Maya Bridge Publishing

At Maya Bridge, we truly believe that each Indigenous language represents a unique and beautiful worldview that is irreplaceable and invaluable. We are saddened when we hear that individuals and families from Indigenous communities are no longer teaching their languages to future generations. This is often because of a combination of factors, including severe discrimination and oppression faced by older generations, extremely limited language teaching and learning resources, and a desire to be able to access the global economy by prioritizing more dominant language learning.

While we empathize with Indigenous people who are often forced to make this difficult decision, and while we respect every individual's right to self-determination and autonomy, we believe that we should do all that we can to support speakers of Indigenous languages to have the same access to language learning resources.

We also recognize that amongst established generations of Indigenous communities, literacy rates in their native languages are typically extremely low, which is almost universally directly the result of intentional acts of oppression and ethnic cleansing by colonial forces. We understand that this intentional linguistic and cultural suppression has been detrimental to Indigenous communities, and we feel compelled to do what we can to reverse some of the effects of these atrocious acts

As we have thought carefully about some of the key ways in which we can support Indigenous languages and their speakers beyond just interpretation services, we have come to the conclusion that one of the most important things we can do is to support literacy and language learning in Indigenous languages.

Thus, we are thrilled to announce that we have started a sister company, Maya Bridge Publishing, whose main objective is to promote increased literacy amongst rising and established generations of Indigenous communities, and to support Indigenous language learning, teaching, and preservation through the art of storytelling. We are partnering with other organizations to establish literacy centers in underprivileged areas to serve Indigenous communities. These literacy centers will primarily feature children's books that will be translated into various Indigenous languages, and will leverage technology to promote self-paced and intuitive literacy learning for both old and young learners. Maya Bridge Publishing will also work with Indigenous authors to promote Indigenous storytelling and cultural preservation. Maya Bridge Publishing will work in tandem with Maya Bridge Language Services to help translate the works of Indigenous authors into various Indigenous languages.

We are very excited to have the opportunity to continue growing our impact beyond direct language access services, and we look forward to starting on some of these projects very soon. Stay tuned for more to come soon!