By Gibrilla Kamara and Joshua Lew McDermott
 

Sierra Leone is a small country on the coast of West Africa. Home to about 7.5 million people, the country is home to 16 recognized ethnolinguistic groups, all with rich histories and cultures. The Mani people, also known locally as the Bollum*, were once a well-known and widespread culture throughout coastal West Africa. 

Image 1: Map showing Sierra Leone in West Africa (Credit: Canva)

Due to suppression from neighboring  Soso and Themene (Temne) ethnic groups in Samu Chiefdom, the Mani People’s original home territory, some Mani moved to the southern part of the country which contributed to reducing the population of native speakers. Today, however, Mani is a critically endangered language spoken by likely only a few hundred or as few as a few dozen individuals, most of them adults or seniors. There are no monolingual Mani speakers. 

The remaining Mani speakers live primarily in the Samu Chiefdom, Kambia District, in North West Sierra Leone on the border with Guinea. Within Samu, most fluent speakers remain in and around the village of Moribaya in Samu Chiefdom.  

Sierra Leone gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1961. Its history of colonization, and its more recent post-colonial history, has contributed to it being one of the least developed countries in the world. The country has struggled with ten years of war, the Ebola outbreak, mudslides,  social and economic instability and a lack of basic infrastructure like roads and transportation, medical care, water supply, electrical grids, sewage, telecommunications networks, healthcare, social welfare, emergency services. Due in part to these and other issues, relatively little work has been done, or is being done, in the country to preserve and promote the country’s endangered Indigenous languages and traditional customs and cultures. With a booming population, rapid urbanization, and extreme deforestation and environmental crisis engulfing the country, the disappearance of traditional knowledge, social ties, cultural practices, and languages has intensified exponentially.

In hopes of aiding in the preservation and revitalization of traditional culture and language, the authors, language educator Gibrilla Kamara (Sierra Leone) and sociology professor Joshua McDermott (US) founded the Society for Indigenous Languages, Communities, and Cultures of Sierra Leone (SILCC) in 2020. Language revitalization in the West African context is unique compared to other regions of the world. This is true of the Mani language as well. Unlike many other contexts of Indigenous language communities, which are pressured to shift due to the dominance of colonial languages, Mani language use is shifting due to the dominance of another African language: Soso. Most Mani speakers also speak Soso and identify as both Mani and Soso. 

Also unique to Mani is the fact that many people in Samu, including in the Chiefdom Headquarter Town of Keychom, still identify as Mani (or Bolom) despite not speaking the language. Great pride is taken in identifying as Mani. The Chiefdom’s Paramount Chief, the most important and highest political and cultural office in the Chiefdom, is a proud Mani who laments he and his children do not speak the language. 

In July of 2023, we traveled to Keychom to meet with the Paramount Chief, community members, and leaders to see how we could best aid efforts to stop the disappearance of Mani. The journey to Samu Chiefdom and its headquarter town of Keychom is not easy, especially in the rainy season, which lasts from June to October. After a four-hour journey by taxi from Freetown to Kambia Town, we traveled by motorcycle on dirt roads under pouring rain for another four to five hours before finally arriving in Keychom. 

Image 2: Community meeting in Moribaya community when everyone agreed to make farming with students part of the school and to make policies for people to speak the Mani language during farming activities. (Credit: Gibrilla Kamara, SILCC)

The last outsiders to come to the area for purposes of documenting Mani were the American linguist George Tucker Childs and his team in the early 2000s. Dr. Childs built strong relationships with community members throughout the Samu Chiefdom and in the village of  Moribaya specifically. Locals still speak fondly of him and his fluency in Mani. 

It was no surprise, then, that people assumed Joshua was Dr. Childs’s son, referring to him as Tucker Childs. In Keychom and in Moribaya, we met with community leaders and stakeholders. The excitement and pride were palpable among Mani speakers and non-Mani speaking Mani individuals, who were all eager to organize and work towards revitalizing the language. Even for those who don’t speak Mani, Mani vocabulary is recalled often with pride. On the first night, we ate freshwater fish, known in the local lingua franca of Krio as jungle fish, and were told that in Mani they are known as Korote.

Samu is a major rice producing region of Sierra Leone, and rice production is a central aspect of the local community, economy, and culture. During our visit, it was harvesting time, so many community members were spending their days out in the rice fields harvesting their rice crop. 

During our first meeting with the Chief and other community Elders in Moribaya, word spread that outsiders interested in helping to preserve Mani were in town. One man made the long trek from the rice fields to greet us at the meeting, where he proceeded to teach us several folk songs in Mani. A young woman of maybe twenty years old, the youngest Mani speaker we met on our journey, joined in, singing a song in Mani about a frog traveling by canoe to the rice fields for harvest. 

In short, local pride and enthusiasm in the Mani language abounds in Samu Chiefdom. The issue is, as one might imagine, one of resources. 

In discussions with community leaders, local teachers, and local children, it was decided collaboratively between the Samu Chiefdom and SILCC that a multi-pronged approach is necessary if any headway is to be made in preserving and revitalizing Mani.

In our first approach, we went to the paramount chief who is the custodian of the entire Chiefdom. He hosted us for three days in his palace, while he was sending us each day to have meetings with section chiefs in various communities. We also try to make it possible to host a program where we can bring community people, school going pupils, and teachers together in a big gathering for the day of Sierra Leone independence to discuss the revitalization program.

Image 3: Teachers, students, and parents in Moribaya community discussing how the Mani language will be introduced in primary schools (Credit: Gibrilla Kamara, SILCC)

One essential approach, and the first focus of our efforts, is to integrate Mani literacy into the local primary schools surrounding the village of Moribaya. The resources and training necessary to implement Mani instruction and literacy into the schools are significant, especially given that we are a new organization with little to no outside support for our project. 

In October of 2023, SILCC held a writing workshop with a handful of local, literate Mani speakers that were nominated by the chief of Moribaya. The purpose of the multi-day workshop was to produce a primary level reading book in Mani, utilizing the documentation provided by the work of Tucker Childs and his team. Our goal is to produce a book written by and for the community which draws upon local stories and customs in its literacy lessons. 

Image 4: The Mani Language Book Writers Workshop in Moribaya community (Credit: Gibrilla Kamara, SILCC)

Image 5: The Mani Language Book Writers editing team (Credit: Gibrilla Kamara, SILCC)

This primary level reading book will be bilingual in Mani and English. By gaining literacy in Mani, these students in Samu Chiefdom will be able to learn through their own language. As research shows, learning to read in their mother tongue will help them to acquire literacy in other languages; gaining literacy in multiple languages, including dominant languages like English, is important economically for the community.

Our next step is to publish the community-produced Mani primary learning book in a plastic format that can withstand the humidity of the area, which can lead to the rapid degradation of paperback books. At the same time, SILCC is working on organizing a series of teacher training workshops and has continued to meet and make arrangements with teachers and education leaders in order to facilitate Mani instruction as part of the daily curriculum in Moribaya and other surrounding small villages. One of the challenges is the fact that many of the current teachers do not speak Mani. One possible solution to this challenge is to enlist the handful of Elders who are both literate and fluent speakers of Mani language to enter schools to teach Mani instruction for one or two periods each day. SILCC is working on coordinating this, though our lack of resources and the remoteness of the area have proven challenging. 

Beyond intervention in the school system, we also work with community members to establish adult literacy and Mani learning classes and activities.
 

In the future, we would like to do more of this kind of work – our work is hindered by a lack of resources needed to carry out more plans and projects that we are anxious to do.
 

Community members voiced the special importance of mothers in passing Mani language to their children, which means young women and mothers in the community are essential ambassadors if we are to preserve Mani language. 

Challenges and constraints notwithstanding, SILCC and the people of Samu remain excited, eager, and hopeful that a positive future exists for Mani.  

Image 6: A meeting of teachers, pupils, and parents in Moribaya community (Credit: Gibrilla Kamara, SILCC)

*In this article we will be using the name Mani, which is the Mani People’s name for themselves. The neighboring Soso tribe call them Mandain, while the Themene (Temne) people call them Bollum. Because Themene people are one of the largest populations in the area, the name “Bollum” is widely known in Sierra Leone.

 

About Gibrilla Kamara 

I was born and raised in a remote village in Sierra Leone and have spent most of my adult life preserving languages and culture in my home country. I’ve worked as the Language Coordinator at The Institute for Sierra Leonean Languages, as the Language and Cross-cultural Facilitator at the United State Peace Corps in Sierra Leone, and currently, I work as the Executive Director for the Society for Indigenous Languages, Communities, and Cultures in Sierra Leone, which I co-founded in 2020.

About Joshua Lew McDermott

I am a sociologist and political economist from the U.S. I have been traveling to, and doing work in, Sierra Leone since 2013. My work explores the informal economy, labor, extractivism, neocolonialism, and inequality. I am an assistant professor of sociology at Southeastern Louisiana University. BlueSky: @jlewmcd.bsky.social

 
In recognition of World Press Freedom Day, ELP and the First Peoples'​ Cultural Council are excited to launch a new journalism resource about language revitalization:

“Say it With Respect: A Journalists’ Guide to Reporting on Indigenous & Minoritized Languages, Language Endangerment, and Language Revitalization"

This guide is a resource for journalists, written from the point of view of Indigenous Peoples and allies. We appreciate the growing attention that the media is giving to language revitalization and related topics, but we have seen issues covered in ways that unintentionally cause harm. How? Reporting on these topics often falls into deficit narratives like:

“This ancient language with only five speakers who have few resources are trying to save their dying language and need help.”

This framing spreads false assumptions while obscuring the roots of the problem.

So how does this resource help? The guide has three main sections centered around using respectful language when telling stories about language-related topics: 🚩 red flags (disrespectful, avoid), ⚠️ yellow flags (use with caution) and ✅ green flags (respectful). Each flag has an explanation and – where appropriate – a suggested alternative.

This guide incorporates the voices, knowledge, and experiences of Indigenous and minoritized language community members and scholars, as well as non-Indigenous linguists and scholars. We thank all of the contributors; Eden Fineday (Nêhiyaw) and Danielle Paradis (Métis) for their professional review and insightful suggestions; and Lydia Prince (Dakelh/Cree) for her beautiful work on the document’s design and layout, and Nicaela Leon Coico (Quechua) for her fantastic work on finalizing the guide and designing the beautiful cover page.

If you or someone you know is a journalist, reporter, editor or writer who may engage with topics of Indigenous and minoritized languages, language endangerment, or language revitalization, please use and share this! We hope it can help empower folks to tell these stories and to "say it with respect"! 🗞️

Find the guide at https://fpcc.ca/resource/say-it-with-respect/

By Riathung Ngullie

“What is Hornbill called in your language/mother tongue?” I came across this question, asked by the host, Dr. Haʻalilio Solomon, to the attendees during a global webinar on endangered language documentation and preservation hosted by the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) and other approaches to safeguarding a spoken language. 

When this question struck me, I did not have the answer, as growing up I realised I never saw a Hornbill and those I associated with had hardly seen it themselves. My only thought then was to refer to books written on Naga people by British or foreign missionaries, which were few but accessible. 

Surprisingly, I found little reference to names of ecological or biological habitat, as most colonial records seemed to focus on ethnographic recordings of “Lhota Nagas” (Mills, 1922). 

Now, one might then wonder, why a Hornbill, of all the birds? 

Photo: The Great Indian Hornbill Source: Kalyanvarma, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Let me explain. The Hornbill is a revered ancestral icon of the Naga people. Despite  differences in language, all Naga communities beyond postcolonial borders revere the ancestral Hornbill bird, so much so that it is sung and danced in many songs and in many endangered Naga languages, comparing a lover to the splendour of the majestic Hornbill bird. 

Going further, in times of ancestral living some centuries ago, only a warrior of great and daring courage was entitled to wear the hornbill feathers on their headband, thus proclaiming their heroic abilities to the sight of its onlookers. Naga people would take pride in narrating the heroic actions of warriors from their clans, repeated by their kinsmen, their village and the larger community, repeating and immortalising their lore.  

Photo: Elderly Naga men and women dressed to showcase their traditional attire at the Hornbill  Festival, Kisama, Dec 2024.  Source: Riathung Ngullie

Photo: A young Rengma Naga lad sits near a fireplace during the Hornbill festival in Kisama. Source: Riathung Ngullie

History has proven that a language and culture does not disappear overnight, but the erosion happens gradually.  

When the last bird has stopped singing, when the communities no longer hear its songs, when the community stops calling its name in a language they once knew, its previous existence begins to wither away, a bit of the present begins to be chipped down, then it soon ceases to exist!

About the author: Riathung Ngullie is from the Kyong Naga community, also known as "Lotha" Naga, in Nagaland state in Northeast India. He holds a master's degree in social work and has worked extensively with Indigenous and migrant communities across India. As a Communications and Storytelling Intern at ELP during the 2024-2025 academic year, he gathered and shared stories from his own community, as well as building networks of knowledge sharing and storytelling between Indigenous communities worldwide.

During the second week of March, four members of the ELP team - Language Revitalization Mentors Yulha Lhawa, Yazmín Novelo, and Alexandra Philbin, and Executive Director Anna Belew - had the honor and privilege of attending the 9th International Conference on Language Documentation and Conservation (ICLDC 9) at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. 

Yulha Lhawa, Yazmin Novelo, Alexandra Philbin, and Anna Belew at ICLDC

ELP kicked off ICLDC 9 by hosting the pre-conference event: a special in-person screening of digital stories by language champions around the world. These deeply personal short films shared the real-life experiences of people working to revitalize and reclaim their languages, and highlighted the voices of 12 language champions from 11 countries. We thank everyone who attended, showed their appreciation to the storytellers, and shared how profoundly moved they were by these stories. 

Attendees listen to Esraa Alrasheed (Nubian language, Sudan) introduce her digital story at the screening on March 5.

ELP also hosted a booth in the main conference hall and a "video postcard room" with a professional videographer, where conference attendees could film greetings to folks back home, share about what they'd learned and connections they'd made at ICLDC, and send good wishes to other communities around the world. We'll be sharing some of these video postcards in the coming days! 

Left to right: Alexandra Philbin, Yazmin Novelo, Anna Belew, and Yulha Lhawa greet attendees at the ELP booth.

The ELP team also presented a poster on (re)envisioning and crafting futures for Indigenous languages. The poster invited viewers to dream ambitious futures for their languages and communities, and consider the paths that would lead to those futures. We had the chance to talk with so many amazing language champions, to share our visions, aspirations, and challenges, and to make a space to change the fatalistic narratives that dominate so much conversation around language endangerment.

Talking with attendees at the ELP poster session, sharing visions for language futures

Amid all the activity, most importantly, the ELP team had the opportunity to connect with old and new friends and colleagues, grow their networks of language champions from all over the world, and learn from people doing amazing and innovative work in language revitalization, documentation, and advocacy.  The relationships that emerged and deepened from this time in Honolulu will continue to guide and grow our work. 

We extend our profound gratitude to the organizers and volunteers who made ICLDC possible, to everyone who shared their time and knowledge at the conference, to the Hawaiian people for permitting us to visit and learn as guests on their land, and to the lands and waters of Oʻahu. 

Each member of the ELP team who attended has shared their reflections on the conference, in their own words:

Yulha Lhawa: 

"ICLDC was a week of reconnecting, learning, and soaking in the energy of a community that truly gets it. Meeting my colleagues Yazmin and Alex in person after years of working together was surreal—we’ve spent so much time on screens, but finally sharing meals, laughing, and interacting face-to-face made everything feel more real. One of the most special moments was the ELP reunion at a beautiful home in the mountains, where we heard the story of how ELP started, a reminder of how a small seed, nurtured with care and love, can grow into something impactful. The conference itself was packed with deep conversations, unexpected reunions, and exciting opportunities, including an invitation from a professor at Boise State University to share my work on language documentation and revitalization. And of course, there were all the little moments: hiking, late-night spam musubi, and a lovely afternoon at Anna’s favorite beach before the conference, all adding to an experience that felt nothing short of magical."

Alexandra Philbin: 

"‘Ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’. This Irish proverb means that it is by being connected with other people that we live. It comes to mind as I think back to the wonderful time I had at ICLDC on Oʻahu. I was able to see old friends, some of whom I had only seen online (including my ELP colleagues!), and meet new ones. I took part in many wonderful conversations - at presentations and posters, at the ELP conference stand and video postcard room and over meals and walks around Honolulu. Central to all of these conversations was a deep commitment to language diversity, to language revitalisation, to the wellbeing of people and communities. 

Coming together to share our work, our ideas, our stories was really amazing, and it was very special to be able to do it in Hawaiʻi; a place with such an inspiring reclamation movement. The focus of the conference was on diaspora communities, and the kinds of conversations and ideas that this sparked are really needed right now. The conference was a good reminder of ‘ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine’, of the importance of connecting with people, of living and working in community and in solidarity with people."

Yazmín Novelo:

"It was my first time attending the conference, and I must confess that I was pleasantly surprised by the nature of the event, which deviated significantly from the academic format in which professors present their thoughts on our languages. Instead, the attendees were practitioners, members of their communities, and the talks related to the realities and experiences directly lived by their speakers. I believe that linguistic revitalization is in our hands, and what I saw gave me great hope.

Many of the talks I heard had something in common: whether they were communities in the diaspora or in their territories: language is no longer seen as a separate element requiring intervention, like a limb undergoing surgery. From experiences with technology to the implementation of school programs, the common denominator was strengthening the language to strengthen ourselves as people. This is summed up in the experience of the Cherokee people, who concluded their presentation on language immersion by saying, "It's not just about creating Cherokee speakers, it's about growing Cherokee." This thought remains in my head, thank you ICLDC 2025, see you in two years."

Anna Belew:

"Attending ICLDC always feels like returning home. Not only to the island I called my home for a few years as a PhD student at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, but to the broader community of people working in language documentation and revitalization. 

ICLDC has been a bright thread woven through all my language work. My first ICLDC, in 2013, was the first time I ever visited Honolulu - besides being bowled over by the power and beauty of Oʻahu, the conference and the people I met there cemented my choice to do my PhD at UHM. I served on the student organizing committee for ICLDC in 2015 and 2017, getting incredible firsthand education in how conferences are run from start to finish. And I've attended every subsequent ICLDC. The energy is always beautiful - hundreds of people who share a vision for a world of thriving languages and communities, coming together to learn and support each other. It genuinely feels like a very large family, in many ways. 

But this ICLDC was particularly special. After ICLDC moved online in 2021 and 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this was many people's first time physically seeing their ICLDC "family" in years. The sense of joy and gratitude at being together again was palpable. For me, everywhere I turned, I saw familiar and beloved faces - some of friends, colleagues, and mentors I hadn't seen in years, and some of people I'd only ever known online, including my longtime ELP colleagues Yazmín and Alex!

I learned so much, as I always do at ICLDC. Brilliant ideas, deep knowledge, unwavering conviction, tears and laughter were present throughout the sessions. But there was also a tangible sense of relief and rest in being together in this moment. The relief and nourishment of being among kind and courageous and smart people who believe in a world of diversity, of Indigenous resurgence, of respectful and reciprocal relations among our human and other-than-human communities. There were hard discussions about the future of our field in these dark and uncertain times. But we were together. And we will keep working together to sustain and nourish languages and communities. A hui hou - until we're together again."

Yulha greets Mānoa Falls

Would you like to help support ELP's work to strengthen language revitalization in this critical moment? Get your very own ELP t-shirt like the ones in the photos, with the design "Our Roots, Our Languages", or make a tax-deductible donation.

By Maison Ole Nkurrunah, ELP Communications and Storytelling Intern

A couple of weeks back, I had the distinct honour of representing the Endangered Languages Project (ELP) at the International Funders for Indigenous Peoples Global Conference.

The International Funders for Indigenous Peoples Global Conference 2025 was hosted by my country and on the ancestral lands of the Maasai People (my people) by the shores of Lake Naivasha.

Naivasha, is an anglicized version of the Maasai word ‘Enaiposha’ meaning ‘disturbed waters/waters that are not still’.

The conference commenced on 17th and ran through to 21st February. The theme of the conference being 'Global Impact, Local Solutions: Funding Indigenous Self Determination and Leadership.'

The conference for me was a symbolic and eye-opening experience as I got to mingle and interact with different individuals from all over the world working at different capacities in uplifting Indigenous peoples. 

    

Some of the high level workshops and showcases I got to participate in include; the second Indigenous Youth Dialogue where we developed a manifesto that would provide a guideline for future engagement for Indigenous youth in different local and global spaces, Solidarity Funding in Accompaniment to Indigenous Governments and Decoloniality, Cross-Learning in Indigenous Leadership, Roots of the Future and How Indigenous Peoples are Addressing Biodiversity Loss and Climate Change, Integrating Indigenous Wisdom and Human Rights with Participatory Grantmaking, the Role of Funds in Supporting Indigenous Communities among other very enlightening sessions.

On the sidelines, I had the opportunity to talk to many people on the importance of language revitalization and what we, the Endangered Languages Project are doing all over the world to support endangered languages.

Languages are the threads that tie us to our past while placing us in longing for the future. Our history, our land, our governance structures and our cultures are preserved and conserved through languages. When we lose our languages, we lose a lot.

 If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to support the work of ELP, we gratefully accept contributions at https://www.endangeredlanguages.com/donate/

 If you are interested in speaking with ELP about funding partnerships, we welcome you to reach out to ELP's Executive Director, Dr. Anna Belew: [email protected]