Heritage Voices · The Archaeology Podcast Network

Nuxawiš: unwilling to give up - Ep 87

·56 min·3 clips

Maura says anthropology and archaeology are “inherently extractive” and argues for renegotiated consent.

1. Heritage Voices episode 87 centers on Nuhawish, unwilling to give up, with Jessica Aquinto and Maura Sullivan talking about Chumash language work. 2. Jessica Aquinto introduces Maura Sullivan as an enrolled member of the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation, a linguist, craftsman, and sacred lands defender. 3. The episode asks how a Chumash language worker builds language use, archival access, and community support when elder-speaker access is limited. 4. Maura traces her start in 2010 to a buffet line at the California Department of Fish and Game and a friend named Gino Altamirano. 5. She explains that Gino pointed her toward Breath of Life, a California gathering for people without elder speakers who work with archives and recordings. 6. Maura says Breath of Life taught her the names of linguistic subfields, including phonetics, phonology, syntax, morphology, pragmatics, and semantics. 7. She describes learning that linguistics had to be learned as its own language before she could read Chumash materials. 8. Maura calls herself a “Breath of Life success story” and says the in-person energy of language workers matters. 9. She says her dissertation studied archives and access, but her real focus became what it takes to get people using their languages every day. 10. Maura says sustained archival research can be a legitimate way to learn language when immersion and fluent speakers are not available. 11. She describes making lino cuts by choosing one word, carving it, looking at it, and talking about it as part of language learning. 12. She gives the example “Ushk Alish,” which she says means strength. 13. Maura says language buddies, voice memos, and photo exchanges with her mother help keep language practice ordinary and social. 14. She names the Language Net as a pre-Zoom project she helped start to connect language workers who often feel isolated. 15. Maura says meeting the Comanche language worker for the Predator movie was exciting because it made Native languages visible. 16. She says the International Conference on Minoritized Languages in Carmarthen, Wales, changed how she thinks about infrastructure and language rights. 17. Maura points to the Norwegian Language Act, Basque in Spain and France, Hawaiian language use in courts, and California’s over 100 languages as concrete policy examples. 18. The conversation is conversational and reflective, with Jessica asking follow-up questions and Maura shifting between policy, craft, and community practice. 19. People working in Indigenous language revitalization, archives, or university programs would likely get the most from this episode. 20. Listeners wanting entertainment without language-policy detail or archival ethics may skip it.

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