Healing Indigenous Communities Through Language Revitalization: The Effects of Lingít Language Acquisition on Mental Health, Reversing Acculturation, and Addressing Racism in Southeast Alaska

Abstract

This qualitative, constructivist study explored Lingít language acquisition (Lingít yoo xʼatángi) among the Lingít People of Lingít Aaní (Southeast Alaska). It examined how learners interpret their language learning experiences in relation to historical trauma, racism, and ongoing cultural oppression. The literature review situates Indigenous language loss within settler colonialism and systemic racism, drawing from Indigenous psychology, depth psychology, self-psychology, and decolonizing methodologies. Language suppression is framed as a tool of colonization. Growing evidence suggests that Indigenous language use serves as a protective factor against suicide, substance use, and other mental health inequities. Data were collected using the Listening Guide, a feminist, voice-centered method attentive to dissociation, silencing, and relational meaning within narratives. By privileging participant voice and supporting coconstructed knowledge through story, reflection, and research poetry, the approach proved to be well-suited to experiences shaped by colonial violence and linguistic erasure. Interviews with Lingít learners were examined to trace emotional, relational, cultural, and healing themes within and across accounts. Findings showed that learning Lingít fosters psychological healing by restoring voice, identity, belonging, and cultural continuity. Participants described language learning not simply as cognitive, but as relational and embodied. Lingít students described experiences that counter internalized racism, strengthen ancestral and community ties, and cultivate resilience amid historical trauma. The study offers clinical psychology a culturally grounded, antiracist, and decolonizing framework that positions language revitalization as a mental health intervention, with implications for assessment, treatment, and policy.