Warlance Chee (Part 1): Fledging Speakers of Diné Bizaad from the Nest!

Create in your mind an image of a parent bird feeding its babies mouth-to-mouth and you have an apt metaphor for the concept of a human language nest. In a language nest, adults who are fluent in a language that is experiencing a steep decline in the number first language speakers, surround the youngest speakers in the community with the language, all the while engaging these young speakers in culturally meaningful  practices. Warlance Chee is a Navajo language and culture teacher and one of the founders of Saad K’idilyé, an urban language nest in Albuquerque, where babies—some even still in the womb—are surrounded Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language, spoken by adults fluent in the language. Saad K’idilyé means “the planting of the language” in Diné Bizaad, which is yet another apt metaphor for the link between language and culture, as the planting of corn and other crops at the school represents some of the traditional activities that link Diné Bizaad to Navajo culture. Listen as Warlance explains the founding of the Saad K’idilyé, how it has grown over the last three years, and how it hopes to expand in the future. We dedicate this episode to the late Lois M. Meyer, a long-time professor at the University of New Mexico, whose life work involved the establishment of language nests in indigenous communities in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. 

For more about Saad K'idilyé, visit: https://www.saadkidilye.org