The main goal of the Shuar Language Documentation Project is to digitalize and process over 200 hours of Shuar recordings collected between 1955 and 1965 by the Salesiano missionary, Father Siro Pellizaro. The recordings will be digitalized, transcribed and translated. These recordings contain information and stories which have disappeared from the collective memory of the current generation of Shuar (Jivaro).
A strength of this proposal is the degree of collaboration with the Shuar. Young Shuar will be trained to carry out the bulk of the work themselves. During this process they will not only obtain important skills, but increase their knowledge and involvement with their own culture. The majority of indigenous cultures in South America, and indeed the world have undergone immense cultural and language shifts during the last century. The project will provide a rich database for those interested in language and culture change. The information will be invaluable for linguists, anthropologists, historians, botanists and other scholars.
The primary purpose of the Shuar Documentation Project was to digitalize, transcribe and translate a large collection of reel-to-reel Shuar audio recordings collected by Father Siro Pellizzaro during the 1950s through the 1970s. Shuar is spoken by some 46,000 souls living in the Amazonian area of Ecuador and Peru. The Shuar are perhaps best known for their practice of tsántsa or head-shrinking but this is only one aspect of their rich culture which is based on a profound knowledge of the flora and fauna of the Amazonian jungle. This culture has undergone a rapid and brutal upheaval in the last fifty years as members of the dominant culture of Ecuador have entered their territory, building roads, establishing ranches and extracting oil. Many of the stories, songs and information contained in these early recordings are no longer extant in the collective memory of the present day Shuar. During this project we have digitalized, transcribed and translated 166 audio recordings collected by Father Pellizzaro comprising stories, songs and information concerning primarily shamanism but also other aspects of the Shuar culture. We have also processed some thirty additional hours of video recordings of the present day Shuar language and culture. This vast number of recordings of the Shuar language will allow both Shuar speakers and linguists to arrive at a deeper understanding of the grammar and lexicon of Shuar and examine how the language has changed due to the influence of Spanish. The materials can be adapted for use in the bilingual schools and in addition this material will be invaluable for anthropologists, botanists and ethno-historians, contributing to our knowledge of pre-Colombian South America. And perhaps most importantly they provide the Shuar themselves with a means to arrive at a deeper understanding of their language and culture. We are in the process of uploading these materials into the Archivo de Lenguas and Culturas created through the cooperation of the Max Planck Institute and FLACSO, a post-graduate institute located in Ecuador. We hope to have all the materials in this archive and in AILLA, the archive located at the University of Texas, Austin by July 2013. You can see the materials already uploaded and learn more about the project at: www.flacsoandes.org/archivo_lenguas.
