Ever since I first read “The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to keep our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds” by Anton Treur (pronounced troy-er) on suggestion of a close friend. I was so enamoured with this idea of how learning one’s own language can be a powerful as well as a decolonizing and healing act that I might have probably been influenced into joining the one year Post Graduate Diploma in Mising language at Dibrugarh University.
Anton is a fellow indigenous Ojibwe academic and writer from America who studied at Princeton University, with the aim of pursuing law and probably entering American politics. However, he gives up all of this in the pursuit of learning the language of his people, learning the ways of his ancestors and getting initiated into the Medicine dance (the primary religious society of the Ojibwe people). Well, I did not really give up anything, I just joined Mising classes. Even though we spoke our AnekéAgom (mother tongue) in our homes. I was not really fluent in it because we grew up in an environment where Mising was not spoken much. I therefore wanted to be fluent and well-versed in the language that my mother dreams in. I have also always been fascinated by how fluent Mising speakers could play around with words twisting and twirling them to one’s wishes. All these factors acted as a push factor for me to learn Mising.
It has just been a couple of months learning Mising language but it has opened up a whole new horizon of knowledge that exists in the community that all of us students, researchers, and community members really need to spend a bit more of our time scratching the surface of. For instance, I for a fact did not know that our language is estimated to be around 2000 years old (Zhang et al. 2020). I cannot fathom but only wonder how it might have been possible for our people to cross ravaging rivers, huge mountains covered with dense foliage of prickly, poisonous plants, killer wildlife always out on the prowl to kill and then to arrive at the plains and to have it passed onto us as oral histories. Ours is truly a story of resilience but let us not take solace in this fact alone rather open our eyes to the pressing issues of flood-induced displacement, chronic poverty, alcoholism, and losing one’s sense of identity that the community currently faces.
There is also a very strong need to decolonize and deconstruct many of the ideas on how Misings as a community had been written about in both colonial and in the present times. It should be like how Linda Tuhiwai Smith, professor of indigenous studies, has put forward, in her book “Decolonizing Methodologies Research and Indigenous Peoples”, that indigenous peoples should articulate their own indigenous research agenda. Mising’s as a community should also articulate research agendas which are centred to them and to the issues that they face and also go on to establish new interdisciplinary centres of studies.
It is my assumption that the root cause of the issues that the community faces is in some way related to the issue of language loss and revitalization of our indigenous languages can be the first step to help us solve most of the issues that we currently face. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) back in 2011 had brought out a report titled Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. Mising language herein had been flagged as ‘definitely endangered’ which meant that the language is no longer learned as the mother tongue or being taught in our homes. Mising language falls under the Eastern Tani branch of the Tani group of Tibeto-Burman languages. The Tani languages are spoken by indigenous people of Arunachal Pradesh and northern Assam, including the Adi (many subtribes), Nyishi(ng)-Bangni, Hill Miri (Charak), Tagin, and Apatani tribes of East Kameng, Lower Subansiri, Upper Subansiri, West Siang, East Siang, and Dibang Valley districts of Arunachal Pradesh, as well as the Mising people of Assam (Sun 2004). There are at least ten regional varieties of Mising: Pagro, Délu, Sa:yang, Mo:ying, Oyan, Dambug, Samuguriya, Bebejiya, Bongkual, Bihiya, and Tamar out of which the last three groups have largely adopted Assamese (an Indo-Aryan language) in preference to Mising for the majority of language situations (Doley & Post, 2012). If we examine closely languages are not simply a means of communication, they are one of the strongest links to connect to one’s people. Connecting with the language means connecting with our ancestors, to the land and to authentic indigenous knowledge.
Mising people throughout history have maintained their distinctive sense of identity despite being surrounded by regional hegemons such as the Ahoms in medieval times. The fact that our language continues to survive and continues to be spoken till today is a testament of this fact. It is not only a matter of pride alone, Existing research has shown how languages remain core to a community’s identity, how it connects present to past generations and how language loss can also have an impact on the community’s resilience. Existing studies of indigenous people both in Canada and the U.S have shown how indigenous communities with high rates of language loss may experience higher rates of school dropouts and higher rates of youth suicide (Hallett 1995). On the other hand, indigenous communities with strong links to its language shows lesser suicide rates over time (Hallet, Chandler and Lalonde 2007). For communities like the Misings our languages are not simply a means of communication. They are archival repositories of our existence, songs of our ancestors and for a people with no sense of written history. Languages can often help us in reconstructing their prehistory as has been done by some linguists such as Dr. Mark Post who studies the Tani languages of which Mising forms a crucial part (Post 2022).
Our language is what has really sustained and defined us for a long time and therefore the revitalization of our indigenous language becomes crucial to our identity and to our sovereignty. Language revitalization is not only a matter of spiritual, moral, social and political awakening of our society but it can also generate massive employment opportunities. Misings might have the largest population numbers among the Tani groups, but the level of language loss and the decline of the use of language is also most prevalent among us. Mere declaration of Mising medium schools and just one Diploma programme at Dibrugarh University which even though commendable is survived by a very small group of people with love for the language. We have to transform this love of the language into a movement for which we will need funding, more schools, better leadership to guide our people, more books written in Mising containing our stories, our tales, and a dictionary containing words of all the Mising dialects not only of Pagro speakers. For us, Mising’s we have only just started on this path of revitalizing our language, there still is a long way ahead for us to imagine a day when we will have a PhD program in Mising. Many of us might still question even our own people that what is the point in learning Mising when it cannot even guarantee a job, I think just learning the language itself gives a sense of who you are and where you come from and there is no stopping a person who knows where he or she comes from. In the Mising language program at the university, there is a rule that when you come on Wednesdays you have to come to classes wearing your traditional attire. There is a certain kind of unexplainable feeling of happiness when you come to class that day all decked up in your mibugaluk and dokné and the ladies wrapped in their colourful ege gasor. For me this remains the highlight of our program and in certain ways it reflects who we are: colourful, diverse and peace-loving people.
References
Treuer, A. (2020). The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds. Minnesota Historical Society Press.
Zhang, H., Ji, T., Pagel, M., & Mace, R. (2020). Dated phylogeny suggests early Neolithic origin of Sino‑Tibetan languages. Scientific Reports, 11(Article no: 20792). //doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-77404-4
Moseley, C. (2012). THE UNESCO ATLAS OF THE WORLD’S LANGUAGES IN DANGER: CONTEXT AND PROCESS[The paper demonstrates the enduring importance of language mapping for scholars, speech communities and the wider public.]. WORLD ORAL LITERATURE PROJECT University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies : research and indigenous peoples. Bloomsbury Academic.
Sun, J. T.S. (2004). TANI LANGUAGES. In R. J. LaPolla & G. Thurgood (Eds.), The Sino-Tibetan Languages (pp. 456-466). Taylor & Francis.
Doley, S. K., & Post, M. W. (2012). Classifiers in Mising. In North East Indian Linguistics – Vol. 4 (pp. 1-31). Cambridge University Press India Private Limited (24 January 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/UPO9789382264521.014
Hallet, D., Chandler, M. J., & Lalonde, C. E. (2007). Aboriginal language knowledge and youth suicide. Cognitive Development, 22(3), 393-399. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cogdev.2007.02.001
Post, M. W. (2022). On Reconstructing Ethno-linguistic Prehistory: The Case of Tani. In “Crossing Boundaries: Tibetan Studies Unlimited” (pp. 311-340). Prague: Academia Nakladatelství.
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