Advocacy

Since 2012, the Endangered Alphabets Project has been advocating for minority cultures the world over by establishing contacts in minority cultures, promoting and publicizing their scripts, and making games and educational materials for use in homes and schools.

Here is a page from a six-language children’s picturebook dictionary, possibly the first of its kind in the world, we created and published (in collaboration with the non-profit Our Golden Hour) for Indigenous mother-tongue schools in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh.

Our experiences in South Asia led to the creation of a similar publication much closer to home — an illustrated dictionary for the Abenaki, the ancestral people of northern New England and southern Quebec.

Especially on the U.S. side of the border, the Abenaki have suffered such persecution and marginalization their language has been categorized as “highly endangered.” They were not officially recognized by the state of Vermont, their history, language and culture were not taught in schools or in higher education, and in fact most people had no idea of their existence.

With the support of a Lake Champlain Watershed grant, we collaborated with the tribal linguist and tribal educators to publish a dictionary that also acted as a visual introduction to Abenaki culture and way of life.

This advocacy work was backed up by a series of carvings in Abenaki (using a font designed by the Alphabets in conjunction with an Abenaki team) for tribal centers in Vermont and New York. A carving saying “People of the Dawn Lands” — the Abenaki name for themselves — was presented to the state’s Lieutenant-Governor and became the impetus for the establishment of the first-ever display about the Abenaki in the Vermont State House.

In addition to these activities we have created or supported fundraisers to benefit the publication of an illustrated children’s dictionary in Nubian, the digitization of the Chakma script, and the development of digital fonts and keyboard software for the Beria script of the Zaghawa people in Chad and South Sudan.

We have also acted as a resource to connect representatives of dozens of scripts with valuable contacts who are able to provide services such as font design, digitization, fundraising, and Braille editions of their script.

Other cultures/languages/scripts supported by the Endangered Alphabets include:

Adlam
Ainu
Amazigh
Balinese
Bassa
Buginese
Cham
Cherokee
Coptic
Cree
Dayak
Eskayan
Focurk
Gurung
Hmong
Inuktitut
Javanese
Kalmyk
Karen
Luo
Mandaean
Neapolitan
Nepalese
Ojibwe
Okinawan (Ryukyuan)
Rohingya
Santali
Sora
Sundanese
Sylheti
Syriac
Tai Dam
Tai Tham
Tibetan
Vai
Welsh
Wolof
Yi