Bernard C. Perley's primary interests are the language politics and maintenance practices employed by Native Americans in North America as practiced within dominant English language and cultural socialization. "It is a comparative approach that identifies socio-political coalition building between First Nations communities in resisting, and at times celebrating marginalization by the Nation-States of Canada and the United States."
Additional ongoing research interests focus on multi-ethnic politics of Native Americans in the United States and Canada. Part of the investigation examines the legal definitions by nation-states on their indigenous populations and how the indigenous populations react, subvert, and resist those definitions.
The above studies have alerted Perley to the potential of applying the findings to larger issues of language politics and language philosophy. "I am exploring how peoples and communities make practical decisions in strategically misinterpreting symbolic bureaucratic discourses to their advantage. Some of the areas of potential advantage are in identity formation, self-determination politics, and international coalition building."
Projects:
Maliseet Seasons - four panel drawing project that incorporates the Maliseet names for the four qualities of light at four times of day in the four different seasons.
Nolasweltom: Translocalizing Cosmological Imaginings - an ethnographic project that utilizes paintings and Maliseet language in a constructed environment that will simulate a specific remembered place (the Tobique Rock) on the Tobique Reservation.
I designate that place as the locus of mythical time (or 'deep time') for my interpretation of Maliseet cosmological imagining. The project is my attempt as both native and anthropologist to produce an alternative ethnography.
http://projects.gsd.harvard.edu/heritage/
Maliseet language curriculum - an ongoing project assisting Maliseet language teachers in developing teaching materials for use in the Maliseet language classroom at Tobique First Nation, New Brunswick, Canada.
