The project Language, Music and Place in Délįnę, Northwest Territories, Canada develops an interdisciplinary approach towards language documentation in a broad perspective. Délįnę is a community at a critical threshold in that language use and transmission has declined over the past twenty years, and the language could easily cease to be spoken in a short time. The community is currently under enormous pressures of social and environmental change that will soon lead to qualitatively different conditions for understanding the language. At this time, the language is heard in the community, and variability continues to exist in the language, based in part on the different places of origin of different families. There is also an understanding in the community of what is happening in terms of declining language transmission, and a strong desire to reverse this. As the community makes the transition to self-government, there has been an increased interest in language documentation through stories, song, and concepts of place in order to better understand what Dene government means. Governance thus forms one focal point of this research. Complementing the focal point on governance, this project will involve development of an indigenous research methodology with respect to language research. We are particularly interested in the areas of variation, change and continuity in language, stories, song, and concepts of place as they relate to governance and land stewardship. Our approach will involve documentation with three groups of extended families or clans from distinct traditional land use areas across three or four generations, including archival materials and new materials from living family members. In addition, we propose to facilitate a dialogue with elder relatives from neighbouring communities with distinct dialects in order to understand the role that place of origin plays in variability. We focus on the collection of “rich” discourse through a variety of performance media. Annotated audio and video data will support the development of local educational material (including a language toolbox) as well as the establishment of community archives for traditional linguistic and cultural knowledge. The interdisciplinary research team brings together a diversity of community and academic expertise.
