One World, Many Voices

A Festival visitor writes the name of her first language and her heritage language on slips of paper to pin to the language map in the Documentation and Collections demonstration tent.

Jake Homiak, director of the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives, discusses his work with those helping out at the Documentation and Collections tent.

Lauren Marr shows a young visitor the diverse array of languages represented by other visitors on a map of the East Coast.

Recovering Voices staff and Festival volunteers keep a tally of the languages visitors pin to the language diversity map.

Recovering Voices staff and Festival volunteers engage visitors in a language diversity mapping activity where visitors place tags to indicate their first language, additional languages they speak, and their heritage languages. From this information, Recovering Voices plans to create a digital map of the Festival-goers Photo by Amy Staples

Guha Shankar, folklife specialist with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, converses with a visitor about the important role of archival collections in the revitalization of endangered languages.

(L to R) Jake Homiak, director of the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives; Joshua Bell, curator of globalization at the National Museum of Natural History; Ruth Rouvier, Recovering Voices program manager at the National Museum of Natural History; and Guha Shankar, folklife specialist with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress pose for a picture before their “Revitalizing Language & Culture: Documentation & Collections” panel on the Talk Story discussion stage.

Jake Homiak, director of the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives, and Joshua Bell, curator of globalization at the National Museum of Natural History, discuss endangered language documentation on the Talk Story stage.

Ruth Rouvier, Recovering Voices program manager at the National Museum of Natural History, and Guha Shankar, folklife specialist with the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, participate in a panel on the Talk Story stage.

Visitors add markers to a world map indicating their first language, additional languages they speak, and their heritage languages.