Indigenous Languages Week Celebration at Penn

Indigenous Languages Today: Celebration Week at Penn

Academic Symposium: October 26th
Cultural Activities: October 26th – 31st.

University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA
Events free, open to the public
(some activities require RSVP)

The United Nations declared 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages and we are happy to join this commemoration. The Quechua Language Program and the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania are partnering to organize a week of events that promote indigenous language writers and indigenous language use in the Americas, with a special focus on Quechua (South America) and Zapotec (Central America).

La Organización de las Naciones Unidas ha declarado el 2019 como el año internacional de las Lenguas Indígenas y estamos contentos de sumarnos a esta celebración. El programa de Quechua y la centro Kelly Writers House de la Universidad de Pensilvania organizarán una serie de evento para promover escritores y el uso de las lenguas de las Américas, con una especial atención en Quechua (Sudamérica) y Zapoteco (Centroamérica).

IMPORTANT: All activities are open free and open to the public. Some of them might require registration in advance. 

If you are a college student apply to our Travel Award funds to attend Penn’s Indigenous Languages week celebration.

Week Events (Preliminar Program)

  • Saturday, October 26th:

9:00am to 5pm: Symposium Indigenous Languages Today
Location: Different venues within the university
Open to the public (Registration for the Symposium is required)
Symposium program, RSVP and info

  • Film screening of “Mother Tongue” Q&A with director Gabina Funegra

The documentary chronicles Gabina’s search for her indigenous roots through the story of Quechua- the Inca language. Gabina uses participatory visual ethnography to explore the state of Quechua worldwide as well as strategies for its revival and maintenance. Quechua is now being promoted in some of the greatest cities of the world, including Cusco, Paris, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

  • Guest speaker: Diego Tituaña

Diego Tituaña, a Kichwa Otavalo from Ecuador, is a diplomat of the Ecuadorian Foreign Service. He has served at the Permanent Mission to the United Nations since 2014 and has been in charge of human rights, disarmament, and international security agendas. Mr. Tituaña has multilateral experience in the promotion and protection of the rights of indigenous peoples. He was the Facilitator for the United Nations Resolution on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples from 2014 to 2019. Under his leadership, the United Nations started two important actions for the indigenous peoples of the world:  the process of enhancing their participation at the United Nations and the Proclamation of 2019 as the International Year of Indigenous Languages.

5:15pm. Andean Music Concert by Kuyayky
Irvine Auditorium (34th Street and Spruce St, Philadelphia, PA 19104) – No RSVP required

Kuyayky is one of the most popular and newly influential bands in Andean music. The band has contributed to the prominence and revival of huayno music and Quechua traditional music from the central Peruvian Andes

 

11:00 AM:  Tour at the New gallery of MesoAmerica.
Sign up here for the Meso American Gallery tour at the Penn Museum

 

  • Monday, October 28th
    Location: Different venues within the university

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Speak the Language of your grandmother!
Location: Kelly Writers House
Please sign up for a 5-minute slot to speak/read the language of your ancestry or share with us a word/expression that you would recall as a valuable memory to you. We want to record as many languages as possible from across the world, especially languages indigenous to the Americas. Open studio time.
Sign up sheet for a 5-minute time slot  

3:00pm – 4:30pm. Andean Textiles and Clothing with the Quechua Class. Location: Penn Museum  Attendees will be able to interact with articles from the Penn Museum’s collection. It will be a great opportunity since these artifacts are currently not on public display.  Sign up here to visit the Andean Collection at the Penn Museum 

5:00pm – 6:00pm Book Presentation: “Los Virajes del Quipu” by Alberto Valdivia. Location: Williams Hall, 5th Floor (Cherpack Seminar Room).
No RSVP is required.

“Los virajes del Quipu” analyzes the formation of heterotopias (discursive spaces that are somehow disturbing, intense, incompatible) and how they build up ideologies of resistance from the Andes, in tension with Western society. Book Presentation will be in Spanish. Presentación del libro será en Español.

 

  • Tuesday, October 29th
    Location: Kelly Writers House

2:00 PM – 4:00 PM: Speak the Language of your grandmother! Please sign up for a 5-minute slot to speak/read the language of your ancestry or share with us a word/expression that you would recall as a valuable memory to you. We want to record as many languages as possible from across the world, especially languages indigenous to the Americas. Open studio time. Location: Kelly Writers House
Sign up sheet for a 5-minute time slot  

4:00-5:00pm Explore Khipus and numbers with the Quechua class. Location: Penn Museum  Attendees will be able to interact with Andean Khipus from the Penn Museum’s collection. It will be a great opportunity since these artifacts are currently not on public display. RSVP here

6:00 PM – 7:15 PM:
Quechua Writers: Pablo Landeo-Muñoz and Irma Alvarez-Ccosco, a reading and conversation. Register here

Pablo Landeo-Muñoz is a Peruvian award-winning writer, translator, and teacher of language and literature.  He is currently a Quechua professor at INALCO in Paris, and director of the literary magazine Atuqpa Chupan (“The fox’s tail” in Quechua), which is published annually and written entirely in Quechua. In 2011, his collection of poems Los hijos de Babel appeared in Spanish. He published a collection of stories from Huancavelica in Quechua Ayacucho under the title Wankawillkain 2013, complemented by translations into Spanish and a study in Quechua. His novel Aqupampa won 2018 Peru’s National Prize of Literature in the category of Indigenous Languages.

Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco is a Quechua poet and language activist from Haquira, in Peru’s Apurímac region. She is a former fellow of the Artist Leadership Program at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. In 2018 she presented her first short-film Runasimpi Qillqaspa, about the efforts to promote literacy among Quechua native speakers in the Andes. Additionally, she has been involved in projects about the use of Quechua language in radio, software, and programmers in Peru and the United States.

7:15 PM – 8:00 PM: Reception

 

  • Wednesday, October 30th
    Location: Kelly Writers House

12:00 – 1:30 PM: Lunch rountable: What does it mean to reclaim a language? Participants: Stephanie Mach (Diné/Navajo), Janice Llamoca (Quechua), Moderator: Connor Beard (Lumbee Tribe) .  Sign up here

6:00-6:15pm PM: Nahuatl poetry and Aztec dances at Kelly Writers House

6:15 – 7:40 PM: Zapotec short-films: Dizhsa Nabani —  Lengua Viva — Living Language, screening and discussions.
Presented by Felipe H. Lopez, Brook Lilehaugen, Eddie Oggborn, Sabea Evans, and Kathryn Goldberg. RSVP here

Dizhsa Nabani is a documentary film series, supported by DocuLab at Haverford College. They explore the relationship between Zapotec identity, language, and daily life. The series traces efforts of San Jerónimo Tlacochahuaya (México) community members, including farmers, artesans, and public officials, to sustain and re-invigorate their Zapotec language.

 

 

  • Thursday, October 31st
    Location: Kelly Writers House

11:30am-1pm: Informal Lunch with Pablo Landeo-MuñozInformal Lunch with Pablo Landeo-Muñoz, Quechua writer and Peru’s National Literature Prize winner. Moderator: Marco Avilés.
Sign up, here