By Leon Bent –
The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages, that is: dedicated to raising awareness about languages of indigenous peoples all over the world.
The word indigenous comes from the Latin ‘indigena’ meaning ‘a native’ and was developed in mid- 17th century English, to carry the meaning it now holds. Indigenous generally refers to people who have lived in a place or country for a very long time, or to plants and animals that developed in a place, rather than arriving from somewhere else. Indigenous populations are descended from the original inhabitants of a place, and often preserve traditional ways of life.
Language is a system of conventional spoken, manual, or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and participants in its culture express themselves. The functions of language include communication, the expression of identity, play, imaginative expression, and emotional release.
An indigenous language is native to a region and spoken by indigenous people, often reduced to the status of a minority language. This means a linguistically distinct community that has been settled in the area for countless generations. What does indigenous mean? Native, or aboriginal or savage (fierce, violent, and uncontrolled) originating in and characteristic of, a particular region or country, that is living in isolation, with an unique ancient culture untouched by our modern lifestyle, usually living in dense forests, who feed on animals, fruits, vegetables and roots in the wild, and drink water from natural springs, streams, rivers and possibly ponds. These tribes thrive in perfect harmony with the eco-system; many indigenous tribes live in their natural state, naked, like most of God’s creation does!
These largely untouched people speak about 7079 indigenous languages. This number is constantly in flux, because we’re learning more about the world’s languages every day. And beyond that, the languages themselves are in flux. They’re living and dynamic, spoken by communities whose lives are shaped by our rapidly changing world. This is a fragile time: Roughly a third of these languages are now endangered.
“Despite their immense value languages around the world continue to disappear at an alarming rate.” Meanwhile, quite ironically, just 23 languages account for more than half the world’s population.
Not long ago, thousands of languages were spoken around the globe, but they are disappearing in a way that parallels the loss of endangered species. Indigenous tongues might not be subject to climate change or hunting, but popular languages affect them like invasive species. Since every language encodes a unique way of seeing the world, the loss is not just to the descendants of people who once spoke it, cut off from their ancestors’ knowledge, but to the rest of the world.
The UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues estimates 40 percent of the languages currently spoken around the world are in danger. A few places have achieved success in reviving threatened indigenous languages, mostly by teaching them in schools, but most lack either the will or the resources.
Since 1950, 228 languages have become extinct. Due to the immense value of languages, not only as a tool for communication, but also as a form of identity, cultural history, and a repository of traditions and memory, it is vital to protect them from extinction.
According to the World Bank, there are approximately 370 million indigenous peoples worldwide. While they occupy a quarter of the world’s surface area, they safeguard three-fourths of the world’s remaining biodiversity. They are said to provide answers to food security and climate change. Their traditional knowledge is considered of immense value in preserving ecosystems.
Their food systems may offer solutions for expanding and diversifying the current food base and providing nutritious food in areas threatened by climate change. Yet, land dispossession, forced assimilation and other forms of discrimination, are endangering the most fundamental aspects of indigenous peoples, including their identity, language, art, traditional knowledge and spirituality.
The 55th meeting of the 3rd Committee of the United Nations General Assembly saw the adoption of the resolution on “Rights of Indigenous peoples.” The resolution stresses the urgent need to preserve, promote and revitalize endangered languages… inviting UNESCO to “serve as the lead agency for the Year.” The text encourages Member States to work towards achieving the ends of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The Resolution also reaffirms the importance of the empowerment and capacity building of Indigenous women and youth, including their full and effective participation in decision-making processes in matters that affect them directly, including policies, programs and resources, in particular in the areas of health, education, employment and the transmission of traditional knowledge, languages and practices. Additional emphasis has been put on international cooperation to support national and regional efforts to maintain and strengthen the distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions of Indigenous peoples, encouraging Member States to give due consideration to all the rights of Indigenous peoples in fulfilling the commitments undertaken in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and in the elaboration of national programs.
Now, this gold nugget! What accounts for the differences between dominant global modern culture and the cultures of successful, sustainable indigenous communities that existed for tens of thousands of years? First, there appear to be opposing worldviews: indigenous communities typically display a philosophy of the earth, an orientation to respectful, reciprocal, co-existence, whereas dominant global modern culture promotes a philosophy of escape from the earth.
How could humans become the only species that destroys its habitat? Humans have not always been destructive. There have been many indigenous peoples who lived sustainably within their landscape [called “first ways” – “original”] (e.g., archaeological studies show that Australian Aborigines have been around for over 60,000 years and the Kung of Southern Africa for over 40,000 years). Can our culture return to the mindsets and responsible actions of such sustainable cultures?
I’ll let you into a little secret! I saw from a distance, some primordial, primitive, hostile tribal people while on a visit to Bishop Alex Dias’ (my good friend) Diocese, of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. They muttered incoherent ‘nothings for me,’ and made strange signs, that bemused me. I envied their holy, sacred habitat! Totally, perennial pristine! Garden-of-Eden like it had an aura of mystery fascination, magic, which cast a charming spell on me. I stood there as a mystic, enveloped in millennia of unchanged history and eco-system, in the pure stillness, silence and solitude, of an ever-present God! I saw HIM, in His Truth, Beauty and Goodness, with the inner eye of love, the undiluted-with-the-human-mind, God, the Master Creator of Genesis! Truly awesome! I lay prostrate in adoration – in communion, nay, union, with the Trinitarian God!
I learned a new language, that Creation is a kenosis of divine love, a constant emptying of divine self into others. God draws all things through love into the fullness of His Being. God’s love is the energy that makes everything precious and alive. I sensed the birth of a new God present every; truly the world is full of divine mystery – an ordinary mysticism that lives without a why, in dense, dappled with sun, rain forests, and the hills glistening with waterfalls! This illuminated a pathway into the depths of my experience. I shouted in delight: Transcendence no longer hangs over me, yet I become, strangely, its privileged bearer! I was quickly rid of the old distant God. I realized He is not up there; He is everywhere.
Paul Tillich calls this insight “theonomous culture.” Every aspect of being is a dynamic presence of God. Raimon Panikkar named it, “cosmotheandrism”: there is no God without the cosmos and no cosmos without God…an inter-being of divine and created realities! Pannikkar writes, “Without the divine we cannot say I; without consciousness we cannot say Thou; and without the world, we cannot say It. Teilhard de Chardin calls God a “hyper-centre” – that is to say, of a greater depth than us. The world is not God and God is not the world, nevertheless, God is unlimited depth of love of all that is, a love that overflows into new life, into a “road less travelled,” that leads the pilgrim to God’s sacred heart. This is the vernacular, the twitter that leads to eternal bliss, akin to “the shallow river babbling over smooth rocks, I had fixed my gaze on!
Teilhard further states: Creation is a kenosis of divine love, a constant emptying of divine self into others. Because divine is totally other-centred, the whole cosmos is a theophany, a revelation of God’s love. This is indeed, the new language to remain in communion a God who is near, not up there, in the heavens. In a place of “untouched, unspoilt glory” that ancient, indigenous tribes live, God is in a gnarled twig, a dried branch, a wilted flower, in thunder and lightning, in delicate butterflies that flit and float in gay abandon in search of nectar, and go from flower to flower, momentarily. I looked with a heavy heart at “wild flowers doomed to bloom, blush and die, unseen!” Yes, God is transcendent and imminent, at the same time! One can easily and freely be in communion and union with Him, all the time. It’s that easy! This is the universal language of love in all creation that prevailed from the dawn time, but we, mortals, look for Him feverishly, in Cathedrals, Churches, Shrines and places of Retreats and Pilgrimage only – and in empty rituals!
The final flourish! “I see the U.N.s Resolution, as an opportunity to rekindle the legacy of our original “worldview,” that remains in the DNA of all of us, before we alienated ourselves from Nature and from its Creator-God!
The last word! Indeed, indigenous people are often considered to be the best stewards of nature, and chatter and commune with the Beloved, as naturally as the thick, evergreen undergrowth of the flora and fauna of a tropical rain forest.
Leon Bent is an ex-Seminarian and studied the Liberal Arts and Humanities, and Philosophy, from St. Pius X College, Mumbai. He holds Masters Degree in English Literature and Aesthetics. He has published three Books and have 20 on the anvil. He has two extensively “Researched” Volumes to his name: Hail Full of Grace and Matrimony: The Thousand Faces of Love. He won The Examiner, Silver Pen Award, 2000 for writing on Social Issues, the clincher being a Researched Article on Gypsies in India, published in an issue of the (worldwide circulation) Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection, New Delhi. On April, 28, 2018, Leon received the Cardinal Ivan Dias Award for a research paper in Mariology.