Developing Mobile Applications to Promote Linguistic Revitalization and Literacy in Indigenous Amazonian Languages

Ten years ago, seeing mobile phones or tablets in an indigenous Amazonian community would have been perceived as an anomaly. Today, however, there is a general trend to incorporate such technological devices into the everyday life of indigenous communities throughout the Amazon. Additionally, in response to the suspension of in-person schooling due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Education in Peru distributed tablets to most rural schools, unfortunately without installing bilingual materials on the tablets distributed to indigenous students. In 2022, in collaboration with Acate Conservation, members of what is now Chana developed two applications for the Iskonawa language. As part of this project, we will continue to develop applications for Iskonawa and implement applications for two new languages: Kakataibo and Amahuaca. Chana has a long history of scientific and social collaboration with the Kakataibo and Amahuaca peoples, who have expressed their desire to work within the framework of this mobile application development project in their languages. The mobile applications implemented under this project will be introduced in revitalization workshops, where team members will train speakers of different ages in their use and educational potential. These workshops, under the name "Escuelita," have proven to be valuable for language revitalization in the case of the Iskonawa people. Funded by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. Research Areas: Computational Linguistics, Databases, and Language Technologies; Linguistic Revitalization, Description, and Documentation of Endangered Languages.