Episode #92: The Language of Freedom
Most people would not regard a violent military coup as the best time to start an organization… but that's exactly what Katie Craig and her partners did!
Katie had worked with minority language communities around Myanmar for years, which has given her unique insight into the historical, cultural, and political challenges that such communities face. She has created educational courses and materials to help them keep their languages, cultures, and heritages alive. In a lively discussion, Katie shares her experiences working in the country, and her thoughts on the impact that the country’s complex, shifting political situation has on these minority language communities.
Katie’s interest in language began in her childhood, in Dallas, Texas, where she encountered a variety of immigrants, and was fascinated by the diversity of culture and language they represented. Then, while getting her Masters in linguistics, she happened to meet a number of Burmese refugees, so it was natural that she would channel her educational training towards that part of the world.
Once in Myanmar, Katie began working with various community groups who were trying to preserve their languages. Given the Burmanization policies of the government, both during military rule as well as during the democratic transition, this has been no easy task. One of the most serious battlegrounds has been the mandated use of Burmese in all public schools, which often goes hand-in-hand with the prohibition of ethnic language use in the classroom.
Katie emphasizes that language is more than simply a way of speaking, it’s also a way of being in the world, a major factor in one’s identity. “If you lose your language,” she says, “it's like losing yourself. You can feel like you're losing your agency, because you're losing your voice, sort of on a fundamental level. If you think about it, language is what makes us human, it's kind of this unique feature of humanity. It's how we move through the world. Everything goes through language. Every aspect of our life, every sector, every domain, uses language.”
Yet some in the majority language community view the wide linguistic diversity in Myanmar as a communication “problem” to be fixed by enforcing their own language as the country’s lingua franca, like is being done in its public schools. However, Katie views language diversity as an opportunity for learning. “I think often we see languages as sort of obstacles or barriers or problems,” she notes. “But really, they can be a huge resource! Having all this linguistic diversity means you'll have all these different perspectives and different ways of viewing the world, and different ways of navigating the world.” She stresses that her organization is not trying to challenge the supremacy of Burmese within the country, but to try to ensure that its instruction does not wipe out indigenous languages. Katie speaks passionately of the trauma that befalls a community when it loses its language.
Moreover, Myanmar has a very long history of violence and conflict with its ethnic minority/minority language communities. And as Katie explains, the majority language, Burmese, is probably associated by ethnic minority communities with the horrible events that have been perpetrated by the Burmese military; the identification of language with that oppression is acute. She gives a few examples; for example, right before one’s village is burned down, or before one sees their parents shot, or even before one is raped, the order to perpetuate that crime is given in that language. So trauma’s relationship to language conflict has two dimensions: when a community loses its own language, and being overwhelmed by the language of one’s oppressors. In Myanmar, Katie certainly has her work cut out for her!
Though language and identity are so interrelated, Katie stresses how they are not fixed entities, but rather change and evolve as people code-switch in different situations and environments, and social and political conditions change. So, while all people negotiate a variety of different yet intersecting identities, this dynamic is magnified and multiplied by those who speak more than one language. She notes, “We’re not static people… So I think that's kind of a myth that we can have this sort of very fixed linguistic identity or even a fixed sort of national identity.” Katie then describes another layer of complexity regarding the situation in Myanmar: it is not simply a matter of Burmese versus the ethnic languages, as each of the standard, generalized ethnic language categories, such as “Rakhine”, “Kachin”, and “Chin,” actually contain a variety of dialects. She says, "In Myanmar, it becomes more complicated when you will have more political representation if you identify with a larger group, or you will have more physical protection, quite literally, if you identify with a large group, especially if they have guns. And sometimes, you might want to identify with a certain group in order to disassociate with another group.”
For this reason, the job of classification involves a wider range of expertise than most typical, trained linguists possess. Identity is often rooted in temporary political or survival needs. And to make things more complicated still, some minority language communities groups in Myanmar still do not have their own formalized script, and might alternately use either Burmese or Roman characters depending on the context, and based on preferences in identity and alignment.
To help address these complex issues, Katie co-founded Myanmar Indigenous Community Partners (MICP), along with two Burmese PhD colleagues. Its mission statement reads: “Our mission is to see flourishing formal and informal education systems that put children first, that are rooted in the child’s own lived experience, and that promote a healthy sense of identity and self-worth in students, thereby preserving local languages and culture. Our goal is to equip local communities with what they need to improve education for their children so that they can fulfill their dreams for a brighter future.
As Katie is the one foreign member of the group, she makes sure to defer to her colleagues when dealing with sensitive issues, like the intersection between language, identity, and trauma. As she comments, “If you're an outsider, you can't make any decisions, you can just give your recommendations.”
Part of their work involves assisting peoples within Myanmar who have no written form of language to create one. After they get a basic structure codified, they then begin teaching that new form, and Katie has observed the sense of pride and validation that arises through this process. The work of MICP helps language minority groups not only preserve their language, but also their culture and identity along with it.