Teaching Tariana, an endangered language from north-west Amazonia

Abstract

Tariana is an endangered language spoken by about one hundred people in a remote area of northwest Amazonia, Brazil. The language is spoken in a fascinating area where one can only marry someone who speaks a different language and who belongs to a different ethnic group. Tariana is being rapidly displaced by an unrelated language, Tucano. Plans to implement teaching Tariana in the secondary school in Iauaretê, a local mission center, started to take shape in 1999, several years after the author began her fieldwork on this language. In June 2000, a workshop on Tariana literacy was held, with over three hundred participants, having different levels of competence. The paper describes the ups and downs of the workshop, the ways in which pedagogical materials were worked out, and what problems the organizers had to confront.