View Content #11281

Contentid11281
Content Type1
TitleArticle: Yaqui Tapes a Treasure for University of Arizona researchers
Body
From http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/college/article_548b2543-1d8d-5264-973e-58da5943f2a2.html

Yaqui tapes a treasure for UA researchers
Becky Pallack
May 28, 2010

Several University of Arizona researchers are working with a set of tape-recorded interviews in the endangered Yaqui language describing firsthand accounts of tribal persecution by the Mexican government.

Maria Florez Leyva, a native speaker of Arizona Yaqui, was working with associate linguistics professor Heidi Harley on the grammar of the language when she mentioned her tapes.

Harley said she could hardly believe it when she learned Leyva had been working since 1969 to document the history of persecution of the tribe. She had stored away interviews with tribal elders who recalled childhood memories of deportations by the Mexican government.

There are no other known first-person accounts of that period in Yaqui history, Harley said.

What Leyva gathered is "the kind of material no one could collect except a member of the community," Harley said. All of the interviewees have since died.

Through a $30,000 grant from the UA, they preserved the audio and are now working on transcriptions.

Read the full article at http://azstarnet.com/news/local/education/college/article_548b2543-1d8d-5264-973e-58da5943f2a2.html
SourceArizona Daily Star
Inputdate2010-06-01 09:55:10
Lastmodifieddate2010-06-01 09:55:10
ExpdateNot set
Publishdate2010-06-07 00:00:00
DisplaydateNot set
Active1
Emailed1
Isarchived1