Georgia
The Linguistic Justice Collaborative is committed to Georgia communities. What does that mean?
What is currently known as the state of Georgia is located on the native lands of the Muscogee people and spans from the Appalachian foothills in the north to the southern border with Florida to the coastal islands or “low country” on the west, the historical home of the Gullah Geechee people, to the eastern border with Alabama. We acknowledge these borders are socially created and do not fully represent the history of colonization and enslavement that persists through geospatial politics. While we call Georgia our home and our shared community, that concept is fraught. In this space, we try to honor the historical and modern communities that make up Georgia.
Land Acknowledgment
Language and linguistic justice collaborators live throughout what is currently Georgia, and we acknowledge our work is most likely on the land of the Muscogee and Cherokee peoples. We ask you to join us in acknowledging these Indigenous communities, their elders both past and present, as well as future generations. We acknowledge that Mercer University and the state of Georgia were founded upon exclusions and erasures of many Indigenous peoples, their histories, cultures, and languages. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantle the ongoing legacies of settler colonialism.
Learn about the Muscogee
The Muscogee Nation continue to support historical preservation of the tribe’s history within Georgia.
Learn about Native Lands
Learn about the Indigenous communities, their colonization, and decolonization efforts throughout what is now North America.
Ocmulgee Mounds
Georgia’s national park in Macon, Georgia preserves Muscogee history, culture, and religious traditions.
Teach Decolonization
Mayan language scholar, Aldo Barriente, created an overview of Georgia’s colonization and provides educational resources to support decolonization.
James Baldwin
“If Black English isn’t a language then tell me, what is?”
Rosina Lippi-Green
“The myth of standard language persists because it is carefully tended and propagated, with huge, almost universal success, so that language, the most fundamental of human socialization tools, becomes a commodity. This is the core of an ideology of standardization which empowers certain individuals and institutions to make these decisions and impose them on others.”
Sujin Kim &
Kim H. SOng
“Visualize, for example, a space where people interact by writing and speaking in diverse languages, gesturing, making, building, and drawing to communicate. In this ‘linguistic landscape’ [sic], the collaborative use of multiple modes creates richer messages than drawing only from one individual capacity or from only one mode”
Lenny Sánchez & Michelle Honeyford
“For far too long educational systems have negated the diverse beauty of languages, literacies, and ways of knowing relevant to the very peoples and places they serve”