Strengthening the Literacy of an Indigenous Language Community: Methodological Implications of the Project Čyeti čälled anaraškielân, 'One Hundred writers for Aanaar Saami'

Abstract

Aanaar Saami literacy is weaker than majority languages, in the sense that reading and writing Aanaar Saami is less common. In order to strengthen literacy, we argue for an approach that represents a methodology for participatory research from a community and from an in-group perspective. We also discuss the implications this has for indigenous research. The article presents a strategy for producing new readers and writers, both native and non-native. Whereas the language revitalisation process of the last decades has successfully created new speakers in the younger and middle generations, literacy is still lagging behind, thus we prioritize strengthening literacy. The strategy, called Čyeti čälled, is a set of actions taken to encourage people to write, creating new domains for writing and supporting people in their writing processes. We argue that in order to succeed, revitalisation needs a pluralistic approach, including the involvement of all generations and the inclusion of both spoken and written language.