SAPPORO, JAPAN — For someone who grew up ashamed of her ethnic identity, they are powerful words. “You are beautiful just as you are. Don’t be afraid,” Mina Sakai sings to a young, enthusiastic crowd ...

LONDON--Across a darkened exhibition hall, lit in islands containing artifacts and video installations, the voice of tenacious rights activist Shigeru Kayano croaks out words in the threatened ...

KUHN: Today, many younger Ainu know of their language in culture only from recordings, like this one at the cultural center. After years of lobbying by Sawai and other community leaders, Japan's ...

Almost every 14 days, a language dies; that’s about 26 languages a year. And over 2,500 Indigenous languages are currently in danger of disappearing forever — that’s more than a third of our world’s ...

In 2009, UNESCO in its “Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger” designated the Ainu language as being critically endangered. As the most dire of the five categories — only extinct is worse — used in ...

More than a century after colonisation, the Ainu language almost vanished. Now machines are listening to hours of old recordings and learning to give it a new voice. The cassette player would catch ...

For someone who grew up ashamed of her ethnic identity, they are powerful words. “You are beautiful just as you are. Don’t be afraid,” Mina Sakai sings to a young, enthusiastic crowd in the language ...

It’s a cold February morning on the banks of Lake Poroto in Shiraoi, Hokkaido. A white blanket of ice and snow covers the water — only footprints lead toward the center of the lake, where holes have ...