Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson I. Course design A.

Needs assessment

1. This is a seminar lesson for students in AL5317-Language Documentation at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics (GIAL) in Dallas, TX. Accordingly, the students will be of both genders and a range of ages; the likely median age is somewhere around 30. 2. This seminar forms part of the new unit on Missionaries and Endangered Languages, which seeks to critically examine the role of missionaries in both language endangerment and language preservation. It is for this reason that the students will have gathered for this particular seminar lesson. 3. In this lesson, the students hope to gain familiarity with the issues attendant upon missionary involvement with endangered languages as well as with the principal critiques and criticisms of that involvement leveled in secular academic circles. 4. The students will accomplish this goal by participating in a role play activity, with some students playing the roles of missionaries and representatives of missionary organizations and others, those of critics of missionaries within secular academia. Still others will play the roles of business and governmental interests in areas of the world where there is great linguistic diversity as well as readily extractable natural resources. 5. Prior preparation assumed: a. The students will have been enrolled in the Language Documentation course (AL5317) up to this point and will have covered the basic modules, including, but not limited to, the endangerment crisis, moral imperatives, globalization, and ethics. b. The students will arrive in class having read a representative subset of the articles and papers on the recommended reading list (Appendix). When that assignment is given prior to the seminar meeting, the students will be informed of the expectation that they engage in role play during the next class. This way, they can begin thinking of how they will represent the various sides of the debate during the role play lesson. B. Outcomes 1. Students will be familiar with the high-level issues surrounding missionary involvement with endangered languages, to include both potential negative impacts (i.e. spread of disease, acculturation, globalization) and positive impacts (i.e. increased literacy, language revitalization programs, archived databases of language data). 2. Students will be familiar with and be able to dissect the most common criticisms leveled at missionaries and missionary organizations active with endangered languages, to

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson include the use of outdated linguistic theory, failure to appropriately publish findings and data, failure to empower native communities to make an informed choice concerning their own destinies, spreading of literacy that acts as a bridge to languages of wider communication (LWCs) and thus as a wedge to spread the LWC at the expense of minority languages, and encouraged abandonment of traditional cultural practices deemed at odds with evangelical Christian values. 3. Students will gain a fuller appreciation of the multi-faceted nature of the complex problem of missionary involvement with endangered languages. 4. Attainment of these outcomes will be measured by the quality of student responses during role play and to the video observation that concludes the module. The emphasis will be on whether the students show that they can fully identify the issues involved and discuss them from multiple sides.

5. The time limit for this module is two hours (the length of the combined class meeting time for the Language Documentation course when taught in a single session), including welcome, introduction, ice-breaker, warm-up, presentation, application activity, and final debriefing. II. Seminar design A. Welcome and introductory activities 1. Greet participants as they enter. Time limit: end when appointed time for seminar arrives. 2. Ice-breaker: Hand out to students notecards on which are written individual bits of information regarding endangered languages (one piece of information per card, one card per student). One of each set of cards contains the name of an endangered language that is identified on other cards in the set by relevant facts about it, such as remaining speaker population, geographic area where spoken, interesting grammatical structures, etc. Instruct the students to circulate around the room and find their matches. In order to do so, they will have to talk to the other students and make introductions if necessary. Tell the students they must not only decide who their matches are, but also discuss why and defend their choices. If they do not know the students with whom they are matched, they must make the necessary introductions. Once the students think they have made their matches, each group will address the class to reveal the information on their cards, why they think they are matched, and who the members of their group are. Debrief the class by asking if anyone has had experience with any one of the endangered languages on the cards, or with another, and have any students who answer affirmatively share their experiences and impressions with the group. Time limit: 15 minutes.

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson 3. Elicit from students their expectations for the seminar and write on the board. 4. State the objectives and explain why the expectations will or will not be met. 5. Review the agenda for the seminar.

6. Review housekeeping items such as location of bathroom facilities and break timing if needed. Time limit for items 3 through 6: 15 minutes. B. Warm-up: Story 1. Learning Task Structure: Socratic or class-meeting. The structure will ideally begin by following the Socratic model and then segue into a class-meeting task structure as the discussion grows and students begin responding to one another. 2. Instructor introduces story by reading the following: When the Texaco and Gulf oil companies, both now part of Chevron-Texaco, discovered commercial quantities of oil in the Ecuadorian Amazon in 1967, Ecuador was among the poorest Latin American countries. Exports of oil began in 1972 following the construction of a 313-mile pipeline to transport the crude to the Pacific coast. The ceremonial first barrel of oil was paraded through the streets of Ecuador's capital, Quito, as though it were a hero, in order to commemorate the beginning of the country's prosperity. Unfortunately, over the course of the next twenty years, the indigenous residents of the Ecuadorian Amazonian region known as El Oriente experienced devastation, not prosperity. The oil companies dumped highly toxic oil field brine known as "produced water" into an enormous number of unlined pits throughout the region. Though the practice was forbidden by federal law in the United States as early as 1979, it continued unabated in Ecuador, saving the companies as much as $3 per barrel of oil produced. The total of about 20 billion gallons of wastewater quickly leached into streams and rivers, rendering many completely unable to support life. The oil companies also deforested 2.5 million acres of rainforest in order to build platforms, roads, and towns to house workers. In addition, they spilled the estimated equivalent of two Exxon Valdez disasters' worth of oil across the land. Treated oil was even dumped on dirt roads for dust control. The areas affected by pollution from spills and discharges were mostl

entirely surrounded by outsiders, areas that represented but tiny fractions of their ancestral lands. Former employees of the oil enterprises testified that their companies dropped dynamite and bombs from helicopters in order to frighten the native inhabitants. As a result of the pollution and extreme reduction of their ranges, the indigenous groups became largely unable to sustain their ways of life or to meet the conditions necessary for mere survival (Kimlerling 1991; Kimerling 2006; Amazon watch, n.d.). There

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson sprang up alongside Texaco's first commercial oil field in the region. This claim, however, has been disputed r Ecuadorian and Colombian rubber collectors between 1877 and the 1920s (Wasserstrom et al. 2011). Either way, the people were ultimately victims of the same economically motivated violence that has too often accompanied the avarice of Western powers eager to exploit the natural resources of the developing world. In November 1993, the year after Texaco's contract with Ecuador expired, 74 named plaintiffs including 15 Quichua and

pollution from the Texaco-Gulf drilling operations. The plaintiffs filed suit in federal court in New York, the state in which Texaco had its then-headquarters in White Plains. Aguinda v. Texaco was the first environmental lawsuit ever brought by foreign plaintiffs in the U.S. alleging that an American company had violated the law of nations by causing pollution abroad. For years after the trial began, Texaco petitioned the court to order the case relocated to Ecuador. In 2002, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals granted just that, dismissing the case in the U.S. under the legal principle of forum non conveniens and ordering Texaco to submit to the jurisdiction of Ecuadorian courts and waive defense based on any statutes of limitations that expired between the time the lawsuit was originally filed and one year after the case's dismissal from U.S. federal court. In May 2003, 46 of the Aguinda plaintiffs plus two new individuals filed suit against what was by then Chevron-Texaco, the second largest energy company in the world after Exxon-Mobil, in the Superior Court of Justice of Nueva Loja (Lago Agrio), ground zero for Texaco's operations in Ecuador. In July of that same year, 90 plaintiffs selected by 31 Quichua and Huaorani communities, filed suit separately in the Superior Court of Justice of Te finding Chevron-Texaco at fault for the environmental and cultural devastation wrought in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Chevron immediately appealed the ruling, also filing suit in the U.S. and international tribunals to block the enforcement of the ruling. Because Chevron now has no assets in Ecuador, the Ecuadorian ruling would have to be enforced entirely abroad. Chevron even filed suit for racketeering and fraud against several of the Ecuadorian plaintiffs and their principal lawyer in the U.S., Steven Donziger. Despite the company's original petitions to have the case moved to Ecuador, Chevron-Texaco charged that the Ecuadorian legal process had been unfair and corrupt and the final ruling, fraudulent. In March 2011, a Manhattan judge ordered a halt to enforcement of the Ecuadorian court's ruling pending the outcome of these other cases. In January of 2012, an appeals court reversed that decision, removing the injunction against enforcement of the Ecuadorian ruling. On October 9, 2012, the United States Supreme Court announced that it would not consider Chevron's request that the injunction be reinstated (CNN 10 October 2012). Chevron-Texaco has long maintained that the bulk of the pollution in the Oriente stems from the unsafe practices of Ecuador's state-run oil company Petroecuador, which had been part of the consortium that drilled the area and took over from Texaco around 1990. 3. Instructor poses the following questions:

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson

a. Do you think Chevron-Texaco is responsible for what happened in Ecuador as described above? b. Do you think Chevron-Texaco should have to make reparations? c. What specifically did Chevron-Texaco do wrong, if anything? d. Why do you think representatives of the company acted the way they did? e. What do you think motivated the conflict between the company and native peoples in Ecuador? f. To what degree is the government of Ecuador responsible for what happened, if at all? e. To what degree are the indigenous peoples themselves responsible, if at all? h. What could indigenous peoples have done to protect themselves in this situation? i. What might you as a missionary have done to help mitigate the effects of this disaster? j. Do missionaries have a role to play in such conflicts? 4. Instructor interacts with student responses to keep conversation moving (Socratic) and encourages students to respond to one another (class-meeting). 5. Use a quick debriefing period to segue into main topic. 6. Time limit: 20 minutes. C. Lesson presentation 1. Teaching model: Role play. 2. Small group task structure. a. Within each group of no more than 6 students, divide roles equally so as to have one to two students representing the missionary interests, one to two representing the secular academics, and one to two representing other third parties like business interests, NGOs, or government. b. Keeping the groups small like this serves the dual purpose of ensuring that a greater percentage of the students have the opportunity to play more roles and directly interact with more points of view that are likely to be at odds with their own and helps alleviate the

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson pressures of stage fright often attendant upon such role play activities, especially with late teenagers and young adults. 3. Each group has the same scenario, which is as follows:

In the 1940s, missionaries from the World Bible Missions organization engaged a little-known people group that called themselves the Toraha in the Amazon jungle. When the first missionary couple, the Tyndales, arrived, the Toraha were some of the most violent people on earth, constantly engaged in internecine battles between rival clans and chiefs. They also suffered chronically from illnesses treatable with modern methods and antibiotics. The missionaries brought much-needed medical care, encouraged the Toraha to stop slaughtering one another, and initiated a building program resulting in a church, school, and medical center. TheTyndales began working with the Toraha language, creating a practical orthography, developing literacy materials, and teaching reading and writing. In the 1950s, while all this work was on-going, the National Oil Company struck an agreement with the government of the country in which the Toraha had their ancestral lands, to extract oil from the region. The company began moving into Toraha territory, intimidating the people off their land and degrading the environment in the exploitation of oil resources. The Tyndales interceded with the company to protect the area immediately around the central Toraha settlement and encouraged the increasingly literate Toraha (who could now also read the LWC since their practical orthography was modeled on it) to demand copies of deeds and other official government documents from the oil company before they would honor their demands. As a result, the efforts of the oil company began to be stymied in the area. Meanwhile, large numbers of the Toraha gave up their ancestral practices of fermentation, weapon-building, and sacrifices to animist gods and ancestors in order to accept Christianity. Now, in the modern day, grandchildren of the first Toraha to accept Christianity grow up speaking Toraha only at home to their aging parents. They operate in the LWC in most social domains. They do not know the traditional arts of their culture and regret that their grandparents made the decision to convert to Christianity and work with the Tyndales beginning in the 1940s. The oil boom in the area is now over, but the lasting effects of environmental degradation as a result of it remain. The Wycliffes, a young missionary couple, continue to work with the Toraha and a closely-related, though lesser evangelized people. Constance Johns, a professor of linguistics on the faculty of the University of Your State, has worked with the Toraha for the past decade. She opposes missionary involvement with the Toraha and points to the current regret among younger members of the tribe that they are losing or have lost tribal practices and traditions as evidence against missionary involvement in the region. At a regional conference to discuss the degradation of the environment activities and the effects it has had on the native peoples, Dr. Johns, the Wycliffes and representatives of the National Oil Company and the government of the Amazonian nation come together to discuss the issues and the road ahead, including possible sanctions against the oil company. 4. The students assume their roles in their groups and debate the issues a first time.

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson a. For this first enactment, either the instructor can assign roles or the students can pick for themselves which they would like to play. 5. After the first enactment, the class comes together in didactic task structure and the instructor leads a review of the role play through discussion and pointed questions of the groups.

6. Back in the small group structure, the students switch roles and reenact the scenario. a. This time, the role assignment should be automatic, such as Switch roles with the nearest person on your right who played a different role from you during the first enactment. This way, the likelihood that most or all of the students must play at least one role representing views at odds with their personal views is increased. 7. The class comes together again in didactic structure following the second enactment, and the instructor leads the class through analyzing the role play, writing key issues on the board as well as sample solutions proposed by the individual groups. 8. Time limit: 30 minutes. D. 10-minute break E. Application activity 1. Video observation and response (didactic task structure). 2. Students view a 5-10 minute clip from the documentary film Mysterious Mamberamo about a trek through Irian Jaya. The clip centers on an episode where the narrator discusses a tribal people who, according to the film-maker, were encouraged by missionaries to wear shorts and t-shirts but did not understand about keeping the shirts dry in such a humid climate. The people got sick and some died. 3. The following instructions are to be given to the students: View the video and consider these questions: 1) Assuming this report of missionary activity is accurate, do you support what the missionaries did? 2) What role would encouraging the people to wear Western clothes play in the missionaries goals? 3) How might this episode affect the vitality of the people group and their language? 4) What should the missionaries have done differently, if anything? 5) What is the most important concern for missionaries in such situations? 4. Debriefing activity: Once students have watched the video as a group and individually answered the questions and offered any additional comments they desired, the instructor elicits sample responses from the students (Socratic structure). Have the students share they ideas and feelings about the video (class meeting structure). 5. Time limit: 20 minutes.

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson F. Overall debriefing 1. Bring students back into Socratic task structure, discuss what was learned during the activity and role play. What new insights did the students gain, if any?

2. The instructor verifies the outcomes were achieved as the students demonstrate their thinking orally. 3. Time limit: 5 minutes. G. Evaluation 1. The instructor leads a short evaluation discussion with students. 2. The instructor asks: a. Were your expectations of the seminar met? b. What would you have liked to have learned but didnt? c. What was the most helpful thing you learned? d. Would you recommend this class to a friend? e. Please share comments about any aspect of the seminar. 3. Time limit: 5 minutes.

References
Amazon Watch. n.d.. ChevronToxaco: Clean up your toxic legacy in the Ecuadorian Amazon . Oakland, CA: Amazon Watch. CNN Wire Staff. 10 October 2012. Supreme Court won't consider blocking $18B judgment against Chevron. CNN . http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/10/world/americas/chevron-ecuador-lawsuit/index.html?iref=allsearch (accessed 12 October 2012). Kimerling, Judith. 1991. Amazon Crude. New York: National Resources Defense Council. Kimerling, Judith. 2006. Indigenous Peoples and the Oil Frontier in Amazonia: The Case of Ecuador, ChevronTexaco, and Aguinda v. Texaco. International Journal of Law and Politics 38(3):413-664. Wasserstrom, Robert, Susan Reider and Rommel Lara. 2011. Nobody Knew Their Names: The Black Legend of Tetete Extermination. Ethnohistory 58(3):421-444.

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson Appendix: Missionaries and Language Endangerment Reading List Pro:

Cahill, Michael. 2004. From endangered to less endangered: case histories from Brazil and Papua New Guinea. SIL. SIL Electronic Working Papers. This article examines various factors in the revitalization of several endangered languages of Brazil and Papua New Guinea in which the people were in imminent danger of dying out as a group. Among these factors were access to consistent medical care and a heightened self-respect. Frank, Paul. 2008. The Glory of God through the Peoples and Languages of the Earth. Unpublished. Diversity of languages and cultures is part of God's purpose and plan. Translating the scriptures into other languages is a sacred responsibility of Christians. Franklin, Karl J. The legacy of academic stories in Applied Linguistics. GIALens 6.1:114. This paper discusses the contributions SIL and GIAL have made to the study of storytelling and oral culture. Mifflin, Jeffrey. 2008. Language Reclamation 101 - Technology Review. Published by MIT. Technologyreview.com. This interesting report and the one that follows deal with a success story in modern language revitalization that would not have been possible at all but for a 17th century translation of the Bible into the Massachusetts or Wampanoag language. Mifflin, Jeffrey. 2008. Saving a Language - Technology Review. Published by MIT. Technologyreview.com. Naby, E. 2007. Saving Souls/Saving Languages: Writing Vernacular Aramaic. Working together for endangered languages: research challenges and social impacts: proceedings of the XIth FEL conference, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malysia, 26-28 October 2007, 141147. Bath, England: Foundation for Endangered Languages. Argues that an 1835 translation of the Bible by American Protestants into vernacular Aramaic effectively saved the language from extinction from the 1840s to today. Olson, Kenneth S. 2009. SIL International: An emic view. Language 85.646652. Quakenbush, J.S. 2007. SIL International and endangered Austronesian languages. Documenting and revitalizing Austronesian languages.4265. SIL International has been partnering with Austronesian language communities in language development for over fifty years. This paper briefly reviews that history, situates it in the current environment of international concern for the documentation and revitalization of endangered languages, and looks at ways in which SIL might assist endangered Austronesian language communities of today. Silverman, D.J. 2005. Indians, Missionaries, and Religious Translation: Creating Wampanoag Christianity in Seventeenth-Century Marthas Vineyard. William and Mary Quarterly.141174. Treats 17th century missionizing activity among the Wampanoag/Massachusett Indians and early literacy among the natives as a result of Bible translation. Svelmoe, William L. 2009. We do not want to masquerade as linguists: A short history of SIL and the academy. Language 85.629635. Not a pro viewpoint per se, but a good overview of the history and development of SIL and its mission, especially the roles of Townsend and Pike and the controversies in Latin America.

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson Con:

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Epps, Patience, and Herb Ladley. 2009. Syntax, souls, or speakers? On SIL and community language development. Language 85.640646. Contains notable criticisms of SIL for not publishing enough on the languages studied, SIL emphasis on community self-determination especially as regards decision to open community to missionary activity, cultural change as a result of discouragement of traditional practices. Epps, Patience. 2005. Language endangerment in Amazonia: the role of missionaries. Bedrohte Viefalt: Aspects of Language Death, ed. by Jan Wolgemuth and Tyko Dirksmeyer, 311327. Berliner Beitrge zur Linguistik. Berlin: Weissensee. This article examines language endangerment in the Rio Negro region of the northwest Brazilian amazon and determines that missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, have played a major role in exacerbating the problem. The author criticizes Protestant missionaries in particular for inexpert linguistic work and disingenuous as to their principal aim. Despite the overall critical tone, Epps does cite one example of a case where the efforts of Protestant missionaries help preserve a people and their language from extinction. Errington, J. 2004. Getting language rights, shifting linguistic traditions. Collegium antropologicum 28.4348. This is not really a piece about SIL, but it takes a dim view of SILs purpose and activities: see p. 46. Fast, Anicka. 2007. Managing Linguistic Diversity in the Church. Proceedings of LingO 2007.67. This piece deals with the ideology of missionaries and ways missionary emphasis on vernacular function to control native communities and their nascent churches. Handman, Courtney. 2009. Language ideologies, endangered languages, linguistics, and Christianization. Language 85.635639. Examines the impact of missionizing on language ideology and identity maintenance/shift. Interesting discussion on possible negative side to literacy development vis-vis speakers connection to an oral language tradition on pages 638-639. Landabaru, Jon. 1979. The double-edged sword: The SIL in Colombia. Survival International Review 27.5 8. This piece, written by a French linguist who had worked in Colombia, provides significant antiWycliffe/SIL fodder for David Stolls book listed below. Matras, Yaron. 2005. Language contact, language endangerment, and the role of the salvation linguist. Language documentation and description, ed. by P.K. Austin, 3:225251. London: SOAS. Schieffelin, B.B. 2002. Marking Time: The Dichotomizing Discourse of Multiple Temporalities. Current Anthropology 43.S5S17. This very interesting article investigates whether, as direct result of missionary activities in PNG, a groups very lexicon and mental conceptions of time have been irrevocably altered. Stoll, David. 1982. Fishers of men or founders of empire?: The Wycliffe Bible translators in Latin America. Zed Press. A book-length expos of Wycliffe/SIL, its history, mission, and methods. See especially chapter 8, pp. 249-59 including the quotes from Jon Landabaru for spirited criticism of SIL practices. For those who read Spanish, the entire book can be found online at the authors website (this link goes directly to chapter 8): http://www.nodulo.org/bib/stoll/ilv8c.htm. Also of interest is the authors professional page at Middlebury College in Vermont: http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/es/faculty/stoll/node/25831

Stephen Self LD5151 Cross-Cultural Teaching Seminar December 5, 2012 Seminar Lesson Something for both sides to consider:

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Fast, Anicka. 2007. Moral incoherence in documentary linguistics: theorizing the interventionist aspect of the field. CAMLING 2007, 6471. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Institute of Language Research (CILR).