New film "Runa Simi" highlights Quechua language revitalization in Peru

The new documentary Runa Simi — "our language" in Quechua — follows Fernando Valencia, a Peruvian voice actor, Indigenous activist, radio host and single father, who has dubbed many online clips of animated movies into Quechua from his home in Cusco, Peru. In the film, Valencia pursues his most ambitious goal yet: to fully dub Disney's animated classic The Lion King into Quechua,.

"I am sharing our culture to the worldwide culture," says Valencia, who started dubbing films after noticing that Quechua-speaking Indigenous children were watching movies dubbed into Spanish that they couldn't understand.

Experts estimate that a language is lost every two weeks — and that half of the world's 7,000 spoken languages could be lost by the end of the century. Quechua is the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, with approximately 7 to 10 million speakers living primarily in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador. But like so many Indigenous languages, Qechua is vulnerable due to cultural pressures and discrimination.