Dr Celia Brown-Blake (Jamaica) delivered an unforgettable speech on language justice and reparations. Look out for her speech! #IAFLL2025 University of the Western Cape ![]()
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Photo from ILAF Siki Dlanga ![]()
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Article quote below from University of the Western Cape (UWC) Alumni Online![]()
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"Delivering her keynote address, on the fourth day of the conference, Dr Cecilia Brown-Blake said the United Nations’ Durban Declaration, following the World Conference Against Racism and Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia, and Related Intolerance, said her aim was to situate language and the Commonwealth Carribean’s linguistic heritage in the reparations narrative. ![]()
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“The UN Durban Declaration and its companion programme of action recognises language as one factor that discrimination and urged states to ensure that victims have the right to reparation for such discrimination,” said Dr Brown-Blake, who is a senior academic at the University of the West Indies at Mona, in Jamaica.![]()
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From her own experience in the Caribbean, language has been on the fringe of the reparations agenda. Her talk delved into the nature of linguistic damage, emanating from the colonial project in the Caribbean, along with the contours of that linguistic scarring.![]()
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Dr Brown-Blake said the devastation of indigenous, pre colonial languages was exceptional, including the erasure of cultural identity. ![]()
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“The UNESCO expert group on endangered languages has said that every time a language dies, we have less evidence for understanding patterns in the structure and function of human language, human prehistory and the maintenance of the world's diverse ecosystems,” said Dr Brown-Blake."
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