Paris was never on my travel list. Yet, after the UNESCO trip with Masterword and the Mayan Languages Preservation and Digitization Project, I find myself craving the city’s savory food, the art and its unparalleled beauty. At first, the thought of eating snails and fatty goose liver seemed unusual but the moment I tried escargots, and foie gras, I was met with unexpected flavors. The endless amounts of freshly baked bread and various cheeses seemed unimaginable to consume but the irresistible aroma made it impossible to resist. It is without a doubt that I’ll be missing the way the French serve their charcuterie with their spicy mustard, their fiery flambéed crepes and the unmatched taste of the macarons from Pierre Hermé.
Bread and cheese were good and all, but the city itself was food to the eye. It was as if the whole city was an open-air museum, a portal to history. Testimony to mankind’s imagination, breathtaking architecture capturing the taste of each monarch of France. Beneath the city, the eerie secrets of Paris revealed a darker side of its history. “C’est ici l’empire de la mort!” or “this is the empire of the dead!” reads the message before entering the Catacombs. We learned that the project was commissioned to literally save Paris from collapsing and later on was turned into the official resting site for the dead. After resurfacing from the catacombs, we continued exploring the endless shops and vendors heading to Notre Dame and out to the plaza of the Louvre.
We also had the privilege of visiting the Biblothèque François-Mitterrand during this trip. Knowing that Paris was the cradle of prestigious art pieces from all over Europe, one particular relic of an ancient civilization lies tucked away. The Codex Pérez, known as the Paris Codex, is one of the four known surviving Maya manuscripts dating to pre-Columbian times. Not only does this particular manuscript hold the intricate hieroglyphs of the Maya, it depicts evidence of the use of a lunar cycle that is still being used in the highlands of Guatemala to this day. For the Maya Q’anjob’al, such cycles are known as “Oxlajon xajaw,”the 13 moon cycles. Each cycle is associated with an animal of the region,T’iw( eagle), B’alam (jaguar), Tx’i’ (dog), Yaxkan (snake), Txitx (rabbit), Ak (turtle), Sotz’ (bat), K’etzin (scorpion), Chej (deer), Kuqub’(owl), Tab’(turkey), Ayin (caiman), and Wojb’atz’(monkey). On the last two pages of this codex, these cycles are depicted in the form of creatures sitting upward with their mouths wide open under lunar eclipses— a common way the Maya once depicted moon cycles. Unfortunately, this manuscript is poorly preserved and has suffered irreversible damage, resulting in the loss of text and pigmentation of the pages. So much has faded from the last two pages that one can only admire what once was and what has become in this modern age. This being said, the personnel of the Bibliothèque François-Mitterrand could only do so much for our visit. They were unable to bring the actual manuscript, but they were kind enough to provide us with a short presentation and showed us some high-resolution images from the last scan of the codex. We may have not been face to face with the original copy, but we were able to get a glimpse to how the ancient Maya once viewed the movements of celestial bodies and how this tradition is weaved into the cosmology of the modern Maya of Guatemala.
The LT4All was a three-day conference hosted by UNESCO at their headquarters in Paris. At this event, multiple representatives of big tech companies and community leaders of Indigenous communities attended this conference to discuss the current situation on the use of new technology. Currently, many Indigenous communities are being left out in the advancement in the use of technology. This exclusion makes it harder for communities to advocate for their languages rights and not only to utilize it but to mobilize resources for revitalization. An Indigenous language without a digital presence is not only left out of the technological advances but it becomes increasingly vulnerable to decline, since the absence of digital archives means future generations are limited in the opportunity to reconnect with their cultural identity.
Many perspectives on the rapid development of AI were exchanged. Presenters, such as Indigenous leaders, expressed their concerns on how the path that big tech is currently taking with this new technology could further marginalize Indigenous communities by the limited access and lack of ethical safeguards to reinforcing digital equality. It is critical that the data being extracted from the communities is used to create digital spaces that would aid in cultural survival. Digital equality among Indigenous users would also pave the way to co-designing and transforming existing technology to establish and help achieve linguistic growth. In doing so, AI becomes a tool of empowerment rather than exploitation.
On 7 Oc/Tz’i’/Elab’ (February 19), the sacred count of the ancestors, our great friend Baldomero, well known as Kawoq, of the Maya Kaqchikel linguistic group, had the privilege to give his presentation entirely in Maya Kaqchikel. This presentation was a historic day not only for the Maya Kaqchikel and other Maya nations but for all Indigenous communities around the globe. Not only was this seen as a celebration of linguistic heritage but served as a powerful statement of cultural resilience to reclaiming our ancestral narrative. As a member of the Q’anjob’al linguistic group, I was touched to witness this moment in person. This presentation was truly an opportunity to inspire other Maya relatives and hopefully it resonated deeply with other brothers and sisters of other nations whose voices have been suppressed for centuries. Our languages are key to getting our points through. If we don’t embrace our languages, our efforts to acquire new resources would jeopardize our efforts to ensure that innovations are culturally appropriate and linguistically accurate.
It is essential that members of Indigenous communities must go far beyond language preservation to secure their voice in this new digital age. Communities must also collectively support the development of new cybertools that would actually meet their linguistic needs. Community leaders must also acknowledge the fact that AI can and will be used to harness the riches of one’s community so it is crucial that communities worldwide would advocate for transparency, equal access to data and equal representation on all cyber platforms to better serve communities with their unique linguistic needs.
As I reflect back on this conference, I am reminded that the fight for Indigenous language preservation extends far beyond the Maya territories of Guatemala. The Maya are not alone in their efforts to leaving a digital footprint, it is a collective movement of Indigenous communities standing in solidarity to create a stronger presence in the digital age. Just as our ancestors once protected our languages, we must remember that ancestral knowledge is not lost, it simply waits to be reclaimed. The responsibility now lies with us to preserve, promote and archive our voices to better shape our future.