Between the Archive and the Island: Navigating Resistance in Language Documentation

This article examines the methodological tensions that arise when collaborative language documentation is situated between the institutional expectations of academia and the relational priorities of indigenous communities. Drawing from my doctoral research on Sonsorolese, an underresearched Micronesian language, I reflect on the disjunctures between funder metrics, linguistic conventions and community-centred goals. Engaging with feedback from the Endangered Languages Documentation Programme (ELDP), the article explores how resistance manifests in the refusal of open access, the redefinition of ‘success’, and the assertion of local authority over language knowledge. By tracing debates around orthography, lexical categorisation and authorship, I show how language documentation practices become sites of epistemic and methodological resistance. Framed within decolonial and relational paradigms, this article argues for a more reflexive approach to language documentation, one that embraces uncertainty, prioritises community use and acknowledges resistance not only as confrontation, but as care.