Established in 2024, Indigenous Language Rights & Realities (ILR&R) is a formal academic publishing space led, driven, and administered by Indigenous¹ and non-dominant² scholars. ILR&R privileges and centers the work of Indigenous and non-dominant scholars, including elders, language speakers and learners, knowledge holders, cultural practitioners, educators, researchers, and advocates from various cultural, intellectual, and institutional traditions and practices.

ILR&R focuses on disseminating work derived from ethical, community-led initiatives. Additionally, it publishes work grounded in collaborative and accountable relationships, embodying the four Rs (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 1991): respect, relevance, reciprocity, and responsibility. Publications highlight the rights and realities of Indigenous and non-dominant peoples and all aspects of their language use across all domains of society, including home, community, school, work, government, online, and digital.

Vision

A transformed academy and world where Indigenous and non-dominant peoples, languages, cultures, knowledge, and practices have an equal and sustainable presence, influence, and power. Furthermore, where this transformation positively impacts the lives of all.

Mission

To Indigenize and decolonize academic publishing by intentionally…

• Centering Indigenous and non-dominant peoples, their languages, ways of knowing, being, and doing;
• Prioritizing ethical and relational community-led and -driven language work;
• Mobilizing and disseminating Indigenous and non-dominant voices through accessible platforms (in and through their knowledges and languages); 
• Championing the celebrating, (re)vitalizating, (re)claiming, (re)learning, (re)normalizing and/or (re)newing of Indigenous and non-dominant languages;
• Strengthening relational accountability and trust between Indigenous and non-dominant communities and those dominant communities and their members that publish about them, their way of being, and their languages;
• Honoring, recognizing, and promoting oralilty and signing;
• Minimizing the gap between grassroots, Indigenous, and non-dominant institutions and dominant institutions by creating connections for the inception, expansion, and validation of research through Indigenous and non-dominant languages; and
• Embracing the collaborative nature of inquiry and acknowledging the fallibility of scientific methods by incorporating Indigenous and non-dominant worldviews within the Academy.

ILR&R publishes original papers on topics related to Indigenous and non-dominant community-centered, -led, -driven language work as it relates to their rights and lived realities. This includes, but is not limited to language revitalization, reclamation, education, policy planning, and linguistic rights. We privilege submissions authored or co-authored by Indigenous and/or non-dominant community members and/or in partnership with Indigenous and/or non-dominant communities or community members.

All authors are encouraged to include and weave into their submission their positionality to demonstrate relationality, respect, responsibility, and relevance to the language community(ies) featured. ILR&R encourages authors to be critical of their roles and positionality in relation to the community, language, work and research that they are a part of. We will not publish submissions that do not demonstrate respect and responsibility to language communities and work that reflects knowledge extractive practices that exploit communities, community members, and/or community resources. Our expectations regarding relational accountability as well as Ethics & Malpractice Statement can be found here.