Miryam Yataco is a Peruvian-born language rights advocate, an expert in bilingualism, and a trained sociolinguist. Her work is rooted in the idea of language rights as human rights.
Ms. Yataco’s focuses on language policies & language exclusion and discrimination. Her new research concentrates, on epistemological decolonization and, on Indigenous language policies developing in Latin America.
Ms. Yataco has served as an educator in Indonesia, Mexico, and New York City. She was a faculty member for 22 years (1992- 2014) at Steinhardt’s School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University in the Multilingual and Multicultural Studies program. In 2018 she was appointed as an External Research Associate at Kawsasun Research Group within the Center for Applied Linguistics (CILA) at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima, Peru.
One of the main highlights of Yataco’s career has been to serve for several years (1999-2013) as an assistant to the founder of the discipline of sociolinguistics, professor emeritus and world-renowned scholar Dr. Joshua Fishman. She is also a disciple of the distinguished Kenyan theorist of post-colonial literature Dr. Ngugi Wa Thiongo, and of the pioneer in linguistic human rights, Dr. Tove Skutnabb-Kangas.
Yataco has worked with Indigenous Congress people in Peru as a consultant and educational program developer and as a congressional assistant in matters of language rights. In 2009, she helped develop a Diplomado (a Certificate Program) on Indigenous Rights and Interculturality for the Indigenous Parliamentary Group within the Peruvian Congress. In 2013-4, she served as a consultant to the Office of Indigenous Languages within Peru’s Vice-Ministry of Intercultural Affairs. She has also been a consultant on language policies to Peru’s Constitutional Tribunal (or Supreme Court).
With her multilingual skills and training in ethnography, Yataco has participated in sociolinguistic research projects involving Roma populations in Lisbon, Portuguese migrant workers in Luxembourg, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi second-language learners in New York City, and Ashaninka and Shipibo Amazonian peoples during the pandemic in Peru.
Ms. Yataco was the recipient of the 1994−5 Frances C. Allen Fellowship from The Newberry Library’s Darcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian in Chicago. This fellowship was established for women of Indigenous ancestry pursuing academic work; Ms. Yataco was the first South American to receive the honor. That same year, she was also granted the Indian Voices in the Academy Fellowship at The Newberry Library. Ms. Yataco’s academic trajectory has been deeply influenced by her readings of Native North American scholars, especially the late Vine Deloria Jr.
Ms. Yataco is a frequent presenter at both scholarly and activist events on Indigenous rights worldwide. In February 2020, she was the keynote speaker at the International Year of Indigenous Languages event held by UNESCO in Mexico. She was also a presenter at the 2019 International Year of Indigenous Languages and Global Justice for Indigenous Languages conferences at Columbia University. In 2019, she participated at the gathering of 16 Indigenous nations of Oklahoma focusing on preserving, protecting, and revitalizing Oklahoma’s Indigenous languages. This conference was held at the Chickasaw Cultural Center in November of 2019. She is part of Grupo de Apoyo a las Lenguas Amenazadas (GALA) based in Mexico and of Talks on Decolonization, Methodology and Indigeneity, group organized by colleagues from Uppsala university in Sweden.
Yataco’s research interests include language policies, language ideologies, decolonization of knowledge and power, technologies of communication, linguistic and semiotic landscapes, native territories and language rights, and new Indigenous diasporas created through online resources.
Recently, she has developed a digital component to her language rights activism through social media such as Facebook. She presently belongs to a network of Indigenous scholars and activists working to promote Native American and Indigenous sovereignty and resurgence. Follow link Language Rights, Derechos Linguisticos, Lenguas en riesgo | Facebook
Miryam Yataco has a multilingual background, her linguistic repertoire includes native proficiency (Oral & Literacy) in Spanish, English, Indonesian & Bengali (Bangla) and has linguistic training in quechua, ashaninka and in many other languages of the world.
