This past August, ALDS PhD students Rebekah Ingram and Adam Stone, and Linguistics professor Kumiko Murasugi journeyed to the University of Iceland, Reykjavík to participate in the 2018 Foundation for Endangered (FEL), Endangered Languages and the Land: Mapping Landscapes of Multilingualism. This annual conference is organized each year by FEL in a different capital city to serve as a meeting place for Indigenous activists, scholars, and those involved in language documentation and revitalization efforts. This year, not only were we able to take advantage of the long Icelandic summer days, but also the first full week without rain of the entire summer.
This year’s theme was particularly relevant for the students, their advisor, Dr. Erik Anonby, and Dr. Murasugi in that it coincides with the theme of a forthcoming volume edited by Dr. Anonby and Murasugi as well as Dr. Fraser Taylor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Science, entitled Further Developments in the Theory and Practice of Cybercartography, to which all have contributed, and which is due out later this year.
The conference was opened by former Icelandic president and UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for languages Vigdís Finnbogadóttir and Iceland’s First Lady, Canadian Eliza Reid. Rebekah gave a talk based on the preliminary analysis of her dissertation data involving the mapping of Haudenosaunee place names, while Adam introduced a new Structured Observation Survey tool he is currently developing that aims to systematically compare linguistic maps to one another. Dr. Murasugi presented her work on the definition of language maps in the context of her ongoing project, the Atlas of the Inuit Language in Canada and later presented a paper on her joint with with Dr. Anonby on the Nunaliit Atlas Framework.
The conference was a great opportunity for the students to network with those working in Indigenous language education and on documentation initiatives, as well as students like ourselves who are also working within these fields. Though the conference ran on a tight schedule, we did find time to unwind: the organizers went above and beyond in their duties to ensure that we got to bask in the steaming geothermal waters of the Blue Lagoon, shiver atop a glacier glazed with volcanic ash, and watch puffins launch themselves clumsily off of the cliffs of Vik.
