echoes from SFAA 2005

[SERENA D'AGOSTINO]

The Society for Applied Anthropology held its yearly meeting in Santa Fé
(April 4-10).

The Indigenous Languages Institute of Santa Fé organized a very interesting
session on EL.

Here is a Navajo poem collected there :

If you don't open your eyes
        there is no sky

If you don't listen
        there is no ancestors

If you don't breathe
        there is no air

If you don't walk
        there is no earth

If you don't speak
         there is no world

.......................
And some reflections on native language (NL) by Ofelia Zepeda, a speaker on
April 8th;

SCHOOL AND COMMUNITY NEEDS: A SAMPLE
        - Convincing parents that using the NL will not hold their students back
        - Making it OK to speak the NL in publc places/classrooms
        - Integrating laguages lexicon across disciplines
        - Finding language, lexicon acrosss disciplines
        - Finding classroom space
        - Increasing parent involvement
        - Younger peoople have no interest in learning about language and
culture
        - Children having children
        - Weakwening of extended famlies
        - Including elders in daily lives
        - Agggressive behaviour exhibited by children and other students
        - Parents need to know how to support their children education
        - The current focus of many of our people is on survival in a
contemporary world

Serena d'Agostino
990 Jonathan
Prévost, Quebec
Canada J0R 1T0
(450) 224-9406