Marginalized and Misunderstood: How Anti‑Rohingya Language… 293 settler colonialism with the concept of cultural genocide, noting that these efforts to eradicate Indigenous culture were part of a longer process of group destruction (Carasik and Bachman 2019). Of the 187 Indian languages still being spoken in the United States and Canada in 1992, 149 were not being passed on to the next generation, which meant that 80% of the Indigenous languages in North America were severely endangered (Krauss 1992, pp. 5). Data collected between 2006 and 2010 in an American Community Survey (ACS) of Native North American languages showed that of those who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native alone, more than one in five people over age 65 reported speaking a Native North American language, while only about 1 in 10 people aged 5 to 17 did so (Siebens and Julian 2011, pp. 3). This shows the continued decline in the usage of Indigenous languages in North America. Cranney (2019) concluded from the 2013–2017 ACS that there are some Indigenous languages that are demographically holding steady, such as the Central Yupik and Eastern Keres languages. However, most North American Indigenous languages showed evidence of the decline in this (most recent) survey. The issue of language endangerment has gained increased attention in relation to Indigenous peoples,3 but is still rarely discussed and prioritized in situations of forced displacement. Julia Sallabank (2012) notes that causes of language endangerment include the consequences of war and genocide, as well as overt repression against linguistic minorities. To measure the health of a language, one must consider things like the availability of materials for language education and literacy, government language policies, minority groups’ attitudes toward their own language, and the amount and quality of documentation. “Language endangerment may be the result of external forces such as military, economic, religious, cultural, or educational subjugation, or it may be caused by internal forces, such as a community’s negative attitude towards its own language” notes the UNESCO Ad Hoc Expert Group on Endangered Languages (2003). “Internal pressures often have their source in external ones, and both halt the intergenerational transmission of linguistic and cultural traditions” (pp. 2). In the case of the Rohingya, the external pressures working against the maintenance of their language are seemingly insurmountable in the presence of multiple majority and world languages, backed by military might. As Suzanne Romaine (2007) writes, “maintaining cultural and linguistic diversity is a matter of social justice because distinctiveness in culture and language has formed the basis for defining human identities” (pp. 130). Yet, there is little social justice in cases like the Rohingya’s, when people are forced to learn a less useful global language while being prohibited from using their native language and from learning a local majority language that would benefit them more and allow them to thrive. By controlling the languages that an already-disadvantaged group may use, language policy is being utilized essentially as another weapon of persecution. According to Leanne Hinton (2013, pp. 39), “language policy has often been a tool for the oppression of minority languages, but it can serve as a tool for their survival and public 3 The United Nations observed the International Year of Indigenous Languages in 2019 and 2022–2032 marks the International Decade of Indigenous Languages. 13