A UBC Okanagan professor will lead the university's a summer Indigenous cultural exchange program to Mexico focused on the Mayan language.
According to Dana Lowton, the assistant director of Go Global at UBCO, Dr. Monica Good will take students on an exchange program to Mexico this summer. The exchange will take place in the Yucatan peninsula from August 7–27 and will provide students an opportunity to learn and engage with Mayan language and culture.
The program comes after UBCO delayed the launch of its Indigenous Go Global program as the leading faculty member will be away — which was scheduled to start by summer 2023. Lowton said the program will start next summer in Australia with a new faculty member.
In an interview with The Ubyssey, Good, a professor in Spanish and world literature, said she wanted to create a course that introduced students to the Indigenous language in a way that emphasized its descriptive nature.
To do this, she said she is collaborating with local linguists who are working on the revitalization and strengthening of Maya communities.
“I was trying to come up with ways that we can integrate all the knowledge embedded in Indigenous languages,” she said.
The course will be taking place in Izamal and will include a visit to San Jose Oriente, a 100-person speaking Maya community. She said this will be a chance for students to put their knowledge to use communicating with locals.
Good said there are not a lot of summer institutes that offer for Mayan languages: only one offered at UBCO and another at Duke University.
“It is actually a big deal that we are able to offer this seminar, and that we are able to bring students to the peninsula of Yucatan,” she said.
Indigenous students will be given priority during the application process, Good said. “The hope is to have more Indigenous students to have this rich conversation about how territory affects language and how language shapes everything around us.”
Mason Harrison, a third-year languages major applying to the program, said he was eager to apply based on his interest in language revitalization. He said he was most looking forward to “seeing what tools are utilized in Mexico, and if those are also applicable to language revitalization here in BC.”
Good said the program was significant in its relation to reclamation and reconciliation at UBCO.
“It really locates UBC at a place where it's fulfilling a lot of the commitments to Indigenous communities. Not only here locally, by inviting Indigenous students, but also by collaborating with Indigenous students in Mexico.”
The headline of this article was updated at 4:42 p.m. on Thursday, February 16. A previous version incorrectly said this was UBCO's first-ever Indigenous cultural exchange program, which is not the case. The Ubyssey regrets this error.
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