Mamuju
The Mamuju language has roughly 160,000 speakers in the newly created province of West Sulawesi. It belongs to the South Sulawesi branch of the Austronesian family and within South Sulawesi it groups most closely with Mandar. Like most languages of Sulawesi, Mamuju is giving way to regional dialects of the national language among the younger generations. As is also the case with most local languages in Indonesia, there is next to no institutional support for Mamuju, with the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, dominating official communication on every level as well as being the exclusive language of education.
The Mamuju project, initiated under the Urban Fieldstation for Linguistic Research, has been undertaken with the collaboration of Husni Husain, a speaker living in New York City, and students from the CUNY Graduate Center.
In the video below, Husni Husain narrates the story of the Dar ul-Islam rebellion in South Sulawesi, which effected his region severely during his childhood.
