Biography
Ixq’anil Judith Marie Maxwell, PhD in anthropology and linguistics from the University of Chicago, holds the Louise Rebecca Schawe and Williedell Schawe chair at Tulane University, where she directs the Native American and Indigenous Studies program. She began her work with Mayan languages of Guatemala in 1973, as an associate of the Francisco Marroquín Linguistics Project. In the first years, she collaborated with the Chuj and Ixil linguistic communities. Since then, she has contributed to the study of other Indigenous languages, including thirteen more Mayan languages, Nahuatl, Pipil, Han (Athapaskan), Tunica and Biloxi (Louisiana Indigenous languages). She has worked with DIGEBI (Dirección General de Educación Bilingüe-Intercultural), UNESCO, Universidad Mariano Gálvez and Universidad Rafael Landívar in Guatemala and the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in El Salvador. In 1987 she established the Kaqchikel language and cultural program, Oxlajuj Aj, sponsored by Tulane University. In 2010, in collaboration with the Tunica Language and Culture Revitalization Program, she helped found Kuhpani Yoyani Luhchi Yoroni, a Tunica language research, recovery and teaching working group. The last native speaker of Tunica died in 1948. Today more than 100 tribal youth and a similar number of Tulane students have passed learned basically conversational skills in the language. In 2024, Dr. Maxwell joined the group of Biloxi scholars seeking to revitalize their sleeping langauge, whose last speaker died in 1935. Outreach to other tribal members has begun and Biloxi has joined Tunica, being taught at winter immersions and summer camps. Maxwell’s publications include 15 books, 84 chapters and articles, 14 encyclopedia entries, 3 educational compact discs, 10 academic digital publications, 33 pedagogical books on Mayan languages, 13 booklets for the Chuj and Ixil communities, and three in Tunica.