Trond Trosterud, consultant for indigenous peoples,
Barents secretariat, Kirkenes, Norway.
Preliminary version, 04.01.96
As
we start the decade of the indigenous peoples of the world, we at the same time
face a situation where not only their living conditions and legal status are
threatened, but also their languages and cultures. According to recent
estimates, roughly half of the 6000 of the worlds languages are threatened.
This is a catastrophic loss not only to the peoples themselves and to their
culture, but to mankind as a whole. Language is perhaps the most outstanding
achievement in our history, the single trait that distinguishes between animals
and human beings. These languages do not cease to be spoken by themselves, the
development is the result of a carefully planned policy of nation-building,
that has the transition of the population into monolingual speakers of the one
(or a few) official language(s) as explicit or implicit goal.
In the northern half of Eurasia, far the greatest number of threatened
languages are situated in Russia, and of these, a great number are taught as
subject at the FNKS at the Herzen institute in St.Petersburg. Founded in 192x,
it has trained mother tongue teachers long before Western European countries
gave their minorities the same possibilities. Its teachers have produced
primers and dictionaries for use in the national schools, and it has in essence
educated the intellectuals of the northern peoples. Still, today the FNKS faces
a new and tough situation, as money for unprofitable institutions are hard to
get in today's Russia, and since the new economic development also makes the
situation much more difficult for the northern peoples themselves. Thus, an
efficient way of supporting small languages in this part of the world is to
concentrate upon the education of the teachers, i.e. to support the FNKS of the
Herzen Institute.
At the moment, there are ... graduate students at the faculty. They are a very important group, as they represent such a rare thing as scholars of endangered languages having the language in question as their mother tongue. Their main problem (apart from daily concerns linked to the financial situation) is a lack of contact with the general scientific community, partly the Russian one but especially the international one. Lack of reading ability in languages like English, Finnish, German and Hungarian also makes it difficult for them to follow the international scientific debate.
*
Grant program for these students so that they can take parts of their education
at foreign universities
* Language courses so that they can improve their foreign language
abilities (e.g. for students of Uralic languages the summer courses in Hungary
and Finland are relevant), possibly combined with scientific summer schools of
the type that have been arranged in e.g. Hungary and Poland during the last few
years.
* Visiting scholars giving introductory and/or advanced courses, possibly
as part of exchange programs.
The students at the ordinary courses are in a key role when it comes to language maintenance, since they are becoming mother tongue teachers. To have them see their work in a broader perspective, and to make them get to know fellow students elsewhere, excursions to relevant sites should be arranged. A further possibility is to support work done for the benefit of their mother tongues.
*
Visiting trips, e.g. to their fellow students at the Finno-Ugric departments at
nearby Helsinki or Tartu, or to other colleges training indigenous language
teachers, e.g. Guovdageaidnu, Norway.
* Small grants, either linked to special year courses (x roubles for all
the last-year students), or given only to some of the students, one could e.g.
let them apply for money to specific projects to document or preserve their own
mother tongue (collection of vocabularies, texts, documentation of
sociolinguistic situation, or linguistic case studies).
Research on both bilingual and minority language teaching has made great progress during the last decades, and it would be of major importance for the teachers at the FNKS to get familiar with this work. Representing one of the institutions with the longest tradition in the field, the FNKS teachers undoubtedly also has important contributions to the discussion. Travel grants should thus be provided to facilitate such an exchange of experience.
*
Seminars at FNKS with visiting scholars talking about methods for teaching
minority and endangered languages, and about linguistic human rights
* Possibility for FNKS teachers to participate in exchange programs
The daily work of the administration is made difficult by the lack of efficient office equipment. such as computers. Too much time is spent on trivial routines, and an efficient contact with related institutions both abroad and within Russia is hampered by the lack of telefaxes and of electronic mail.
*
Help to facilitate administration: computers, faxes, copy machines, other
equipment. The operative system of the computers should be in Russian, and the
computers should be able to handle the letters of the extended Cyrillic
alphabets that are used for the languages taught at the department.
Most suggestions contained in this program will be facilitated by formalising the co-operation with other institutions.
*
Make co-operation agreements with related institutions, such as The Saami
Regional College in Guovdageaidnu, Norway (cf. list below).
* Co-operation agreement should be made with related institutions abroad.
The reason why this has not already taken place (contact is restricted to
foreign Uralists visiting the Faculty and interviewing the students) is
probably that the activities of the Faculty are poorly known, especially
outside traditional Finno-Ugric departments. The Faculty should, e.g. in
co-operation with the initiators of this programme, make an information leaflet
about itself, and present it for possible contact institutions dealing with
Uralistics and other relevant language programs, Arctic research, Circumpolar
co-operation, and research on indigenous peoples.
* The administration of the Faculty should carry out an analysis of status
quo and of the need for technical and practical support, so that possible aid
measures could meet the actual needs.
* List of possible institutions for scientific co-operation and financial
support:
The Finno-Ugric department at the University of Helsinki (to some extent
co-operating already)
The Finno-Ugric department at the University of Turku
The department for Finnish and Saami studies at the University of Oulu
The Saami College in Guovdageaidnu
Tromsö Museum, University of Tromsö
School of Language and Literature, University of Tromsö
School of Social Sciences, University of Tromsö
The Regional College in Alta
Other Finno-Ugric departments: Uppsala, Hamburg, Lund, Oslo, Copenhagen,
Munich, Berlin, Bloomington, Tokyo, Groningen, Budapest, Göttingen,
Vienna, London,
...
*
The institutions that solve co-operation agreements with the Faculty should
apply for grants from existing exchange programs, especially from programs
aiming at stimulating scientific contacts between Eastern and Western
Europe.
* To be able to give grants to the students of the Faculty there should be
made a separate fund. There are different organisations dealing with endangered
languages that could contribute to such a fund. As the recognition of the acute
situation for most of the languages of the world grows, most linguistic
organisations (The Linguistic Society of America, The Nordic Association of
Linguists, The Linguistic Association of Finland, to mention a few) would
probably also be willing to contribute.
* The administration's need for more equipment can be met by the donation
of outdated equipment from nearby institutions, e.g. in the Nordic countries.
If such an approach proves difficult, the best alternative is probably to by
new equipment in St-Petersburg, so that the support functions will be
functioning.
* The Students' Association of the University of Helsinki has a separate
program for help to linguistically related people (sukukansoja) in
Russia. They should be provided with concrete support program suggestions.
The
details are held at a sketchy level here, but should naturally be worked with
before concrete applications are made. Suffice to say that for all projects
(perhaps except the exchange programs for western scholars) there will be a
relatively high effect to gain even from small sums.
The computers probably cost NOK 10-15000,- if new, and less if used.
Grants for students should be compatible with current Russian student
grants.
Foreign language and scientific courses will vary according to the
organisers.
Exchange programs: The costs are compatible to the grants provided by the
different East European and Baltic support programs that are implemented by the
Nordic countries.