Endangered Ecologies?: Undoing Linguistic and Environmental Oppression in the Western Amazon

by Anthropology

Lecture Open to Faculty/Staff Open to Students Open to the Public

Thu, Apr 17, 2025

3 PM – 4:15 PM EDT (GMT-4)

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Flyer for Endangered Ecologies?: Undoing Linguistic and Environmental Oppression in the Western Amazon

What is the relationship between linguistic and environmental change? By exploring the ways that settler colonialism has disrupted ecologies—natural, social and linguistic—in the Ecuadorian Amazon this talk reframes the agentless process of "language endangerment" as a form of settler colonial oppression. Surprisingly, the top-down imposition of the standardized form Unified Kichwa in bilingual education programs is also experienced as a form of oppression, which is driving language change. In turn, the ways Amazonian Kichwa activists and audiences engage with community media suggest new modalities for language reclamation, which look beyond language, to include embodied practices and environmental knowledge.

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Speakers

Georgia Ennis

Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology

Western Carolina University

https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgia-ennis-38095738/

Dr. Georgia Ennis is a linguistic anthropologist and an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology of Western Carolina University, where she directs the Multimodal Ethnographic Learning and Design (MELD) Lab. She is the author of Rainforest Radio: Language Reclamation and Community Media in the Ecuadorian Amazon (2025, University of Arizona Press). Her current research ranges from Indigenous Amazonian engagements with social media to the role of mutual aid in Appalachian disaster recovery.

https://www.georgiaennis.com/

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Anthropology | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, Environmental Studies, Anthropology (OWNER), Lectures and Concerts Committee

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