Dr. Monica Good is an Associate Professor of Teaching in Global Studies, Indigenous Knowledges, Languages and World Literatures, Spanish in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan. LangSci caught up with Dr. Good to learn more about her work on language revitalization and the Maya territory.
1. Your work uses translation and interpretation as tools for cultural revival. Can you tell us how these tools help support language revitalization?
At the University of British Columbia Okanagan, I use translation and interpretation as key tools for Indigenous language revitalization. Working closely with Yucatec Maya-speaking communities in Mexico, I understand interpretation not simply as the transfer of words between languages but as a form of cultural mediation that preserves and sustains ancestral knowledge, stories, and worldviews. Proper interpretation requires deeply engaging with Maya cosmoperception, the knowledge embedded in the land and natural world, and understanding who my elders are—whether they are the land itself, the Ceiba tree, or the ancient pyramid before me—and listening closely to their messages so that I can convey them between languages as faithfully as possible.
My doctoral research in Oaxaca, Mexico, investigates the role of Indigenous language interpreters in the Mexican legal system, exploring how they navigate the cultural knowledge, worldviews, and meanings embedded within Indigenous languages. Given the descriptive and relational nature of these languages, my work examines how interpreters mediate between vastly different legal and cultural frameworks, revealing both the complexities and the transformative power of interpretation. Alongside this research, I continue developing bilingual learning materials, training interpreters, and designing courses that connect translation and interpretation with broader movements for language justice. By centering Indigenous voices and fostering community participation, I aim to demonstrate how these practices can empower speakers, strengthen linguistic continuity, and advance the reclamation of Indigenous languages.
2. The Indigenous Summer Seminar brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in Yucatán. What kinds of experiences or transformations have you seen come out of this program?
The Indigenous Global Seminar in Yucatán offers students a transformative, immersive experience that reshapes their understanding of language, culture, and community. I follow a Community-Based Learning methodology, situating students in Saki (Valladolid), a small-town east of Mérida, where Maya is spoken daily. Students also visit San José Oriente and Chichimilá, Maya-speaking communities, where they interact with children, women, and teachers. In these communities, they actively use the Maya language while playing, cooking, and learning traditional embroidery techniques—experiences students consistently report as among the most rewarding of the program.
Working alongside Indigenous elders and community members allows students to see firsthand how language sustains cultural knowledge and identity. Many describe a deepening awareness of the responsibilities involved in listening carefully, engaging respectfully, and recognizing the richness of worldviews embedded in Indigenous languages. Non-Indigenous students often reflect on the humility and attentiveness required to enter these spaces, while Indigenous students frequently express renewed pride in their linguistic and cultural heritage. Across reflections, students highlight moments of personal and collective transformation: developing stronger cross-cultural communication skills, fostering relationships grounded in mutual respect, and gaining an embodied understanding of how Indigenous knowledge, language, and community are inseparable.
Students also often express a desire to reclaim their mother tongues or reconnect with the languages of their parents, seeing cultural reclamation as both personal and collective work. At the end of the seminar, if I have helped a student move closer to their language and culture, I know I have challenged the colonial misconception that dominant languages are inherently more valuable than Indigenous languages. By doing so, I hope to equip students to carry forward a more respectful, just, and human-centered perspective into the world.
3. You explained that language and territory are deeply connected. Can you share an example of how the Maya language reflects the land or landscape around it?
When students join the Indigenous Global Seminar, they step into a world where language, culture, and landscape are inseparable. In Yucatán, they learn that to live as the Maya do is to orient oneself to the East—Lak’in—the direction of the rising sun, the source of light and life. Towns were built with this guiding principle, while the West—Chik’in—rests behind them, a reminder of darkness and endings. Many prayers begin by honoring the East, reflecting its central role in Maya cosmoperception, and students come to understand that every movement, every gesture, carries meaning within this cosmic order.
At the heart of each town stands the Ceiba tree, placed at the Chúumuk lu’um—the center—and regarded as the axis of the world. Its roots reach into the underworld (Xibalbá), its trunk rises through the earthly realm (Kaab), and its branches stretch toward the upperworld (Ka’an). The Ceiba embodies life itself, a living cross in the shape of a “Y,” later transformed by colonial influence into the Christian cross. Today, green crosses adorned with stoles often recall the Ceiba’s original meaning—a symbol of balance, growth, and connection across worlds. As the Elder of the town, the Ceiba watches over everyone, embodying wisdom, care, and presence for all who dwell beneath its shade.
Throughout the three-week seminar, students learn to read the land as the Maya do: observing sunlight filtering through leaves, the shifting winds, the patterns of rain, and the signs the earth offers. Wind holds a special place in Maya thought—the good wind carries intentions, shaping relationships and community. One lesson resonates deeply each year: “put the good in the wind.” Every act, every word, sends ripples outward, touching people, communities, and cultures beyond what we can see. By the end of the seminar, students leave with more than language skills—they carry a new way of moving through the world, attuned to its rhythms, respectful of its stories, and committed to carrying goodwill wherever they go. They also carry the responsibility to honor and uphold the lessons bestowed on them by the Yucatec territory.
4. Reconnecting with your own Mayan roots seems to be an important part of this work. How has this journey shaped your understanding of language revitalization?
Reconnecting with my own Maya roots has profoundly shaped how I think about language revitalization. It is a way to recover ties with my ancestors who have passed and a responsibility to be the voice of my people—a principle I hope to honor in all of my work. Growing up and working in contexts where Indigenous language, cosmos, territory, and community are intertwined, I came to understand that language is never simply a tool for communication; it carries knowledge, worldview, responsibility, and belonging. My journey into Maya territory, through immersive seminars where students and community members live and learn side by side, taught me that revitalizing a language also means revitalizing relationships: between people and land, between generations, and between tradition and transformation. The Global Seminar has also been, in a sense, a personal journey, allowing me to deepen my Maya language skills, reconnect with community members and territory in a reciprocal way, and locate myself humbly within Yucatec Maya territory.
When I entered the field of interpreting Indigenous languages in legal settings in Oaxaca, I saw clearly how language carries culture—how its syntax encodes relationships to territory, to nature, to family, and to ancestral ways of knowing. I learned that navigating these spaces—interpreting not just words but worlds—is a profoundly political, ethical, and creative act, one that can either empower or disempower the people whose voices are being interpreted. This realization has shaped my teaching, my research, and my sense of purpose, while also helping me locate myself within Indigenous territories across Turtle Island.
For me, language revitalization is not simply about teaching vocabulary or grammar; it is about restoring dignity, cultural continuity, and voice. My Maya-rootedness gives me a lens of reciprocity rather than extraction: when I bring students into Maya communities, I see myself not as the expert but as a learner alongside, carrying the responsibility to listen, respect, and return. It means designing seminars where students do not just learn about language but become part of a living linguistic and cultural ecosystem—reading the land, honoring wind and water, orienting by East as Lak’in, learning by doing and being.
Ultimately, reconnecting with my own roots has reaffirmed that language revitalization is as much about relationship as it is about linguistics. It is about fostering the conditions under which a language can be spoken, valued, heard, and inherited. The act of revitalization is a long-term commitment to supporting speakers and communities, dismantling colonial legacies that prioritize dominant languages, and nurturing the understanding that Indigenous languages matter not just for heritage, but for the future of how we live with land, with each other, and with our shared world.