“We are seen”: Bringing Indigenous languages ​​to life in rural Nebraska

it was a personal journey for Palala Martinez as well. He has Mayan heritage, but has lost touch with that part of his origins. But through working with a counselor and learning more about educational opportunities for students in rural areas of the state, he found Wakefield.

It is a town of about 1,500 people where Palala Martinez found a concentrated community of Guatemalans who spoke Mayan languages ​​there. Two years ago, he began working with secondary school students in Wakefield.

His first step was weaving Guatemalan culture into the school, being a face and a voice that students could connect to. In Nebraska, Guatemala is the second most common country of origin for immigrants to the state, according to the American Immigration Council.

“These languages ​​that are spoken in Wakefield, Mayan languages, are minority languages ​​spoken in Guatemala,” said Palala Martinez. “The students were happy to see someone from their background, from their heritage to be with them, to speak Spanish with them.”

But most importantly, Palala Martinez’s presence meant she could advocate for students who didn’t speak English or Spanish. In the school itself, Palala Martinez said there are nearly 50 Mayan speakers. This year, the school is home to over 500 students.

“I asked (the students) how to inform the teachers that Guatemalans don’t have one Spanish language,” Palala Martinez said. “And they said, ‘Just let them know.’

For him, it was important that students’ voices be valued in the future, another driving reason for the development of this curriculum.

He immediately began working with a handful of students, asking them to approach their language and culture from a more artistic point of view.

At his suggestion, the students drew what their language looked like to them, how it felt to speak their language, and what it meant to be a part of that culture. Some could not write the language, so they performed spoken poetry instead.

“They like the way poetry can be flexible, it doesn’t have rules,” Palala Martinez said. “They found freedom by writing two or three words and then finding the connection to something else.”

He is using the students’ work this summer to develop a curriculum to be distributed to schools with Mayan populations similar to Wakefield. Somewhere like Fremont, less than 100 miles south of Wakefield.

Palala Martinez is a Ph.D. candidate in UNL’s College of Education and Humanities and will work as a digital humanities summer fellow at the university. He uses the students’ stories along with two other resources: digital material and the Bible.

The Bible will not be used in a religious context, Palala Martinez said, but in an educational context as a spoken and written resource.

“I want to motivate myself to learn (the language) because it will take too long,” Palala Martinez said. “But in the meantime, the kids are there. We have kids right now, right now, sitting down in school listening to you and they don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

At a meeting of Omaha and Wakefield speakers, someone started speaking Mayan and everyone understood, a special moment for everyone in the room.

“They felt, ‘Oh, we’re seen. Finally,'” Palala Martinez recalled. “They know we don’t just speak Spanish. That was the tipping point for them to understand how important the Mayan language is.”

Palala Martinez compared the program to indigenous language revitalization programs for native tribes in the state.

It’s not just preserving these languages, which for Palala Martinez means archiving the language and putting it on the shelf as part of history. While this is important to his project, it is also important that the language continues to live.

“Mayan languages ​​have survived for thousands of years,” said Palala Martinez. “It’s important if we can keep a language alive and we can use technology to do it.”