lyrics and their work to promote the language. By focusing on this background, the film reminds us that they are taking part in a project that is all about community. Their music is shown to bring people together in connection. Through the focus on one of the rappers’ mothers, it is also shown to be healing.

4. 4. Kneecap gives us an example of how to push against certain narratives about our languages

At the beginning of the film, we see a class of bored teenagers learning Irish with one of the group’s members. He despairs at the learning material, with its references to turf farming, and it is clear that the city-based teenagers cannot identify with the image of the language that it promotes. Kneecap’s work changes their relationship with the language, as the group’s use of rap highlights the connection between Irish and urban life in Béal Feirste. The film also goes some way in pushing against the doomful predictions that paint language loss as inevitable.

5. 5. Kneecap is about Irish in the North of Ireland, but it’s also about all our languages

The film focuses on the rappers’ home city of Béal Feirste and the Irish-language context, but it also reminds us that it is but one context in a world in which over 3000 languages are endangered. The film raises awareness of language endangerment and language rights in the North of Ireland, but also raises awareness of language endangerment and rights more generally. We see solidarity with other groups and peoples in the film, and it invites us to think about our language communities as part of a global community facing language endangerment, but also resisting it.

If you haven’t seen the film yet, I hope these points give you more reason to check it out! If you have, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Did you like it? Does the film connect to your own language? Is there similar music being produced in your community? You can always reach out to me at alexandra@endangeredlanguages.com, or book a mentoring appointment with me to discuss Kneecap, your own work, or minoritised languages in general!

For the past 12 years, the Endangered Languages Project has been a trusted place to share digital resources to support Indigenous and endangered languages. People around the world have chosen to share information about their languages, cultures, and work through ELP, trusting that we will engage with their materials appropriately, respectfully, and transparently. 

Our relationships with language champions, community organizations, scholars, and allies are the core of our work. The trust our community places in us is at the heart of what we do. 

We are deeply committed to Indigenous data sovereignty, and to the rights of Indigenous and minoritized communities to decide whether, when, and how they will engage with language technologies.

That is why we have been deeply concerned, in recent months, to see false information circulating about ELP’s involvement in AI projects. Several posts and articles, all of which seemed to be AI-generated, have falsely claimed that ELP is developing large language models (LLMs) or other AI tools, using the language materials shared on our site.

Using the language materials shared on ELP’s site to train LLMs would be profoundly unethical, and a gross violation of our values and relationships. We want to clarify ELP’s use, or non-use, of AI tools in general, and contextualize these decisions within our organizational values.
 

• First and foremost, we do not engage in language data mining using LLMs or other AI tools. We do not permit materials hosted on the ELP site to be used in the training of LLMs or other AI models.

• We work with human writers and editors - we don’t use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools to create our learning resources, social media content, articles or blog posts. We invest significant collective time, thought, and emotion in writing the text you find on the ELP website, social media accounts, and learning materials. We value foregrounding a variety of human voices, writing styles, knowledges, and creative visions. Working together with human writers and editors creates possibilities for one of our core values of relationship-building. 

• We work with human artists - we don’t use generative AI image or music/sound generation tools for our materials. We do not knowingly publish AI-generated images. We value experiencing and sharing a variety of human art styles, perspectives, artistic traditions, and creative visions.

• We work with human translators and interpreters - we don’t rely on machine translation tools without human supervision. We sometimes use transcription tools for materials in dominant languages, or use machine translation tools to quickly check the meaning of a piece of text, but always check any machine translations with a human. We value and respect the human knowledge of context, tone, style, and cultural nuance that goes into translation work.

• We work with human content creators - we aim to support and uplift creators who put time, effort, and creativity into conducting interviews, recording audio and video materials, creating social media posts, etc. We value elevating the perspectives and talents of humans around the world, and creating space for people to learn from one another.

• We work with human researchers - the information in ELP’s Catalogue of Endangered Languages has been painstakingly collected, organized, and reviewed by a team of human researchers over many years. In all of our research work, we do not use ChatGPT or other LLMs. We do our own thinking, reading, editing, and writing.

 
We suggest that anyone interested in the development of AI technologies for language revitalization, in alignment with the values of Indigenous data sovereignty, may wish to learn more about the work of organizations like Indigenous AI, Te Hiku Media, First Languages AI Reality (FLAIR), Te Mana Raraunga, Maiam nayri Wingara, Masakhane, the Global Indigenous Data Alliance, and others.

As the technologies described broadly as “AI” continue to grow and change, and more ethical tools are developed, our use of AI tools may change. However, any choices we make about AI will remain informed by our organizational values: integrity, respect, support, optimism, collaboration, relationship, sharing and accessibility, and informed action. And, in keeping with our values, we will continue to communicate transparently about our decisions and actions regarding AI tools.

We hope this statement clarifies how ELP engages with AI, and we welcome any questions or comments you might have: feedback@endangeredlanguages.com