From the Santa Fe Reporter:
Anton Treuer, who has worked with both the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe and indirectly with other tribes around the state, made technology a major part of his heritage language revitalization efforts.
He is a second-language learner of Ojibwe and an Ojibwe professor at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, where linguists, Native speakers and scholars use online classrooms and have compiled written and audio databases of the language.
Treuer says some pueblos around New Mexico have been hesitant to employ technology or haven't had the funds to do so.
"Some language groups have been very reluctant to embrace modern technologies and [COVID-19 is] maybe stirring the pot a little bit and forcing some who've been late or slow adopters to take advantage of technology," Treuer says. "I think ultimately, unless we're going to go Amish, so to speak, and try to wall our languages and cultures off at a certain point in time, we have to embrace all of these technological things."
Software and apps are among the most powerful tools to overcoming distance and time, as well as the loss of elders. For example, in Minnesota, Treuer is helping a tribe that counts only 25 speakers of its dialect. Members are collaborating to create a Rosetta Stone program.
"A lot of the barriers for programs include overcoming time, where you have a small number of speakers and there's been a lot of damage to a language-speaking community, overcoming space because people are spread out, not everyone has a fluent speaker they can talk to every day," Treuer says. "Technology can do that."