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The common narrative about signing in North America starts in 1817 when Thomas Gallaudet and Laurent Clerc founded a school for the Deaf in Hartford, Connecticut, providing the birthplace for American Sign Language. But long before ASL emerged, Indigenous peoples had been signing here for generations. Hand Talk, the collective term for Indigenous signed languages of North America, is used by both deaf and hearing members of Indigenous communities across the continent. The goal of this article is to raise awareness of Hand Talk, and to encourage individuals to share their knowledge of Hand Talk in contexts where they previously did not. By making Hand Talk a part of our shared understanding of signing in North America, we will improve opportunities for language reclamation efforts and repair the history of signing that is rooted in this land.
Details
Residential Schools;
Grandparents;
Special Schools;
Language Dominance;
Racial Identification;
Phonology;
American Sign Language;
Bilingualism;
Land Settlement;
Navajo;
Navajo (Nation);
Compulsory Education;
English;
Tribes;
Language Usage;
Deafness;
Signs;
Indigenous Knowledge;
Native Language;
Family (Sociological Unit);
Sign Language;
Higher Education
1 is a practicing ASL-English interpreter in New York. They received a bachelor's degree in Signed Language Interpreting and a master's degree in Linguistics from the University of New Mexico where they studied ASL, Hand Talk, and linguistic bias with the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab.
2 is an undergraduate student at the University of New Mexico, majoring in Signed Language Interpreting. She works with the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab doing signed language research, specifically working with Indigenous signed languages such as Hand Talk
3 is an undergraduate student in the Signed Language Interpreting Program with a minor in Navajo at the University of New Mexico. She works as a research assistant for the Indigenous Child Language Research Center and the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab, where she works respectively with Navajo child language acquisition and Hand Talk research
4 is professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics at the University of New Mexico, and co-PI with Melvatha Chee and Naomi Shin of the Lobo Language Acquisition Lab (lobo-language.unm.edu). Her research investigates language acquisition and processing in the visual modality, with a particular focus on bilingualism in the Deaf community