Abstract:
This study convenes Indigenous voices from a grassroots educational project working through an immersion and bilingual school. Here, I examine the educational effort of an Indigenous cooperative for language revitalization. Tosepan Titataniske started Tosepan Kalnemachtiloyan (‘The school of All’ in Nahuat) as a critical response to the language shift that has long been present in the region, and the inequalities Indigenous children endure in the public education system. Tosepan Kalnemachtiloyan’s curriculum follows some seemingly simple guidelines: “Esta es una escuela indígena, campesina y cooperativa” [This is an Indigenous, farming, cooperative school].
Through a critical ethnography, I identified three central elements in a constant evolving interaction within the work of the Indigenous school. 1) The school’s language planning, 2) their work towards Yeknemilis (an Indi-genous nahuat concept meaning ‘vida buena’), and its decolonising resonances, and 3) the representation of Indigenous identity through the linguistic landscape. Despite the challenging context, these voices bring new echoes of the Indigenous language and culture. They have the potential to illuminate a way to support Indigenous bilingual schools in Mexico, and elsewhere. Through this study, I want to communicate what I have been able to see within Tosepan, and the future I have dared to imagine.