Investigating the efforts of the Kichwa of Tena, Ecuador to reverse
language shift to Spanish, this book examines the ways in which
Indigenous language can be revitalized and how creative bilingual forms
of discourse can reshape the identities and futures of local populations.
Based on deep ethnographic fieldwork among urban, periurban, and rural
indigenous Kichwa communities, Michael Wroblewski explores
adaptations to culture contact, language revitalization, and political
mobilization through discourse.
Expanding the ethnographic picture of native Amazonians and their
traditional discourse practices, this book focuses attention on Kichwas'
diverse engagements with rural and urban ways of living, local and global
ways of speaking, and Indigenous and dominant intellectual traditions.
Wroblewski reveals the composite nature of indigenous words and worlds
through conversational interviews, oral history narratives, political
speechmaking, and urban performance media, showing how discourse is a
critical focal point for studying cultural adaptation.
Highlighting how Kichwas assert autonomy through creative forms of selfrepresentation,
Remaking Kichwa moves the study of Indigenous
language into the globalized era and offers innovative reconsiderations of
Indigeneity, discourse, and identity.
Clearly written and engaging, this book brilliantly describes a plural
sociolinguistic world through the words and multi-generational
experiences of Tena Kichwa people. It shows how medicinal plants,
bilingual education, TV shows and beauty pageants - among other things -
are all part of the dynamism of ethnolinguistic identities in urban
Amazonia. Casey High, Senior
