January 2012 marked four years since Cultural Survival launched Endangered Languages Program partnerships with critically endangered Native American language communities. Since Spring 2008, Cultural Survival’s grassroots collaborative of four local language program directors and administrators serving 6 tribally-run programs has raised nearly three quarters of a million dollars in direct support for five partner programs, while leveraging nearly $2 million in total new investments in language revitalization efforts.

Mapunzugun is a language isolate spoken in Chile and Argentina by the Mapuche people. On February 21, 2012 in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía Region in Chile, several Mapuche organizations and communities organized a first regional march in support of the Mapunzugun language.

The constitutional court of Guatemala has failed to issue a decision on the constitutionality of the current Telecommunications Law, despite the established two-month limit for a decree.

On the last weekend in January 2012, Cultural Survival's partner network of pilot radio stations gathered together once again in San Mateo, Quetzaltenango to participate in a workshop about the Mayan calendar and spirituality.  Cultural Survival invited representatives of twenty different radio community stations to learn about the meanings behind the K’iche Maya solar calendar from two Mayan spiritual guides from the town of Momostenango, Totonicpan, who addressed in detail what the 2012 change means for the Mayans.

Felicia Huarsaya is one of many Indigenous artisans whose crafts were sold at the Cultural Survival Bazaars this year.  She comes from a small community in the Peruvian province of Azangaro about 15,815 feet above sea level near Lake Titicaca.