From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 1 22:05:33 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash Cash) Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 15:05:33 -0700 Subject: TribalTech Program Message-ID: TribeTech Program, Courses http://www.tribetech.cybercivics.org/index.html Strategic Planning for Tribal Technology - 3/24 to 4/25 The course is taught by Eric Jensen, CEO of Indigicom , a former deputy director at the FCC, and former staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives. The course focuses on thinking and planning strategically about information technology in the tribal government context. Cost: $49 Preserving and Promoting Culture through Technology - 4/28-5/20 The course is taught by Laura Waterman Wittstock (Seneca), President of MIGIZI Communications, an organization committed to serving the communication and education needs within the Indian Community. She is also on the Board of the Minneapolis Foundation and is President of the Minneapolis Library Board. The course provides an introduction to how information technology can be used to preserve and promote tribal cultures. Cost: $49 Enhancing Tribal Governance through Technology - 6/2 - 7/30 The course is facilitated by Sam Goodhope (Inupiat), President of Native Broadband Services and founder of the Law Offices of Sam Goodhope. He serves as an advisor to several tribal governments. The course provides an overview of how technology can be used to improve government services and constituent interaction. Cost: $49 Telephone Registration To register by phone, call (562) 860-2451, x2521. You may complete the entire registration and payment process over the phone if you desire. Payment options: * All major credit cards * Invoice/PO arrangements Telephone registration assistance is available from: * Monday-Thursday 8:00 AM-7:30 PM (PST) * Friday 8:00 AM-4:30 PM (PST) * Saturday 8:00 AM-Noon (PST) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fax Registration To register via fax, address the fax to Tribe Tech, Cerritos College Community Education, Fax# (562) 467-5013. Your organization will be invoiced directly for course payment. For questions concerning fax registration, call the telephone registration line (see above). In the fax please state: * Name of Course(s) * Name of Student(s) * Institution/agency * Address * Phone * Email address(s) * Form of payment- credit card number or P.O. * Account/Finance Dept. Contact Person * Attach P.O. if applicable Advisory Board A nationally prominent advisory board has been organized and working on general program development issues since the fall of 2002. The Board constitutes a range of expertise in the area of public technology and tribal governance. Name Organization Email Greg Curtin, Ph.D. Civic Resource Group gregc at civicresource.com Kris Monteith (Pending) FCC, Indian Telecom Training Initiative kmonteit at fcc.gov James H. May, Ph.D. CSU Monterey Bay jim at csumb.edu Eric Liang Jensen IndigiCom eljensen at comcast.net Sam Goodhope Law Offices of Sam Goodhope (deceased) Laura Waterman Wittstock MIGIZI Communications, Inc. wittstock at migizi.org From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 2 18:42:35 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash Cash) Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 11:42:35 -0700 Subject: Lingistics Professor wins Grant for Language Revitalization Project (fyi) Message-ID: Linguistics Professor Wins Grant for Language Revitalization Project Wednesday, 30 April 2003 by Lori Harwood http://uanews.org/spots/7269.html Natasha Warner, a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, has won a Woodrow Wilson Public Scholarship Grant. The partnership grant, worth $10,000, will help fund a revitalization project for the Mutsun language. Only seven partnership grants, which are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, are given out nationally. According to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation website, ?The Woodrow Wilson Foundation stands for educational excellence and innovation in service to the public good. The Foundation particularly promotes contributions by university-based humanists and artists to the United States? civic heritage and civic future.? The site describes Warner?s project: ?Although linguists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created extensive notes on Mutsun, a Native American language of central coastal California, the last fluent speaker died in 1930. Drawing on these century-old notes, Natasha Warner of the University of Arizona has already begun working with the tribe to resurrect the language, creating a phonetic spelling system, a partial draft of a textbook for community language classes, and a partial dictionary. The partnership will now expand the dictionary and textbook, provide distance learning software, and support the research team?s travel to conduct face-to-face workshops with the Mutsun.? Warner has been working with the Mutsuns since she was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, and has found the work very rewarding. The interest and involvement of the Mutsuns in reviving their language is remarkable, she says. ?I don?t think we can fully understand how much it means to the Mutsuns to regain their language,? Warner said. ?It is part of their identity. Their culture was nearly wiped out. Their language was wiped out. They were told there was no way of regaining that language. But in fact, there are tens of thousands of pages of archival materials on the language.? The grant will allow Warner to hire a research assistant to examine those archival materials that are more difficult to analyze due to problems such as poor handwriting. Warner's efforts have allowed Mutsun community leader Quirina Luna-Costillas to create teaching materials for local children and to conduct community language lessons. Warner has even helped translate Dr. Seuss? ?Green Eggs and Ham? and the ?Happy Birthday? song. Because the Mutsuns are scattered, Warner will be working on creating distance learning tools. Michael Hammond, head of the UA linguistics department, says, ?There is growing interest on the part of Native American communities in revitalizing their moribund or dead languages. Warner?s project is particularly exciting because she is working closely with community members and has already produced some very impressive work. This is also an area which our department and university are committed to, so it fits wonderfully with other work on Native American language maintenance and documentation going on here. This is a wonderful acknowledgment of Warner?s efforts and abilities in this domain as well.? From fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU Mon May 5 17:03:42 2003 From: fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Francisco Marmolejo) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 10:03:42 -0700 Subject: FW: Mexico Cultural Immersion Program for Students Message-ID: Please forward to students interested in this cultural immersion program in Mexico. Regards, Francisco Marmolejo Executive Director Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) University of Arizona PO Box 210300 220 W. Sixth Street Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA Tel. (520) 621-9080 / 621-7761 Fax (520) 626-2675 Email: fmarmole at u.arizona.edu http://conahec.org -----Original Message----- THE STUDENTS ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICA (http://http://www2.conahec.org/sona/) INVITES YOU CULTURAL IMMERSION PROGRAM 23 DAYS 73 STUDENTS 10 CITIES Mexicali Mazatlán Guadalajara Morelia Mexico DF Puebla Acapulco Querétaro Guanajuato Hermosillo Cultural Immersion Program (CIP), is directed by the UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE BAJA CALIFORNIA through the Accounting and Business Administration School Mexicali. It is a program prepared by students and teachers of UABC for North-American students to promote cultural understanding and to share knowledge and experience. The setting will be Mexico, and students will be exposed to the richness of the country's culture, diversity, economy, and landscape. Our activities will consist in: · Conferences with government and business leaders. · Dinner conferences and lectures from teachers of each university. · Cultural excursions (museums, historic places ) · Conferences and workshops on the North America Community. · Business Visits. · Visits of Government agencies · Interaction with local students. COST 800 US DLLS JUNE 20th – JULY 12th Join us For more information contact: sona_cip2003 at hotmail.com or our web page www2.conahec.org/sona Registration will be closed MAY 30th -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 5 18:43:53 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:43:53 -0700 Subject: Anisgnabeg Language List Message-ID: Subject: Those interested in Ojibwe Language are invited.... We want to invite all of those interested in the Ojibwe Language to our Ojibwe Language Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ojibwelanguagesocietymiinawaa We have over 350 members and plenty of messages everyday. Our links section is huge and full of information. Please join us. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon May 5 21:17:41 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 14:17:41 -0700 Subject: Native Language: Keeping the words alive (fwd) Message-ID: Native Language: Keeping the words alive Tribal elders, members endeavor to preserve their native language By CARRIE ANTLFINGER Associated Press 5/4/2003 ONEIDA NATION RESERVATION, Wis. - At the Language House, a log house tucked between sugar maples and white pines, 10 members of the Oneida tribe sit around a table repeating words that rolled off the tongues of their ancestors. They've just finished watching a videotape that recorded elders talking with students. Their assignment is to pick out trouble phrases and determine their pronunciation and meaning. One of the phrases they're struggling with translates to mean: "We're always trying hard to be like the Caucasian race," a telling phrase in their struggle to preserve their language. The members are paid to learn the ancient language and teach it to others in an effort to ensure the language survives. Other tribes nationwide are taking similar steps with help from the federal government, which has poured more than $23.6 million into such language preservation projects since 1994. "If we don't know the language we probably won't be Indian people anymore," said Dennis White, director of instruction in the Lac Courte Oreilles Band, a Chippewa tribe in Hayward. "We'd be Americans with nice tans." Indians say losing the language of their ancestors takes away a tribe's sense of identity and culture partly because many of their meetings and prayers are in their native tongue. Before Europeans arrived in North America, 400 to 600 tribal languages were spoken in the United States and Canada. Today, there are only 211, said Inee Yang Slaughter, executive director of The Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, N.M. The Administration for Native Americans recognizes 558 tribes in the United States. It gives grants to tribes to preserve their language, which usually means having elders teach it to others who will pass it on. Sheila Cooper, acting director of program operations for the federal agency, said it is the only federal entity that provides tribes funding for such programs. Many don't realize the funds are available. The Oneida received $125,000 last year to pay for seven trainees, who meet with two elders, both in their 80s, five days a week. The trainees spend half the day with the elders; the rest of the time is spent in schools teaching the language. But the lessons aren't limited to the classroom. A grocery store on the reservation lists product names in English and Oneida. One sign in the cereal aisle translates to read: "Morning Time Foods." The tribe also has a biweekly tribal newspaper with a full page written in Oneida. Indian languages began disappearing in the 17th century after European missionaries arrived on the East Coast. In the mid-1880s the government established boarding schools that prohibited students from acknowledging their culture, including language. Students were punished for practicing any part of their culture until the 1960s, and many of the elders still alive are afraid to teach children the language. Language tends to be better preserved when a tribe isolates itself from an urban community and its American influences and when tribe members take an active part in language lessons, Slaughter said. Another challenge the tribes face is the languages are passed down from generation to generation orally, so there are few materials or trained teachers. In many tribal communities, members have grown up speaking English. About a year and a half ago, The Indigenous Language Institute of Santa Fe, N.M., started teacher training sessions, including curriculum development. The institute, which is funded through grants and private contributions, also established a teaching material resource center for tribes. Only a handful of states let tribes certify their teachers so they can teach tribal languages in the public school system. In January, the Washington state Board of Education agreed to grant special teaching certificates that would allow speakers of the ancient languages to teach in public schools there. The 3,500-member Tulalip tribe, located about 30 miles northwest of Seattle, stands to benefit from the teaching certificates. Fewer than 10 of its elders age 70 or older speak Lushootseed. "They are the experts," Suzi Wright,a program developer and applied linguist for the Tulalips. "We're unused to recognizing someone's expertise if they don't have some sort of university degree but there's no way you can be an expert in culture unless you've grown up in the culture." The Tulalips have no textbooks; they rely on taping speakers. On Kodiak Island, Alaska, only 25 fluent speakers of Alutiiq are left after 7,500 years. A 25-year-old dictionary and nine videotapes with language lessons are all they have to help preserve their identity. Shauna Hegna, the 25-year-old language coordinator for the island's 10 tribes, which speak different dialects of Alutiiq, is trying to obtain federal and private funding for a three-year master apprentice program. It would identify seven or eight fluent speakers, each of whom will work for 10 hours a week with one or two adults to teach them the language. The tribes will learn this summer if they will receive funding. "I have to get it off the ground because if we don't accomplish this goal our language will die," Hegna said. "To me it's not acceptable because I want my children to know my language." www.oneidanation.org/ From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Thu May 8 16:51:00 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 12:51:00 EDT Subject: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Message-ID: Okii everyone, Please write a letter in support of S. 575. The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs is having a hearing for S. 575 on Thursday, May 15th in Washington, DC. S. 575 an amendment to the Native American Languages Act which states "it is the policy of the United States to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages." S. 575 will bring the U.S. one step closer to assuring the preservation and revitalization of Native American languages by supporting the continued existence of Native American language survival schools. S. 575 will benefit and support tribes in their efforts to preserve and promote tribal languages. One of the purposes of S. 575 is "to demonstrate the positive effects of Native American language survival schools on the academic success of Native American students and the students' mastery of standard English." Your letter should address two important issues: 1) Why NA languages are important to preserve? 2) Why NA "language survival schools" are an important method to both preserve languages and improve academic achievement? You can send your letter to Senator Campbell, Chairman and Senator Inouye, Vice-Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, by either: email -- testimony at indian.senate.gov fax -- (202) 224-5429 or mail -- United States Senate, Committee on Indians Affairs, Washington, DC 20510. Please also send your letter to YOUR entire congressional delegation. Kitmatsin -- Rosalyn Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 8 17:56:14 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:56:14 -0700 Subject: Athabascan Conference Message-ID: 2003 Athabascan Languages Conference http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/alc/ June 5-7, 2003 Humboldt State University-Arcata, CA For More Info Contact: Zo Devine Esd2 at humboldt.edu Center for Indian Community Development 1 Harpst Street Arcata, CA 95521 202.826.3711 or Dr. Victor Golla Gollav at humboldt.edu From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 9 21:09:43 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 14:09:43 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: FEDERAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITY Department: Education Program: Foreign Language Assistance Grants Summary: The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) provides grants to local educational agencies for innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for elementary and secondary school students. Eligible Applicants: Local educational agencies (LEAs). Deadline: 2003-06-13 Federal Register: Date: 2003-05-09 Page: 24978-25004 URL: for more information: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2003/03-11622.htm From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 9 22:05:36 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 15:05:36 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dba at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 9 22:01:36 2003 From: dba at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Diana Archangeli) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 15:01:36 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC1917.BE0EA817@ncidc.org> Message-ID: To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: "The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support the teaching of English." best, Diana At 02:09 PM 5/9/2003 -0700, Andre Cramblit wrote: >FEDERAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITY >Department: Education >Program: Foreign Language Assistance Grants > >Summary: The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) provides grants to >local educational agencies for innovative model programs providing for the >establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for >elementary and secondary school students. Eligible Applicants: Local >educational agencies (LEAs). > >Deadline: 2003-06-13 >Federal Register: >Date: 2003-05-09 Page: 24978-25004 >URL: >for more information: >http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.go v/2003/03-11622.htm > Diana Archangeli Associate Dean, Research, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 520-621-2184 Director, Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute University of Arizona 520-621-3930 Professor, Linguistics University of Arizona 520-621-2184 From liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Sat May 10 00:34:39 2003 From: liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Liko Puha) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 14:34:39 -1000 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC2630.8FDC98E5@ncidc.org> Message-ID: A question regarding SB 575. Does the Hawaiian language fall under the umbrella of Native American languages? Mahalo (thanks), Liko andrekar at ncidc.org writes: >That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor is >funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate elective >course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our students learn >their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 > > > >Diana Archangeli wrote: > > >To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: > >"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >the teaching of English." > >best, > >Diana > > From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Sat May 10 01:37:09 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 21:37:09 EDT Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: >From S. 575: "Native American -- The term 'Native American' means an Indian, Native Hawaiian,or Native American Pacific Islander. Native American Language -- The term 'Native American language' means the historical, traditional languages spoken by Native Americans." Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sat May 10 14:29:44 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 08:29:44 -0600 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: Seems to me that this is an important question. My comments based on my experience are that expanding the cultural view to include Native languages is going to be very difficult, but is worthwhile in its own way for those willing to stand outside the commonly recognized circle of acceptance. I have just completed my first year in the Computer Science PhD program at New Mexico State. I have just finished the first 5 computer courses that I have ever taken, and have a fresh perspective on what it's like to try to learn in an environment where other students have vastly different, and more topically focused, understandings and knowledge. In other words, this year for me has been very similar to the experience that many Native students have when they come from the reservation to school. That said, I can tell you what I encountered in a discipline where "languages" are a topic of primary concern. 1. There is no support on the most basic technical level for Native languages. That is, there are no language codes and no country codes that are available to specify any of the the North American Native languages. There are 3 for South American Native languages, but ONLY because they are the languages of specific countries. 2. There is no recognition, understanding, or awareness that compilers can/should/must be available in something besides English. 3. On the Open Software platforms, which are primarily Linux, translation efforts are in progress, but these occur based on groups volunteering, and more staggeringly painful is that each message, screen and line of text is translated manually, by groups of translators. Clearly this limits software availability in non-English languages. There is more, but this covers the difficulties of starting. . . since there is nothing, a comprehensive understanding of how hard it is simply to Start is perhaps in this case most valuable. People don't generally think of technical resources in the context of Heritage Language revitalization. They think of nests and elders and opportunities to speak in "common, everyday" terms. They think of physical immersion. But from what I have seen, if people don't have places to use their languages in ways besides asking for the butter or buying gasoline, they will not go through the struggle to learn them. I knew a man once, he was very depressed because he couldn't tell his grandmother about his life's work. They are both Navajo, he is a chemist, completing his PhD. He constructed words from his own understandings of Navajo, wrote his paper in Navajo, and read it to his grandmother. She understood the language, but had a difficult time with the concepts, as one might imagine would also happen for English speakers outside the discipline. Which leads me to the real point: a language is a language certainly in terms of its physical characteristcs, but a language is also a language in terms of its Meanings, meanings bound to culture. Understandings common in a culture are abstracted to single words, and one can only "understand" these words correctly if one is immersed in the culture. I'll give you one example ... . consider the noun "object". Everyone knows what this means, yes? Okay, how about this definition: An instantiation of the Class. How many still know what it means? Not many, I'll bet. But this is a real case, can be seen in English, and is exactly what happens with our Native languages and Native students. You go into school thinking that you know what the words and ideas mean because you have been using them all your life. And, if you are in Computer Science, you learn a new definition: an instantiation of the Class. It's a bit metphorical, too, for those who wish to ponder along the lines of how those who are members of different classes (substitute "races") become objectified. Pre-PS: For those who are waiting, with or without realizing that they are still waiting, for our CD: we are finished with the coding, we just have to test the distribution. It has been a particularly challenging semester: I have a 20-hour per week job on campus, drive in 5 days a week, 100 miles each way. And, since I had to learn 5 languages this semester (Flex, Lex, Bison, Rigal, and Java) and strengthen my C coding skills for my compiler class, my nearly-non-existent life has been. . . well, let's just say "challenging". CD will be out soon. Mia Kalish ----- Original Message ----- From: Rr Lapier To: ILAT at listserv.arizona.edu Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 7:37 PM Subject: Re: Where do Native Languages Fit In? From S. 575: "Native American -- The term 'Native American' means an Indian, Native Hawaiian,or Native American Pacific Islander. Native American Language -- The term 'Native American language' means the historical, traditional languages spoken by Native Americans." Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:32:43 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:32:43 -0700 Subject: computer resources Message-ID: There are some resources being developed by individual tribes. Grand Ronde has a Chinook Wawa font and I have heard of other fonts available through other tribes for their languages. Combine this with the fact that Internet explorer is open to programmers to input native words on the interface. There was a story a few years back that I circulatred on the Chinook-L list about how the code for IE was now open. I'll try to find that message and repost it here. David David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:36:48 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:36:48 -0700 Subject: computer resources Message-ID: Linguistlist computer resources:http://www.linguistlist.org/tools/index.html David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:37:44 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:37:44 -0700 Subject: Chinook-l messege of 1998 Message-ID: Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 10:25:33 -0800 Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List Sender: The Chinook Studies List From: David Gene Lewis Subject: Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released (fwd) Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone know how to develop a jargon web browser? Maybe we could get someone to help with this? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:20:08 -1000 From: Hawaii Nation Info To: Hawaii Nation Info Subject: Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released --- begin forwarded text Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 04:02:30 -1000 From: Keola Donaghy Organization: Hale Kuamo'o Subject: Hawaiian language web browser released Hale Kuamo'o - The Hawaiian Language Center College of Hawaiian Language University of Hawai'i at Hilo 200 W. Kawili St., Hilo, Hawai'i 96720 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 18, 1998 Hilo, Hawai'i - Hale Kuamo'o has announced the release of Ka Ho'okele, a Hawaiian language Internet browser for the World Wide Web (WWW). Ka Ho'okele is based on the popular Netscape Communicator Internet program developed by Netscape Communications Corporation of Mountain View, California. It is the first such translation completed for any Native American or Polynesian language, and only the second such project completed independently of Netscape. The translation was enabled through Netscape's Universal Localization Program (ULP). "This Hawaiian language browser demonstrates the viability of the Universal Localization Program and the value of our open source code concept," said Rick Elliott, ULP program manager, Netscape. "We believe this marks the beginning of a new wave of customized Internet browsers that will help many people access the Web in their native language." Ka Ho'okele contains a World Wide Web browser, email, news reader, and a module for creating web pages. All user interface elements - menus, dialog boxes, window names, etc. - are in Hawaiian. At this time only a Macintosh version of Ka Ho'okele is available. Translation of Windows and Linux versions of Ka Ho'okele are being considered. Though designed specifically for the students, teachers, parents and support personnel involved in Hawaiian Medium Education programs, Ka Ho'okele will be made available for the Hawaiian speaking community at large and anyone with a Macintosh computer and an Internet connection. On March 31st of 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation publicly released the source code for Netscape Communicator, and shortly thereafter contacted the Hale Kuamo'o to determine if there was interest in providing a Hawaiian language version of the program. Translation and testing of the program was completely done by staff of the Hale Kuamo'o during the summer, and testing completed in late-September. "We have been told that 97% of all websites on the Internet are implemented solely in the English language," says Keiki Kawai'ae'a, Director of Curriculum and Teacher Development for the Hale Kuamo'o. "We are so pleased to afford public access to those who choose to 'surf the net' through Hawaiian and in Hawaiian." Hale Kuamo'o also runs Leoki, a Hawaiian language Bulletin Board System (BBS) that is used by nearly 1,000 Hawaiian language speakers statewide, and which links all of the Hawaiian immersion schools, Punana Leo preschools, Hawaiian language university offices, and other support organizations. In addition, Hale Kuamo'o designed and maintains Kualono, the most complete and diverse source of information on Hawaiian language on the Internet. It uses a unique dual-language format, allowing users to view most pages in both Hawaiian and English. Funding for these technological initiatives is provided by the 'Aha Punana Leo through its consortium agreement with the Hale Kuamo'o to provide curriculum and support to the Hawaiian immersion schools. Ka Ho'okele homepage: Hale Kuamo'o homepage: Kualono: Netscape ULP homepage: FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Keola Donaghy - Director of Media and Telecommunications Hale Kuamo'o, University of Hawai'i at Hilo voice (808) 974-7339 fax (808) 974-7339 Keiki Kawai'ae'a - Director of Curriculum and Teacher Development Hale Kuamo'o, University of Hawai'i at Hilo voice (808) 974-7339 fax (808) 974-7686 David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:40:09 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:40:09 -0700 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L Message-ID: Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 16:16:57 +0900 Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List Sender: The Chinook Studies List From: Mike Cleven Subject: Re: Chinook browser development (was Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released (fwd) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Now that Netscape source code is "open", anyone can develop add-ons to it, including other language versions. To get this done, it would have to mean that one of us is familiar with writing code - or we can convince someone to develop it for us. Any takers? I kept notes on this once upon a time - y'know......File-Print, Edit-Preferences, etc. First suggestions "File" = "Ikta", "Edit" = "Mamook", "Save" - "Iskum", "Undo" - "Kilapi", etc. Some of the compounds needed are going to be interesting. Just for fun we could all develop this as a communal whiteboard page; arguing out the possible terms....... Also, there's Opera (www.operabrowser.com I think - maybe www.operasoftware.com). And as a "by the way", I noticed www.slanguage.com listed somewhere - maybe the Herald Tribune. Maybe Jeff's page is already listed there..... Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape ULP - purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find suitable translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" - apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or "Wawahouse" occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree variations on the theme. So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try and evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more straightforward....... David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sat May 10 21:06:45 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 15:06:45 -0600 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L Message-ID: I hate to say this, but this is not trivial. For example, I have been working on fonts for Athabascan for over a year now. Apache uses rising tone nasals. These are not supported directly as glyphs in Unicode. This means a) the support has to be developed to build the glyphs dynamically; b) the code has to be embedded in the html documents; c) the code will not work for some browsers and oh-by-the-way they ALL have to be tested. Alternatively, a font has to be developed that supports the glyphs directly. You may not, by law, take existing fonts, modify them, and redistribute them because they are the property of the big font companies and are covered under intellectual property law. So you must either get the font companies to modify their fonts to the specifications of the Native language, or you must develop your own, from scratch. (Definitely somewhat non-trivial; the existing fonts have been developed over 400 years.) Then, whichever of these two directions you took, you must find a way of making sure that the new font is available on the viewer's workstation. You can embed them in a .pdf, but then the text cannot be used for other purposes; this is a bad thing in the Indian communities where there is little enough material without it being hung up in capitalistic "protection features". Finally, most of the browers are written in C++; C++ uses base classes; the base classes are dependent, ultimately, on two primitive standards, ISO-639, which defines the language codes, and ISO-3166, which defines the country codes. Using any of the standardized routines for Internationalization (I18N) or Localization (I10N) requires having referencable values in the base class that define these two standards. There is a pretty good overview of the process here, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6176, for Linux, which is Open Source. To modify a browser that has the necessary base class support for a particular language is not overly difficult. The programmer power required depends on whether one wishes to implement what is called the "interface" in the Native language, or simply modify it to support Native languages. If one wishes to modify the interface, one should go all the way and make it culturally appropriate. Remembering that what is culturally appropriate for one tribe is culturally offensive for another, the interface needs to be configurable with graphics, colors, and text support. Then, the words and messages, help text, menu displays, all need to be "converted" into the target Native languages. HOW one does this is a major language extension questions. My friend who wrote the paper in Navajo for his grandmother said he had to take words for concepts that seemed related in Navajo. When I did my Hopi presentation on DNA, I crafted words, much as photomicrograph, typewriter, computer and alternator were crafted. The Elders were in general pissed with both of us. Sigh. So how you get this massive amount of text "translated" is a major issue. What do you do when there are no words in the language for the icons. For example, on my tool bar for Outlook, which I am using to write this, are "Undo", "Paste", "Check", "Spelling", "Attach", "Priority", "Sign", "Encrypt" and "Offline". Of these, "check" and "attach", possibly "sign", can be expected to exist in most Native languages. But I'll bet only some of the really modern ones like maybe Cherokee have words like "spelling" and "priority". And I'll bet that none have "encrypt" and "offline". To "borrow" the words from English kind of defeats the purpose here, and encourages the development of a complex Nanglish. . . . probably not pretty. You also want to use long descriptive words, like the Hopi word for computers, which essentially describes what it does and consequently is not a good label for an icon. And it goes on. . . to do this, one needs a Group (large group, preferrably), of committed people, with a space, and enough money to support the task. Once you have to have a job and be in school full time, you don't have much left over for volunteering. Our task would be made much easier if we could get someone to change at least the ISO language standard to include Native American languages, and also to convince the font companies to support us with distributable fonts that included the necessary special characters, instead of expecting that our Native people and miscellaneous scholars will spend from $99-$129 for One Single Font. When we install a new operating system, or package like Photoshop, we get 1000's of fonts for English that also support all the Romance languages; some even support Germanic and Cyrillic, and there are the occassional full-ISO 10646 fonts, like Lucida sans Unicode, and the Microsoft 80-bazillion MB one that you can download. I'm actually planning on building a "font engine" this summer that will be distributed for free to Native communities and for a nominal cost to academic researchers, and will take a font and create the necessary characters for the target language using Unicode methodologies. The reason I am distributing it this way is because if you buy a font from the font companies, or get one in a distribution, and You Modify It Yourself, then you can use it as much as you want. You can't sell it or send it to someone outside your organization, however. With the Red Pony Font Engine, you will be able to make your own fonts, send the engine and the specs to your friends, and they will be able to build Their Own fonts that will look exactly the same as yours. This way, people will have fonts for posters, calendars, cards of all kinds, graphics, whatever they can dream up. . . . .this sure ran on. . . . --> Just a Few Thoughts! Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "coyotez" To: Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 12:40 PM Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 16:16:57 +0900 > Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List > Sender: The Chinook Studies List > From: Mike Cleven > Subject: Re: Chinook browser development (was Fwd: Hawaiian language web > browser released (fwd) > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Now that Netscape source code is "open", anyone can develop add-ons to it, > including other language versions. To get this done, it would have to mean > that one of us is familiar with writing code - or we can convince someone to > develop it for us. Any takers? > > I kept notes on this once upon a time - y'know......File-Print, > Edit-Preferences, etc. > > First suggestions "File" = "Ikta", "Edit" = "Mamook", "Save" - "Iskum", > "Undo" - "Kilapi", etc. Some of the compounds needed are going to be > interesting. > > Just for fun we could all develop this as a communal whiteboard page; > arguing out the possible terms....... > > Also, there's Opera (www.operabrowser.com I think - maybe > www.operasoftware.com). > > And as a "by the way", I noticed www.slanguage.com listed somewhere - maybe > the Herald Tribune. Maybe Jeff's page is already listed there..... > > Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) > > Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: > > > Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape ULP > - purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through > the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find suitable > translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not > that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" - > apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the > project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or "Wawahouse" > occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). > > But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have > profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic > communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for > Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I > suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree > variations on the theme. > > So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try and > evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there > are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe > this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and > ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community > members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop > separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... > > I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to > the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more straightforward....... > > David Lewis > Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde > Department Of Anthropology > University of Oregon > > From mslinn at OU.EDU Mon May 12 15:56:18 2003 From: mslinn at OU.EDU (Mary Linn) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 10:56:18 -0500 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC2630.8FDC98E5@ncidc.org> Message-ID: In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 > > > >Diana Archangeli wrote: > >>To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: >> >>"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >>the teaching of English." >> >>best, >> >>Diana >> > >-- > >André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >(http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >gallery featuring the art of California tribes >(http://www.americanindianonline.com) > >COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >to Natives subscribe send an email to: >IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo -- Mary S. Linn Assistant Curator of Native American Languages Assistant Professor of Anthropology University of Oklahoma Native American Languages, 250G Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History 2401 Chautauqua Avenue Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 (405) 325-7588 office (405) 325-7699 fax -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon May 12 16:23:25 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 09:23:25 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: In Oregon, there is now a new teacher credential which certifies native language teachers, and in Northern California, Tolowa is accepted for the foreign language requirement for college entrance. There are models that other areas can use. I would suggest contacting the kanakamoaliallies-L listserve for more specific information on what is happening in Hawaii. I know they have language nesting schools but I am not sure about how they integrate will college entrance requirements. David >===== Original Message From Indigenous Languages and Technology ===== >In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign >language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement >to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So >why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? > > > > >At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >>That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >>substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >>is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >>elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >>students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 >> >> >> >>Diana Archangeli wrote: >> >>>To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: >>> >>>"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>>languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>>Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >>>the teaching of English." >>> >>>best, >>> >>>Diana >>> >> >>-- >> >>André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >>Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >>(http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >>meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >>gallery featuring the art of California tribes >>(http://www.americanindianonline.com) >> >>COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >>AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >>to Natives subscribe send an email to: >>IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >>http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=list info > > >-- > >Mary S. Linn >Assistant Curator of Native American Languages >Assistant Professor of Anthropology >University of Oklahoma > >Native American Languages, 250G >Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History >2401 Chautauqua Avenue >Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 >(405) 325-7588 office >(405) 325-7699 fax David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 12 18:15:41 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 11:15:41 -0700 Subject: Learning Your lnaguage (education) Message-ID: Denver Post A 'foreign' language Lakota Rare class seeks to reclaim culture, keep kids in school By Eric Hubler Denver Post Education Writer Monday, May 12, 2003 - Beverly Granger cries as she thinks of all that was lost because she couldn't speak to her grandmother in Lakota - and all that is being regained now that her son Robert is learning the language in a course at Denver East High School. "I feel very privileged," said Robert, a 17-year-old junior. "There're not many places to learn Lakota. Plus it's my language, which gives it more meaning. I'm hoping to teach it to my children." This is not an after-school club, but a bona fide language course sanctioned by the Denver Public Schools curriculum department. Students get foreign-language credit - an irony that Rose Marie McGuire, head of the district's Indian Education Program, couldn't help noting. "It's not a foreign language. It's an indigenous language," she said. Instructor Gracie RedShirt Tyon Foote is McGuire's counterpart in Jefferson County schools, and she comes to Denver four times a week to teach the class, which is in its first semester. She and her students are not only preserving history but making it, according to educators involved in American Indian culture. Nationwide, few K-12 schools offer Indian languages. "Usually it's French or German or Spanish or any of those popular European languages. But you never hear, especially in the inner city, anyone teaching a native language. I think it's amazing," said Suzette Brewer, spokeswoman for the American Indian College Fund, which is based in Denver and supports 34 tribal colleges across the country. "That's wonderful news," said Albert White Hat Sr., a Lakota language professor at Sinte Gleska University, a Lakota college in Rosebud, S.D, and the author of the textbook used at East. "Public schools don't generally teach that unless they're on the reservation." For a century, Brewer said, Indian children were sent to boarding schools that discouraged them from speaking their native languages - or worse. "They basically had their languages beaten out of them," said Brewer, a Cherokee. The boarding-school movement allowed two-thirds of Indian languages to slip into extinction and instilled a dislike of school that still harms Indian students, Brewer said. Indians nationwide have worse dropout rates than any other ethnic group, she said. That's true in Denver. In a district where two-thirds of its students graduate from high school - already low by state and national standards - only 46 percent of Indians do, according to DPS figures. RedShirt Tyon Foote's class is part of an Indian Focus Schools system meant to improve those numbers. A quarter of DPS's approximately 850 American Indian students go to three elementary schools and one middle school, in addition to East and the Career Education Center, that offer support services and activities. Some are recent arrivals from reservations and accustomed to tiny rural schools, McGuire said. "Many times our kids get lost. They're just not used to an urban high school," said McGuire, who is a Dakota. (Dakota, Lakota and Nakota are members of the Siouan language group. Speakers of each tongue can understand speakers of the others, McGuire said.) Students who are reserved in other classes come alive in Lakota class, McGuire said: "You'll see more participation. They're more sure of themselves, more connected." Like Robert Granger, Nathan TwoEagles-Downing, a sophomore, is a Lakota looking to reclaim his roots. "I always wanted to be able to communicate with my grandpa," he said. Other students belong to different tribes with unrelated languages, but they're glad to be learning any Indian language at all. Freshman Brandon Ruiz is an Apache, but his elder, or mentor, is a Lakota, and now he's beginning to understand some of his elder's language. A few students aren't Indians at all, just intellectually curious. "Spanish and French, they seem so common. I try to learn new things," sophomore Debby Romero said. Mastering Lakota means recognizing that language can change entire societies, professor White Hat said. Many Lakota words took on new meanings when Christianity came on the scene, and today's students are trying to rediscover their original meanings. The phrase "wakan tanka," for example, meant "every creation," but missionaries translated it as "great spirit." "That's a description of the Christian God," White Hat said. It didn't fit the Lakota philosophy, which held that all people, animals and natural phenomena were relatives, worthy of respect and cooperation but not worship, he said. "In our department here, we are doing what we call laundering the language," White Hat said. "We have to go back to the original meaning of the word and how that addresses the Lakota philosophy, the Lakota way of thinking. We found that the language is very challenging, very complimentary, very honoring, and really kind of a progressive type of thinking." Using White Hat's text, RedShirt Tyon Foote is teaching the students at East High that in Lakota, language and relationships are inseparable. An example: To show respect and preserve household peace, brothers and sisters traditionally did not speak to one another. "Living in tipis, avoidance was practiced to give people their privacy because it's a one-room home," she said. "The class is so much more than just language," RedShirt Tyon Foote added. "There are social rules, philosophy, the culture, history, misinterpretation of different words when it was written down by missionaries." A frequent stumbling block for students is that men and women use different word endings. Brewer said Lakota speakers find Kevin Costner funny in "Dances With Wolves" because he speaks female Lakota. While most Lakota today live in South Dakota, it is appropriate for Denver to play a role in the renaissance of the Lakota language, Beverly Granger said. Lakota routinely traveled through Colorado, where they formed alliances with Cheyennes and Utes, she said. And, in modern times, Denver has emerged as a center of American Indian culture. Granger said she fled the violence, alcoholism and poverty of the Rosebud reservation at 19, lived for many years in Nevada, and only felt her homesickness ebb when she came to Denver in 1989 and saw the annual Denver March Pow Wow. For the first time, she said, she saw Indians of different tribes doing something other than bickering. "Everyone was dancing together. It was an intercultural pow wow. I just sat there and cried," she said. "Denver's just a good place to be for American Indians." From keola at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Mon May 12 18:41:25 2003 From: keola at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Keola Donaghy) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 08:41:25 -1000 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L In-Reply-To: <3EB66330@webmail> Message-ID: FWIW, we did a Hawaiian translation of Communicator into Hawaiian back in 1998. It took two of us about two months to do the work (we did a binary translation for Mac only). Depending on how much of the interface you want to do, the amount of work is not insignificant, and there is constant updating that needs to be done, part of the reason we have not maintained Ka Ho'okele (the name for our translation - http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/resources/kahookele/). For us, it really turned out to be a project that was "cool", as you say, and got us a bit of notoriety, but only served us for a brief period of time. It did require the creation of a considerable amount of new words that needed to go through our new lexicon committee as well. At the time that we did Ka Ho'okele, and when I last checked sometime last year, the tools for translating and maintaining the translation were pretty crude, but the staff of the ULP were quite helpful. If we had staff to spare to maintain it I wouldn't mind continuing on the project, but in our case I felt our limited resources were better served on other projects. Keola Penei ka ~Qölelo a Indigenous Languages and Technology : >Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) > >Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: > > >Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape >ULP >- purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through >the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find >suitable >translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not >that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" >- >apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the >project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or >"Wawahouse" >occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). > >But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have >profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic >communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for >Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I >suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree >variations on the theme. > >So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try >and >evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there >are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe >this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and >ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community >members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop >separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... > >I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to >the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more >straightforward....... ======================================================================= Keola Donaghy Hawaiian Language Curriculum and Technology Coordinator Native Hawaiian Serving Institution Program University of Hawai'i at Hilo keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~nhsi Kualono http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/ ======================================================================= From ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US Mon May 12 21:15:00 2003 From: ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US (Sarah Supahan) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 14:15:00 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EB730B1@webmail> Message-ID: We have also been able to get Hupa, Yurok and Karuk all accepted to the UC system for college entrance here at Hoopa Valley High School. Sarah Supahan On Monday, May 12, 2003, at 09:23 AM, coyotez wrote: > In Oregon, there is now a new teacher credential which certifies native > language teachers, and in Northern California, Tolowa is accepted for > the > foreign language requirement for college entrance. There are models > that other > areas can use. I would suggest contacting the kanakamoaliallies-L > listserve > for more specific information on what is happening in Hawaii. I know > they have > language nesting schools but I am not sure about how they integrate > will > college entrance requirements. > David > >> ===== Original Message From Indigenous Languages and Technology > ===== >> In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign >> language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement >> to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So >> why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? >> >> >> >> >> At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >>> That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >>> substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >>> is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >>> elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >>> students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 >>> >>> >>> >>> Diana Archangeli wrote: >>> >>>> To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call >>>> states: >>>> >>>> "The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>>> languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>>> Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to >>>> support >>>> the teaching of English." >>>> >>>> best, >>>> >>>> Diana >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >>> Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >>> (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >>> meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >>> gallery featuring the art of California tribes >>> (http:// >>> www.americanindianonline.com) >>> >>> COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >>> AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >>> to Natives subscribe send an email to: >>> IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >>> >> ?location=listi > nfo>http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/ > ?location=list > info >> >> >> -- >> >> Mary S. Linn >> Assistant Curator of Native American Languages >> Assistant Professor of Anthropology >> University of Oklahoma >> >> Native American Languages, 250G >> Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History >> 2401 Chautauqua Avenue >> Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 >> (405) 325-7588 office >> (405) 325-7699 fax > > David Lewis > Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde > Department Of Anthropology > University of Oregon > From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon May 12 22:50:27 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Lewis) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 15:50:27 -0700 Subject: from NativeShare: Fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education Message-ID: Fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education (DLESE) The fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education (DLESE) Sunday, August 3 - Tuesday, August 5, 2003 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado for teachers (formal K-grey and informal), curriculum developers, materials developers, content/data providers, scientists, service providers, and library creators. The cost of the meeting would be your airfare plus approximately $350 for lodging in the University of Colorado dormitories, meals and miscellaneous expenses. The additional day for the skills workshop is estimated to be $75. Full and partial funding will be available for a limited number of attendees to the meeting. Funding requests will be prioritized based on need and to achieve balance between educators from all venues, disciplines, and diverse backgrounds, developers from the full range of collections and services, and librarians and education specialists. http://www.dlese.org/ From sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue May 13 20:37:14 2003 From: sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 13:37:14 -0700 Subject: FW: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Message-ID: Everyone, I apologize if this has alread appeared--view it as a reminder! Susan Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D. Department of English University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: ddeleon at email.arizona.edu Subject: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 13:34:49 -0700 Size: 2611 URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 15 18:26:53 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 11:26:53 -0700 Subject: Language Revitalization Efforts Message-ID: Ancestral Language Revitalization Efforts Complete Successful First Year; Visitors from Northern California Tribes Observe Classes in Luiseño 05/14/2003 - RIVERSIDE CA Kris Lovekin, kris.lovekin at ucr.edu Linguist Eric Elliott works with two young people from Pechanga on mastering Luiseno, the ancestral language. Scholars at the University of California, Riverside and cultural leaders of the Pechanga Band of Luiseño Mission Indians are celebrating the completion of the first year of an ambitious effort to teach tribal members their ancestral language. The work is paying off. Last week, Native Americans from Northern California visited UC Riverside to observe the Takic Language Revitalization Project in action at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters near Temecula. They watched children learn Luiseño, one of approximately 100 tribal languages native to California. Fully half of those languages are now nearly extinct. The Native American Languages Protection Act was approved by Congress in the early 1990s, and right now there is a movement to provide additional funding to help revive many of the endangered native languages across the nation. That could help efforts like the one at Pechanga. The people who observed the language program were from the Paiute Tribe in Bishop, the Tule River reservation near Visalia and individuals representing the Numa Yadoha Program in Bishop. They spent a week at UCR Extension learning teaching techniques that can help in their own efforts to revitalize their native languages. "I really liked seeing the program," said Carrie Franco, who is learning the Yowlumni language on the Tule River reservation, home to 13 different native tribes. She is studying her ancestral language in order to pass it down to her children and grandchildren. Her cousin, Lucy Rodilez, said she enjoyed watching children at Pechanga sing and understand Luiseño. The Tule River reservation covers 56,000-acres, including towering redwood trees and elevations of 7,000 ft. Since there are 13 different tribes on the reservations, issues of language revitalization get complicated. Margaret Valdez, who lives on the Tule River reservation, said her father is Mexican, her mother is Yowlumni and her husband was Navajo. "I have five children and they all understand Yowlumni," she said. She has started to teach her grandchildren. When a language dies, she said, so does the culture. That is the theory that launched the effort to revitalize Luiseno, according to Gary DuBois, director of Pechanga Cultural Resources. "With the death of ancestral languages, the process of comprehending one's own history and describing the landscape is changed. It becomes impossible to transmit fundamental cultural ways of knowing across the generations." He said last week that the first year of the program has gone well, in fact better than he expected. "We are concentrating our efforts on the preschool program, and we have waiting lists of Pechanga children who would like to attend the preschool." Recently, DuBois said, the tribe approved a kindergarten program to start in the fall. The adult classes are geared to support the preschool. "It helps family members and tribal members keep up with the children," said DuBois. Sheila Dwight, director of International Education Programs at UCR Extension, helped assembled a team of language teaching experts to work on the project. And she hosted the group touring the Riverside County language programs this week. The lead linguist for the project is Eric Elliott, who is uniquely qualified for the task. A Southern California native, Elliott spent five years documenting the endangered Luiseño language working closely with Villiana Hyde, native speaker of the Rincon dialect of Luiseño. His doctoral dissertation at UC San Diego was a 1,700 page bilingual English-Luiseño/Luiseño-English dictionary, the result of thirteen years of research on the Luiseño language. For the past eleven years he has documented the Mountain Cahuilla dialect of Cahuilla, and the Serrano language spoken by one remaining native speaker residing at the Morongo Reservation of Riverside County. Joel Martin, Rupert Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs at UCR, helped put all of the parties together. His goal has always been to design a program that could be used as a model nationwide. "We're on our way now," Martin said. "The children are learning so well and the teachers are doing so well. It is very heartening to see how far we've come." This effort is connected to UCR's proposed Center for California Native Nations, which will help facilitate innovative educational partnerships, coordinate important research related to Native Americans, and share best practices. A new Web site at UC Riverside that offers curriculum ideas for language revitalization, free magazines for children and other resources, is available at www.americanindian.ucr.edu THE TAKIC LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION PROJECT · Has developed teaching models to revitalize the Luiseño language · Has created successful preschool and adult classes at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters · Has trained tribal members to be teachers in Luiseno · Has taken the model and demonstrated it to national audiences at conferences, as well as accepted visits from observers to see the program in action. Relevance to UCR UCR's focus on American Indian Affairs reflects its location and unique positive heritage. Located at the fastest growing and most diverse campus in the UC system, UCR's Native American Studies program consists of more than 40 courses distributed across many departments. A strong concentration of faculty in History supports one of the country's most highly regarded Ph.D. programs in Native American history as well as a new M.A. program. Efforts are underway to offer an M.A. and Ph.D. in Native American Studies as well, tapping full-time faculty in Anthropology, Dance, English, Ethnic Studies, and Religious Studies. UCR's program enjoys institutional support, including the Rupert Costo Library of American Indian History, the Costo Endowed Chair in American Indian Affairs, the Costo Historical and Linguistic Native American Research Center, and a strong Native American Students Program. Near neighbor to more than 30 federally recognized tribes as well as several unrecognized ones, UCR's program supports interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, critically sophisticated, and communally based research. A Web site is available at http://americanindian.ucr.edu/ Sheila Dwight Director, International Education Programs University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521 e-mail: sdwight at ucx.ucr.edu; Phone: (909)787-4346 From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 15 21:09:34 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:09:34 -0700 Subject: Preserving Language Message-ID: Preserving native language OSU hosts conference in hope of preventing native language extinction By Brenna Doheny Barometer Staff Writer Global development has a detrimental impact on more than just natural resources. Native languages and cultures are becoming increasingly endangered by the globalization trend. OSU is hosting the second annual conference on Native American language preservation in hopes of saving native languages from extinction. "For a number of reasons that go back beyond the 19th century, these languages have been progressively jeopardized," said Joseph Krause, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Krause compared language extinction to the disappearance of a species in the environment. "That disappearance has an effect on the larger ecosystem," he said. Similarly, "when a language disappears, a lot disappears with it." The conference will focus on preservation strategies, including curriculum development and methods for archiving languages. The applications of technology to language education, through such methods as language software, video production and distance education will be addressed. Krause expects a large delegation from the Native American community to attend and hopes that each of the 10 recognized tribes in Oregon will be represented. Native Americans from Montana, Arizona, Canada and Alaska will also be in attendance. The theme of the conference is "Speaking to the Seventh Generation." "We are looking toward the future," Krause explained. "Languages will disappear unless something is done to have the younger generation learn them," he said. "If something is done, the seventh generation will still be speaking them." The Oregon state government is aware of the plight of native languages. Senate Bill 690, passed last year, allows for special teacher certification procedures for native speakers to help bring language programs to schools. "Some of the only remaining speakers of Wasco, for example, may be in their 60s or 70s and won't go through the normal procedures of getting a teacher's certification," Krause explained. The new certification program, approved last summer, recognizes the sovereignty of Native American tribes. If an applicant has the tribe's authorization, "the process of obtaining a certificate is expedited," Krause said. Only a few speakers have gone through the certification process thus far, however, and non-native language teachers are somewhat opposed to the program. "One of the fundamental purposes of the conference is so growth can occur between native and non-native language teachers," Krause said. The conference will begin with an opening convocation at noon Thursday in LaSells Stewart Center, and lectures and workshops will continue until the last lecture at 7 p.m., resuming at 9 a.m. on Friday. The conference will conclude on Friday with a presentation of "Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,"a film that won Camera D'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Lucy Tulugarjuk, who starred in the film and won Best Actress at the American Indian Film Festival, will give an introduction to the film. The screening will begin at 6 p.m. at Milam Auditorium. All of the conference events are free and open to the public. Roylene Keouli, external coordinator of the Native American Longhouse at OSU, understands the plight of native languages. "The Hawaiian language is dying," she said. Keouli, a native Hawaiian Islander, speaks Hawaiian because she learned it through six years of language courses at a school for natives. She explained that the general population speaks English or Japanese. Through higher education and the use of technology, the prevalence of the Hawaiian language is increasing, she said. "Before there were only 400-500 native speakers," Keouli said. "Now the number is increasing, but [the Hawaiian language] is still not common." Brenna Doheny covers news for The Daily Barometer. She can be reached at baro.news at studentmedia.orst.edu, or at 737-2232. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 16 22:37:18 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 15:37:18 -0700 Subject: Testimony Begins (language) Message-ID: Senate bill called vital to Native language survival FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2003 A bill to expand the education of Native languages drew so much support at a Senate hearing on Thursday that just about everyone asked to be a part of it. Amendments to the Native American Languages Act, first passed in 1990, will authorize the creation of three "survival schools" in Alaska, Hawaii and Montana. Modeled after a successful Native Hawaiian program, the schools will provide comprehensive education in an all-Native environment. "Language is important," said Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the bill's sponsor. "It's a link to the past and I think it's an anchor to the future." The idea was warmly embraced by more than a dozen witnesses who documented their own successes in teaching Native languages. During the hearing, which was interrupted several times due to frequent Senate votes on the tax cut, they asked to be included in the survival school initiative. "Given our unique circumstances the Southwest, we hope this committee will entertain a recommendation that a fourth center be established that will serve Native people in the Southwest," said Dr. Christine Sims, chairwoman of the Linguistic Institute for Native Americans and an Acoma Pueblo tribal member. Sims said Pueblo, Apache, Navajo and other tribes will benefit. Speakers also asked the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to address the impacts of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates federal standards in public education. They said a teacher certification requirement will hurt Native instructors, some of whom are tribal elders who were forbidden to speak their own languages. "It doesn't take into account our Native language that are endangered and [it] will endanger all Native American children," said Geneva Navarro, 77, who teaches Comanche at the Comanche Nation College in Oklahoma. "These Native languages helped save our country in World War I and World War II," she added. Rita Coosewon, 71, is the only Comanche language instructor in her area's public school system but has to work with a certified teacher. She was taken to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at a young age and marveled at the changes federal law and policy have brought about in her lifetime. "What a twist for them to ask me to come and teach this language that they wanted so hard for me not to know," she said. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Education Secretary Rod Paige had an "eye-opening experience" when he visited rural Alaska Native schools last week. "Keeping the languages alive -- we recognize that it is a challenge in the state," she said. "It ought not to be so." Witnesses testified about the benefits of Native language instruction. They said it boosts boosts academic performance, preserves tribal culture and lowers drop out rates. Jocelyn DesRosier started off as a volunteer at the Piegan Institute / Nizipuhwahsin School on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana and is now a teacher. She said graduates of the school, which serves up to grades 8, receive praise when they enter high school. "The principal keeps phoning us and asking us what we did to these children," she said, "because they are so brilliant." Dr. Kalena Silva, director of the Ka Haka~QUla O Ke~Qelikolani College at the University of Hawai'i, said 80 percent of students in the Native Hawaiian immersion program enter college. Aside from the survival school, the bill authorizes "language nests." Tribes, tribal colleges, Native language educational organizations and other organizations can receive funds from the Department of Education for instructional programs. Inouye acknowledged the changes suggested by the witnesses and said he hopes the bill will be approved by the Senate committee by the end of July. From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Sun May 18 21:07:43 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 17:07:43 EDT Subject: "Blackfeet Push to Preserve Langauge" Message-ID: Sunday, May 18, 2003 Blackfeet push to preserve language Bill would help schools teach native tongues By CHRISTOPHER STEINER For the Great Falls Tribune WASHINGTON -- Two Blackfeet teachers urged a U.S. Senate committee this week to approve a bill intended to ensure that Native American languages don't vanish. The bill would offer grants to schools starting or continuing native language programs. Dollar figures for the bill are not yet available. Of the 300 tribal languages indigenous to the Americas, only 175 are alive today, according to the National Indian Education Association. In 50 years, the group says, as few as 20 could be left. "The loss of native languages diminishes the truth of native ways and dishonors the lifetimes of our ancestors," Rosalyn LaPier told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "True native history is identified by the stories extending back thousands of years and retold out loud in our native languages." LaPier, director of the Piegan Institute's Nizipuhwahsin School on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, and teacher Jocelyn Davis-DesRosier appeared before the committee Thursday to explain how the school teaches core subjects in the Blackfeet tongue. The Piegan Institute was founded in 1987 to preserve and promote the native Blackfeet language. In 1995, the institute started the Nizipuhwahsin School, which has 32 students, all children in the Blackfeet Tribe. The bill, introduced by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, would amend 1990 legislation that protected the rights of Indians to promote and speak their native languages to fiscally support the programs which it guards. No similar legislation has been introduced in the House. The 1990 bill marked an official reversal in policy for the U.S. government -- which at one time persecuted those who spoke native tongues. An 1868 report from the federal commission on Indian affairs read: "Their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted." Davis-DesRosier, who is learning the Blackfeet language, sends her two boys to the school where she teaches. Early on, she said, her friends and relatives warned her against sending her children to the native-language school, saying her sons "would have lower academic achievement and would never make the transition to public school." The doubters have been proved wrong, she said. "Learning academic subjects in the Blackfeet language has not diminished their academic ability, but enhanced it," she said. This is the case for most children, according to Leanne Hinton, professor and chairwoman of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. "We know through their intense hard work and leadership that these systems work successfully to educate students to be literate and fluent in their ancestral language and accustomed to using it in daily communications and also are literate and fluent in English, and fully prepared to go on to higher education in English-speaking institutions," she said to the committee. That's exactly the way things have played out at Nizipuhwahsin, said Shirlee Crowshoe in an interview from the school where she is one of two teachers who are fully fluent in the native tongue. "We have had many children go on to the public high schools and have no problems," she said. There would be many more of those children if the school had more fluent teachers like her, she said. Because there are only two teachers fluent in the language at the school, which teaches children from kindergarten through eighth grade, it has to limit its enrollment to around 30. There is a waiting list of more than 100 children, despite the tuition of about $100 a month. This is why, Crowshoe said, the teachers are rooting so hard for the bill to pass -- they need more funding to entice a few of the remaining fluent Blackfeet speakers to teach. Fluent speakers, she said, are scarce -- a survey taken by the Blackfeet in the mid-1990s revealed roughly 200 fluent speakers out of a tribal population of about 15,000. At one time the school employed as many as six fluent speakers, she said. "But funding is such a big factor, we just couldn't afford to bring them on again." Christopher Steiner is a reporter for Medill News Service. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 19 19:29:47 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:29:47 -0700 Subject: Dine Family Institute (language) Message-ID: Farmington Daily Times School: Dine language, culture remain the key to success By Monica Lujan/For The Daily Times Thursday, May 15, 2003 - SHIPROCK "We spoke to our children even while they were in the womb. And since there are seven of them, we each took a separate group with us on occasion; dad with the boys, and mom with the girls, to spend time with them," Pauline and Ezekiel Sanchez told participants of the Dine Family Institute held Friday and Saturday at TseBitAi Middle School in Shiprock. The Sanchez', who are the 2003 Family of the Year, kept the audience alternating between tears and laughter as they told stories of their childhood, their romance and the ongoing process of being parents to a houseful of children. The Sanchez' were first named as Arizona's Family of the Year and then as National Family of the Year. The couple is the first Native American family to be selected for this prestigious honor. "We have always communicated to our children our love for them and the fact that each can achieve whatever he or she desires," Pauline Sanchez said, noting the struggles she had to overcome. Pauline Sanchez spoke frankly about watching her Navajo father beat her mother in drunken rages. As an adult, she was able to reconcile her feelings of conflict about this situation by talking to him and realizing how alcohol had affected his abilities to be a normal father. Ezekiel Sanchez quipped about being a "wetback," and how his parents crossed the Rio Grande into the United States when he was a small child. Despite the hardships of being immigrants and raising 16 children, Ezekiel Sanchez said his parents remained loving and caring toward each other and were never violent. Lenora Williams and her family from Fruitland were so moved by the Sanchez' presentation that they invited them to dinner later that evening. "We felt like we had to express back to them the love they shared with us," said Lenora Williams. Randy Roberts, chair of the Central School District's Indian Education Committee, was also very impressed with the Sanchez' presentation "We were so honored to hear the kinds of teachings that every family should use," Roberts said. Navajo Nation Vice President Frank Dayish Jr. and his wife Virginia made a surprise appearance at the Friday night conference. Both the vice president and his wife reminisced about the days they were students at TseBitAi Middle School, he remembered when the school auditorium was brand new and she recalled her days of being a cheerleader. Dayish reinforced the importance of Navajo parents' involvement in schools on the reservation and stressed the inclusion of Navajo language and culture in all schools serving Navajo students. Virginia Dayish spoke about the many struggles and sacrifices she and her husband endured as they pursued higher education. She credited strong family role models and family perseverance for getting them to where they are today. "It was very nice to hear Mrs. Dayish speak as a mother. Both she and the vice president have assisted us with events twice this spring which is unprecedented," added Tina Deschenie, Central Schools' Director of Bilingual and Indian Education, who also organized the conference. On the second day of the conference, a nine-student panel answered questions about their role models, their parent's role in their educational careers and their futures. The student panel was a hit with attendees as the students from Kirtland Central High, Shiprock High, and Newcomb High, mostly credited their mothers for their achievements thus far in life. The students overwhelmingly believed the best parents tell their children they love them, listen to their children, know who their friends are and attempt to understand the very different issues the students are confronted with today, compared to what the parents might have faced in their own adolescence. The student panel also noted some of their favorite reading included books that had to do with individuals overcoming adversity, but they also preferred magazines featuring current issues. As to future career aspirations, they talked about architecture, engineering, Native American law, music, journalism, and business. The students also agreed inclusion of Navajo language, culture, and history is an important component of their education. Some students believed that all Navajo students should have to take all the Navajo courses offered. And many students indicated that their first Navajo specific learning occurred in school when their teachers introduced the information. "Those students who spoke Navajo fluently did so with great reverence for their family who had raised them knowing the importance of their traditional roots," Deschenie said, "All of the students spoke with refreshing candor and intelligence on each question posed to them." Steve Darden with his Navajo teachings and encouragement to use prayer, song, and culturally based practices to be more loving and joyful drew in a large audience as well. Both Dr. Larry W. Emerson and Sylvia Jackson also reinforced the importance of family commitment to raising children who are strong in their identity as Navajo people and who aspire to do the best they can for society in general. Emerson reviewed historical oppression, which led to degeneration of culture and language among the Navajo, and all Indian people. "This historical process was evidenced in the students' insight on their parents' apathy toward language and culture in many households," Deschenie noted. "However, it's no surprise the students' lack of traditional teaching in the home only creates a thirst for Navajo language and culture teachings through the schools." Starting in July, the New Mexico State Department of Education has opened a new door for public school students to study their tribal languages with funding from the state Bilingual Unit for Indigenous Language Revitalization. Central School District's Indian Education Committee hosted the Dine Family Institute. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 19 19:33:25 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:33:25 -0700 Subject: Worlds Languages Dissapearing Message-ID: Alarm raised on world's disappearing languages By Steve Connor, Science Editor 15 May 2003 The number of "living" languages spoken in the world is dwindling faster than the decline in the planet's wildlife, according to a new study. A comparison of the factors affecting the loss of languages and the demise of wild animals has found that the world's 6,000-plus tongues are facing the biggest risk of extinction. "The threats to birds and mammals are well known but it turns out that languages are far more threatened," said Professor Bill Sutherland, a population biologist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Linguists estimate that there are 6,809 "living" languages in the world today, but 90 per cent of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, and some languages are even rarer ? 46 are known to have just one native speaker. "There are 357 languages with under 50 speakers. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than commoner ones," Professor Sutherland said. By applying the same principles used to classify the risk to birds and mammals, Professor Sutherland demonstrated that languages were subject to similar forces of extinction. In the study published in Nature, Professor Sutherland found that the factors that increased the diversity of animal species ? notably forest cover, tropical climates and mountainous topography ? were also those that influence the richness of local languages. "Countries with large numbers of languages are those with the most forests, are nearer the tropics and with mountain ranges. The same factors affect the number of bird species," he said. Over the past 500 years, about 4.5 per cent of the total number of described languages have disappeared, compared with 1.3 per cent of birds and 1.9 per cent of mammals. Colonisation has had the strongest influence. Of the 176 living languages spoken by the tribes of North America, 52 have become extinct since 1600. Of the 235 languages spoken by the Aboriginal Australians, 31 have disappeared. Professor Sutherland said that when comparisons were made to threatened animals, there was a substantially higher proportion of languages that could be considered "critically endangered", "endangered" or "vulnerable" ? the three classifications used to describe the threat to birds and mammals. "My extinction risk classification for languages is conservative ... Even with this, it is clear that the risks to languages exceed those to birds and mammals," Professor Sutherland said. A well-established phenomenon that comes into play when a species declines to small numbers is called the Allee effect ? for example when further breeding drops off because animals have difficulty finding a mate. A similar effect may also occur with rare languages. "People just don't want to learn them because they know there are so few others who can speak it," he said. The Leco language of the Bolivian Andes, for instance, is spoken by about 20 people. The Cambap language of Cameroon in Central Africa is used by just 30 native speakers. Some languages are important because they contain unique characteristics. The Yeli Dnye tongue of the people who live on Rossel Island, in Papua New Guinea, for example, contains unusual sounds and a vocabulary that upsets the universal terminology for describing colours. Professor Sutherland found that although mountains, forests and the tropics were common factors behind the diversity of animals and languages, both types of extinction did not necessarily occur in the same regions of the world. Between 200 and 250 languages are spoken by more than a million people, with Chinese Mandarin, English and Spanish being the three most popular tongues. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Wed May 21 16:34:46 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 09:34:46 -0700 Subject: Language Testimony Message-ID: Professor backs "survival schools" for Native American languages Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 May 2003 BERKELEY ? Native American language "survival schools" must have long-term funding to save these languages from extinction, University of California, Berkeley, professor Leanne Hinton recently told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "Native American languages are in a major state of decline. The present and future language survival schools can turn this sad state of affairs around for at least some languages," Hinton said after testifying May 15 in support of legislation proposed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to provide long-term funding for language survival schools. These preschool and other schools offer a complete education through instruction in a Native American language, with the purpose of strengthening, revitalizing or reestablishing a Native American language and culture. Throughout her career, Hinton, a professor of linguistics and chair of the UC Berkeley Linguistics Department, has worked with Native American languages and on issues relating to language revitalization. She is the incoming president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and hosts the biennial "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley to revive languages for tribes with no speakers left. Of 85 indigenous languages in California, Hinton told the committee, 35 have no speakers left and the remaining 50 are spoken only by a handful of elders. "Along with their languages are being lost eloquent speech-making and story-telling skills, powerful oral literature, philosophical frameworks, environmental knowledge, and diverse world views," Hinton testified. Also testifying at the Washington, D.C., hearing was Mary Hermes, an associate professor of education at the University of Minnesota who has two children in an Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis. Hermes noted research showing that Native American children ? like African-American children ? have long been given the message that they can be either a Native American or a smart, educated person, but they can~Rt be both. Language can be the key to reconciling these two identities, Hermes said. By using indigenous languages for instruction in schools, children no longer see a conflict between education and Native identity. "For these endangered indigenous languages, the children come to school already knowing English ? they have learned it at home from their parents, from television, from their peers, and from virtually every experience in their lives involving speech," Hinton testified. "The survival schools level the playing field." A Hawaiian contingent at the committee hearing said that not a single child has dropped out of Hawaiian language survival schools before graduation in the 15 years the highly successful program has been in operation there. The program~Rs graduates boast an 85 percent acceptance rate at colleges and universities, and one is attending Stanford University in the fall. The 1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) established funding for tribes to develop language revitalization programs. A number of successful language survival programs were set up, partially funded by the Administration for Native Americans, which handles NALA funds. Due to NALA~Rs limited budget, however, schools generally can only be funded for about three years. "The challenge is to find long-term funding for these schools, and that is the major issue that S 575 addresses," Hinton told the Committee on Indian Affairs. "Long ago, previous congressional acts devoted enormous efforts to the schools that were charged with the eradication of Native American languages and cultural traditions," she testified. "Now in this hopefully wiser time, it behooves the Congress to devote an equivalent amount of funds to help indigenous peoples retain the languages that we erased from their lives." Inouye expects his bill to emerge from committee and reach the Senate floor for a vote sometime in July. To learn more about the proposed legislation, From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed May 21 18:50:41 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 11:50:41 -0700 Subject: Language Testimony In-Reply-To: <3ECBAAA7.5ECE60F0@ncidc.org> Message-ID: Dear ILAT, Along with this article is a webcast (.ram file) of the recent Senate hearing that is avilable for viewing. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/05/20_lang.shtml Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT Quoting Andre Cramblit : > Professor backs "survival schools" for Native American languages > > Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 May 2003 > > BERKELEY ? Native American language "survival schools" must have > long-term > funding to save these languages from extinction, University of > California, > Berkeley, professor Leanne Hinton recently told the Senate Committee > on > Indian Affairs. > > "Native American languages are in a major state of decline. The > present and > future language survival schools can turn this sad state of affairs > around > for at least some languages," Hinton said after testifying May 15 in > support of legislation proposed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to > provide > long-term funding for language survival schools. > > These preschool and other schools offer a complete education through > instruction in a Native American language, with the purpose of > strengthening, revitalizing or reestablishing a Native American > language > and culture. > > Throughout her career, Hinton, a professor of linguistics and chair > of the > UC Berkeley Linguistics Department, has worked with Native American > languages and on issues relating to language revitalization. She is > the > incoming president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and > hosts > the biennial "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley to revive > languages > for tribes with no speakers left. > > Of 85 indigenous languages in California, Hinton told the committee, > 35 > have no speakers left and the remaining 50 are spoken only by a > handful of > elders. > > "Along with their languages are being lost eloquent speech-making and > story-telling skills, powerful oral literature, philosophical > frameworks, > environmental knowledge, and diverse world views," Hinton testified. > > Also testifying at the Washington, D.C., hearing was Mary Hermes, an > associate professor of education at the University of Minnesota who > has two > children in an Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis. > Hermes > noted research showing that Native American children ? like > African-American children ? have long been given the message that > they can > be either a Native American or a smart, educated person, but they > can~Rt be > both. > > Language can be the key to reconciling these two identities, Hermes > said. > By using indigenous languages for instruction in schools, children no > longer see a conflict between education and Native identity. > > "For these endangered indigenous languages, the children come to > school > already knowing English ? they have learned it at home from their > parents, > from television, from their peers, and from virtually every > experience in > their lives involving speech," Hinton testified. "The survival > schools > level the playing field." > > A Hawaiian contingent at the committee hearing said that not a single > child > has dropped out of Hawaiian language survival schools before > graduation in > the 15 years the highly successful program has been in operation > there. The > program~Rs graduates boast an 85 percent acceptance rate at colleges > and > universities, and one is attending Stanford University in the fall. > > The 1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) established funding for > tribes to develop language revitalization programs. A number of > successful > language survival programs were set up, partially funded by the > Administration for Native Americans, which handles NALA funds. Due to > NALA~Rs limited budget, however, schools generally can only be funded > for > about three years. > > "The challenge is to find long-term funding for these schools, and > that is > the major issue that S 575 addresses," Hinton told the Committee on > Indian > Affairs. > > "Long ago, previous congressional acts devoted enormous efforts to > the > schools that were charged with the eradication of Native American > languages > and cultural traditions," she testified. "Now in this hopefully wiser > time, > it behooves the Congress to devote an equivalent amount of funds to > help > indigenous peoples retain the languages that we erased from their > lives." > > Inouye expects his bill to emerge from committee and reach the Senate > floor > for a vote sometime in July. To learn more about the proposed > legislation, > From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed May 21 20:55:29 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Lewis) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 13:55:29 -0700 Subject: PDA software potentials In-Reply-To: <1053543041.63ace51997822@localhost> Message-ID: Klahowya, Just last week I had a birthday and received a PDA, a Toshiba Pocket PC, as my present. Some of the software for this mini computer is called Letter Recognizer and Block Recognizer. These are a few of the ways that the folks at Microsoft figured out to help PDA users to write on their devices since they have no easy to use keyboard installed. You can get a keyboard and I have, but most people probably do not go this route. I was reading the manual and the Letter recognizer software is designed to learn as you write. So its meant to learn to recognize new words that each person habitually writes. I remembered this fact this morning when playing with this new toy-(er)-computer device. and then I though about using native languages on this device... I began typing in the names of tribes in oregon. most do not appear in any computer spelling dictionary. names like siuslaw, kalapuya, santiam... but after writign a native word once, the device recognized the word the next time I wrote it. So what about the application of this software for native language programs? do people who are actively engaged in langauge survival programs think this sort of software can potentially be useful? I wonder if somehow the software can be liberated from the PDA/Pocket PC format and used on regular computers? Are there examples of this software already in use in a PC or Mac format? Just an idea, David From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 22 00:35:16 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 17:35:16 -0700 Subject: Baucus Pushes to Increase Technology on Tribal Lands (fwd) Message-ID: BAUCUS PUSHES TO INCREASE TECHNOLOGY ON TRIBAL LANDS Senator Questions Role Of Federal Commission In Providing Telecommunications For Tribes May 20, 2003 (Washington, D.C.) - In an effort to improve telecommunications and create jobs in Indian Country, Montana Senator Max Baucus and Senators Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D) are asking the Federal Communications Commission to provide information on the status of telecommunications on tribal lands. ?The availability and affordability of telecommunications in Indian Country is of extreme importance to the economic well-being of Indian people and the entire nation,? Baucus and the senators said in a letter to the FCC. ?Collecting accurate data on the status of telecommunications on Indian lands will lead to a better understanding of the problems Indian people face.? Noting the FCC and states have struggled with how best to promote and advance telecommunications on tribal lands, Baucus is seeking to clarify what the agency is doing to boost the use of technology in tribal areas. Baucus said the FCC is obligated to promote and advance telecommunications into all areas of the country, including Indian lands. However, telecommunications on many tribal lands is inadequate. Baucus and the senators want answers on what the FCC is doing to promote and advance telecommunications on tribal lands. Baucus said the economies in Native American communities are suffering from a lack of telephones, computer and Internet access. The luxury of a telephone is taken for granted by most Americans, Baucus said, pointing to a U.S. Department of Commerce study showing telephone ?penetration? levels on many reservations can range from 20-70 percent compared to the national average of over 98 percent. Due to the difficulty of accessing telephone service on many of the nation?s reservations, access to Internet service is even more difficult. Previous Commerce studies show that when Native Americans gain access to computers and the Internet, they are among the highest users of those tools for information, such as job listings. ?We ask the FCC to collect and report more accurate data on the status of telecommunications on Indian lands,? the senators wrote. ?This will allow lawmakers a better understanding of the problems Indian people face.? Baucus said he is committed to helping advance technology on tribal lands because it will help them compete in today?s world and boost the economy by creating jobs. Baucus may introduce a bill later this spring to accomplish this goal. ?I?m committed to working together with Senators Daschle and Johnson and the FCC to help provide Indian people with the technology they need to compete in today?s world,? Baucus said. ?Expanding all Montanans? access to technology will help create jobs and boost the economies on the reservations.? ~~~ (sorry, no indentified news source) From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 23 22:01:04 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:01:04 -0700 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: http://www.sioux.org/page21.html From miakalish at REDPONY.US Fri May 23 22:00:29 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 16:00:29 -0600 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: sound. we need sound. sigh. mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andre Cramblit" To: Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 4:01 PM Subject: Kool Use Of Technology > http://www.sioux.org/page21.html > > From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 23 22:05:37 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:05:37 -0700 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: I agree, I am checking with our language program to see if we could do something similar with real audio added (even a vido of an elder pronouncing it would be great) -- André Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art gallery featuring the art of California tribes (http://www.americanindianonline.com) COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest to Natives subscribe send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat May 24 05:33:37 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 22:33:37 -0700 Subject: Reference Materials for Multilingual Computing (link) Message-ID: Dear ILAT, I have come across a nice beginners reference on multilingual computing. Take a look and let me know what you think. http://cet.middlebury.edu/rsrc_multilingual.php heneek'e (again), Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue May 27 05:23:38 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 22:23:38 -0700 Subject: Language STruggle Message-ID: Tribes struggle to keep languages alive As population ages, the spoken word of Indian ancestors is beginning to die off By Doug Abrahms Desert Sun Washington Bureau May 26th, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians had to hire an outside linguist last year to help preschoolers learn the Luiseno language because the only native speakers left in the tribe were in their 70s and 80s. "We can~Rt use them as resources because they~Rre too frail," said Gary DuBois, director of the Temecula tribe~Rs cultural resources program. "We~Rre running against time." The Pechangas are spending $200,000 from their casino profits to fund a preschool language-immersion program that they plan to expand into kindergarten, and perhaps to later grades. Fewer than 10 of the tribe~Rs 1,500 members speak Luiseno. The Pechangas~R situation is typical for California tribes, said Leanne Hinton, chairwoman of the University of California at Berkeley linguistics department. More than 85 native languages were once spoken in the Golden State. Today, 35 languages have no native speakers and each of the other 50 are only spoken by a handful, she said. "Here in California we have 50 languages ... almost all of them are spoken by people over 60," Hinton said. "As soon as the kids stop speaking it, essentially it~Rs a dead language." Many American Indians and educators worry that tribes throughout the nation are in a race against time to save their languages -- a vital part of American Indian culture -- before they die off with tribal elders. Consider: A 1997 study by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians found 3 percent of children under 6 could speak the language. Only an estimated 2,000 Ojibwes, or Chippewas, out of more than 100,000 in the United States speak the language. About 80 percent of the nation~Rs 175 existing Indian languages will disappear in the next generation if nothing is done because the vast majority of speakers are older than 60, according to one study. But tribes are taking steps to revive their languages, with the help of funds from gambling or the government. Some tribes are spending their casino profits on preschools where children are immersed in their native tongue. And Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has sponsored a bill to provide more funds to language-immersion schools. Language revitalization started in the 1970s in Hawaii, where the Aha Punanan Leo language organization brought together preschoolers with island elders. The children then were moved into language-immersion schools. Members of the first senior class, who speak both Hawaiian and English, graduated in 1999. Federal funds could help Inouye~Rs bill would provide roughly $10 million a year to help fund private school efforts to teach Indian languages and provide money for teacher training. Inouye has introduced similar legislation in previous congressional sessions that failed to pass. Congress passed legislation in the early 1990s that funded language revitalization programs but these short-term grants leave programs in a constant hunt for funds, said Mary Hermes, an education professor at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. She also is a board member and parent at the Waadookodaading Ojibwe language-immersion school in Hayward, Wis. American Indians blame the government for eradicating their languages by pushing them off their lands, removing children to English-speaking boarding schools, and barring them from talking in school in their native tongue. Governments in New Zealand and Canada have acknowledged their roles in eradicating native languages and have provided funding to tribes, Hermes said. "It is really the responsibility of the government that we~Rre in this situation," Hermes said. "We~Rre not asking for money because of the harm suffered. We~Rre asking for efforts to revitalize our language." Reasons to save languages Cindy LaMarr heads Capitol Area Indian Resources, a nonprofit group in Sacramento that offers cultural and academic programs for area Indian youth. She believes bringing back the languages that American Indians have used for centuries to pass on their culture and history will give Indian children more confidence and a better education. LaMarr, president-elect of the National Indian Education Association, said few studies have been done on the relatively new language-immersion schools to back up her belief. "To me, it~Rs pretty much a no-brainer: If you feel good about your culture and identity, then you will feel better about yourself," said LaMarr. Her parents were taken from the Pit River reservation in northern California to boarding schools in Riverside and Carson City, Nev. "Language is essential to the continuance of our cultural and spiritual traditions and is an acknowledgement of our gift from the great creator," she said. Torres Martinez in Thermal California Indian groups might seek legislation to help fund language-immersion schools, she said, because the state~Rs tribes have so few native speakers left. Some California tribes have started master-apprentice programs where a native speaker teaches an instructor who then can teach classes. But those programs can be difficult, even when you~Rre learning the language from your mother. Faith Morreo, language program coordinator at the Torres Martinez tribe in Thermal, was part of a group that met with her mom, Tina, several times a week to learn Cahuilla. But it was difficult fitting the classes into daily life, Morreo said. "We started out with a big group," she said, "but we got burned out." The Torres Martinez tribe, which has 14 native speakers among its 600 members, hopes to start a day-care center next fall that will include some teaching of Cahuilla, she said. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue May 27 21:35:53 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 14:35:53 -0700 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways May 27, 2003 By DAVID BERREBY For the past decade, scholars and political activists have been working to get the rest of us worried about the future of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they argue, are like species heading for extinction. A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that when standard measures of species risk are applied to language communities, human tongues come out even more endangered than the animals. The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. Language preservationists have been using this analogy for years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda or the California condor?" It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics begins. How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, once gone, is gone forever. If the information and political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our neighbor, not our invention. Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's currently spoken languages will be around in a century. It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But there is no danger of that, because the reserve of language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the language changes. Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with almost all other living languages are being altered by speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of England now pronounces her English less aristocratically than she used to. As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently settled island can be as rich in languages as a long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to suit changing times and places. In an era when languages continue to change with time, can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, to blossom into families of related but distinct new tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of the last four centuries. For example, on the preservationist Web site terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of human history. So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? Preservationists call this an argument for accepting injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about language and a preservationist, notes that "language death does not happen in privileged communities." "It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," he continues. This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, modernization and national identity, so the preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such practices. It is important, though, to be clear about what - or rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions created to describe what human beings did yesterday. The difference between a living creature with blood in its veins and a general notion should be obvious: your auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The concept of "red" does not. But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a particular place and time, members of a culture will argue with one another about what those resources are. When we describe culture as an organism, we do not see the individuals inside it. So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political question: which voices represent the communities whose languages are fading? Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the younger? Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English. The elucidation of language in all its complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But "saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1&en=189342f2df585fdd Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company From DQuitiquit at HOPLANDTRIBE.COM Wed May 28 17:17:21 2003 From: DQuitiquit at HOPLANDTRIBE.COM (Denise Quitiquit) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 10:17:21 -0700 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: Nice article, maybe the funding sources in government can use it as a reason why native languages should no longer be funded....as long as its been recorded, taped, written down a language can be revived even like Hebrew 2,000 years from now. How wonderful, and I will be very sad when there are no more pandas in the world, like the other 400+ species already gone FOREVER...but with genetic engineering we can fix that to..just make sure we have some cell samples hanging around in some museum or lab (maybe 2000 years from now). But with native languages its even more than just the spoken word, it is a spirit linked directly to the earth mother, a sense of being right in the world and being able to communicate with it...its not for the linguist to teach (maybe only to assist) in developing new strategies for language preservation, revival it is up to communities and speakers of that particular language to yes learn it again or strengthen its use once more, but more so to instill into a new/old speaker the connection with the earth, ancestors and a world viewpoint that might just enable all of us to continue as a species. Thanks for all the flow of information, I always look forward to opening up my email. This is my first response to any subject but it got my goat. -----Original Message----- From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU [mailto:cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU] Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 1:36 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways May 27, 2003 By DAVID BERREBY For the past decade, scholars and political activists have been working to get the rest of us worried about the future of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they argue, are like species heading for extinction. A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that when standard measures of species risk are applied to language communities, human tongues come out even more endangered than the animals. The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. Language preservationists have been using this analogy for years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda or the California condor?" It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics begins. How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, once gone, is gone forever. If the information and political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our neighbor, not our invention. Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's currently spoken languages will be around in a century. It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But there is no danger of that, because the reserve of language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the language changes. Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with almost all other living languages are being altered by speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of England now pronounces her English less aristocratically than she used to. As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently settled island can be as rich in languages as a long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to suit changing times and places. In an era when languages continue to change with time, can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, to blossom into families of related but distinct new tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of the last four centuries. For example, on the preservationist Web site terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of human history. So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? Preservationists call this an argument for accepting injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about language and a preservationist, notes that "language death does not happen in privileged communities." "It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," he continues. This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, modernization and national identity, so the preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such practices. It is important, though, to be clear about what - or rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions created to describe what human beings did yesterday. The difference between a living creature with blood in its veins and a general notion should be obvious: your auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The concept of "red" does not. But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a particular place and time, members of a culture will argue with one another about what those resources are. When we describe culture as an organism, we do not see the individuals inside it. So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political question: which voices represent the communities whose languages are fading? Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the younger? Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English. The elucidation of language in all its complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But "saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1 &en=189342f2df585fdd Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed May 28 17:44:26 2003 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 11:44:26 -0600 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: I found this article to be pretty useful, as it sums up a lot of the (in my mind, bogus) arguments against language preservation. I'm sure you all can find reasons why it's wrong (or even, in places, right) but just two that come up to my mind right away: 1). Using Hebrew to argue "You can revive a language, but you can't revive an extinct species" The conditions that Hebrew were revived were, shall we say, unique, and not likely to be repeated. Other "dead" languages do not find themselves in the same situation. I strongly support efforts to revive "dead" languages, but the fact is, when all native speakers are gone, reviving a language poses an enormous challenge. Keeping languages alive, while a great challenge in itself, is far easier than reviving a language which has lost all of its native speakers. 2). "Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English." Who, exactly, are the real "language bullies?" I fully support linguistic self-determination, which means, among other things, that speakers of endangered languages have the right to let their languages die if they so choose. What we are talking about is simply reversing the course of centuries of real "language bullying," by giving speakers of endangered languages the resources and rights that have been taken away from them by force--no-one is forcing anyone to preserve their languages. At this point, the real "language bullying" is the status quo the equivalent to beating someone nearly to death, and then refusing to give that person medical help. Hey, I do support the right to die, but it doesn't follow that I support murder as well. Thanks for the article, at any rate, I'm sure it will get us all thinking. cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU wrote: >Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways > >May 27, 2003 >By DAVID BERREBY > >For the past decade, scholars and political activists have >been working to get the rest of us worried about the future >of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an >analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they >argue, are like species heading for extinction. > >A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison >a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. >Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that >when standard measures of species risk are applied to >language communities, human tongues come out even more >endangered than the animals. > >The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to >grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent >speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying >off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly >speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. >Language preservationists have been using this analogy for >years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael >Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the >University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn >the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda >or the California condor?" > >It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote >maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg >Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to >study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics >begins. > >How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, >once gone, is gone forever. If the information and >political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years >from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient >texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language >of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our >neighbor, not our invention. > >Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a >finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. >Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's >currently spoken languages will be around in a century. > >It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But >there is no danger of that, because the reserve of >language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as >ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of >talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop >away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the >language changes. > >Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with >almost all other living languages are being altered by >speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, >another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of >England now pronounces her English less aristocratically >than she used to. >As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are >in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently >settled island can be as rich in languages as a >long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this >morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to >suit changing times and places. > >In an era when languages continue to change with time, >can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, >to blossom into families of related but distinct new >tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been >created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of >the last four centuries. > >For example, on the preservationist Web site >terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement >of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. >Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, >it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of >human history. > >So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and >deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language >evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? > > >Preservationists call this an argument for accepting >injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about >language and a preservationist, notes that "language death >does not happen in privileged communities." > >"It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, >peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," >he continues. > >This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were >systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in >cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. >Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, >modernization and national identity, so the >preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such >practices. > >It is important, though, to be clear about what - or >rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe >and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions >created to describe what human beings did yesterday. > >The difference between a living creature with blood in its >veins and a general notion should be obvious: your >auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The >concept of "red" does not. > >But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but >because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a >particular place and time, members of a culture will argue >with one another about what those resources are. When we >describe culture as an organism, we do not see the >individuals inside it. > >So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, >the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political >question: which voices represent the communities whose >languages are fading? > >Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their >own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded >by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason >to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, >that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this >hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder >preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the >younger? > >Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his >grandfather's language are not morally different from the >language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into >learning English. The elucidation of language in all its >complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But >"saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. > >http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1&en=189342f2df585fdd > >Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company > > > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 29 00:21:58 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 17:21:58 -0700 Subject: CASTS Conference 2003 (fwd) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The Canadian Aboriginal Science & Technology Society is pleased to announce its upcoming sixth Conference. The CASTS Conference 2003 will be held September 18-20, 2003 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Conference posters and brochures are now available - please email amounts needed. The theme of our conference is the "Integration of Science, Technology, and Traditional Knowledge in Today's Environment". The objectives of the conference are: a.. To celebrate and showcase a national profile of Aboriginal S&T research and researchers b.. To celebrate and showcase successful initiatives of Aboriginal participation and excellence in S&T c.. To provide a forum for a three day assembly of the national Aboriginal S&T community to network - sharing information, resources, and perspectives d.. To provide a forum for a discussion of "the Integration of Science, Technology, and Traditional Knowledge in Today's Environment" e.. To promote an interest in science-related careers among Aboriginal students The CASTS Conference 2003 will have six main areas of interests in which presenters will have the opportunity to showcase their research by conducting an oral presentation, workshop, or submitting a poster presentation. There will also be an option to purchase booth space to sponsor your organization. The six main areas of interest are as follows: Science & Technology, Health, Environment, Education, Traditional Knowledge, and Careers. Submit Abstracts online or by e-mail - Submit early!!! For more information visit the conference webpage at: http://www.usask.ca/casts2003 Best Regards, Philip McCloskey, Conference Coordinator Department of Chemistry 110 Science Place, Room 180 University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, SK. S7K 5C9 Tel: 306-966-5533 Fax: 306-966-4730 Email: conference.coordinator at usask.ca From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 30 15:54:36 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 08:54:36 -0700 Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Message-ID: Thursday, May 29, 2003 Ojibwe elder teaches language By Molly Miron Staff Writer mmiron at bemidjipioneer.com http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/Main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=83&ArticleID=9967 CASS LAKE -- A little boy answers the door at Leslie Harper?s home in Cass Lake with a cheerful ?Biindigen!? The toddler calling visitors to ?Come in!? is Leslie?s 3-year-old son, Theo Liberty. He is learning Ojibwe as naturally as he is absorbing English. ?He?s getting there,? Leslie said of Theo?s Ojibwe skill. ?He understands a lot more than any of us. We have to really encourage him to speak Ojibwe because of all the English around us. His dad (Adrian Liberty) speaks only Ojibwe to him.? Theo and his mother are part of a project in which language apprentices work with masters to bring their language back to younger generations. Leslie, 28, and by osmosis Theo, are apprentices of Josephine Dunn, 70, of Cass Lake, a native Ojibwe speaker. ?I only do it one-on-one,? Josephine said. ?I don?t think I could do it in a class.? Leslie?s sister, Laurie Harper, directs the master/apprentice program as part of Anishinaabe Wi Yung (We are Anishinabe people), an Ojibwe project funded in part by a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education. Masters and apprentice families are also working together in Mille Lacs and St. Croix Bands. The grant provides stipends for both teacher and learner. ?It?s a living situation. It?s not ?This is today?s lesson,?? Laurie said of the project. ?You?ve baked bread with Josephine. You?ve done laundry. You?ve gone shopping.? The learning takes patience and determination, but Laurie described a scene that always reminds her the effort is totally worthwhile. Leslie and Theo were with Laurie in the supermarket when an elderly stranger came to her, almost in tears, saying, ?Do you know how long it?s been since I heard a young mother speaking to her child like that?? Josephine said English sometimes comes between her and her apprentices, but they keep working. ?I think anybody can learn,? Josephine said. She recalled the non-Indian owner of a grocery store in Cass Lake who learned to speak Ojibwe with his Indian customers. Laurie and Leslie said their parents, Dennis and Judy Harper of Cass Lake, heard Ojibwe spoken around the house when they were small children, and probably spoke the language, too. But the knowledge has skipped a generation. Laurie and Leslie have visited the Piegan Institute, which is a Blackfeet immersion program, and a similar Hawaiian program, Ka Haka Wa O Keelikolani in Hilo. Laurie said she was especially moved to hear Blackfeet students the same age as her own children speaking their language confidently. ?They were not shy. They were very proud of who they are,? Laurie said. ?That day was very emotional.? Learning a language is more than words: with the process comes an understanding beliefs, culture and life perspectives of the speakers. Laurie began Anishinaabe We Yung by organizing language conferences. She said elders at the conferences told her they had been trying to transmit the language for years, so she decided to stop talking about the concept and do it. ?This is a step in a bigger plan,? Laurie said. ?You have to be patient. I know I am,? Josephine said. ?I?ve been the happiest I?ve ever been in my life working on Ojibwe,? Leslie said. Theo, happily unaware of the experiment he is living, ran to his father who called him in Ojibwe to come put on his makizinan (shoes) to go outside. ?I think that?s where we can start, anyway, with the little ones who are just learning,? Josephine said. ?That?s how I learned. I don?t know when I started talking English. I suppose when I went to school. I didn?t even have an English name on my birth certificate.? From mikinakn at SHAW.CA Sat May 31 03:10:03 2003 From: mikinakn at SHAW.CA (Rolland Nadjiwon) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 23:10:03 -0400 Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Message-ID: Great story...I have posted it to most of my friends. ---- wahjeh rolland nadjiwon ----- Original Message ----- From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 11:54 AM Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Thursday, May 29, 2003 Ojibwe elder teaches language By Molly Miron Staff Writer mmiron at bemidjipioneer.com http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/Main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=83&ArticleID=9967 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat May 31 04:43:38 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 21:43:38 -0700 Subject: Ed grants can be used for Apple technologies (fwd) Message-ID: Ed grants can be used for Apple technologies By Dennis Sellers dsellers at maccentral.com http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/05/29/edgrants/ May 29, 2003 11:30 am ET There are a variety of grants available now to educational users that can include Apple technologies. The Foreign Language Assistance Grants from the U.S. Department of Education can be used for Apple's Mobile Curriculum Carts. This U.S. Department of Education (ED) program will provide US$10 million in grants to local educational agencies for "innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for elementary and secondary school students." For 2003, preference will be given to proposals that establish, improve, or expand foreign language learning in grades K-8 -- especially Russian, Chinese, and Arabic -- or proposals that establish a foreign language program in underserved schools. Preference also will be given to applications that make effective use of technology -- such as computer-assisted instruction, language laboratories, or distance learning -- to promote foreign language study. ED expects to make about 90 awards ranging from $50,000 to $175,000. The deadline for application is June 13. iLife lessons are a possibility for the Jordan Fundamentals Grants from the Jordan Brand, a division of Nike Inc. Since 1999, basketball star Michael Jordan's Jordan Fundamentals program has donated up to 400 grants of $2,500 each year. The grants fund resource materials, supplies, equipment, transportation, or other costs related to field trips, software, and other items required to implement and assess a proposed lesson or thematic unit. Teachers or paraprofessionals who work with students in grades 6-12 in a U.S. public school -- and who also demonstrate "instructional creativity and exemplify high learning expectations for economically disadvantaged students" - are eligible to apply. Applicants must develop an original lesson plan or thematic unit. Unique teaching methods and projects are encouraged. At least 40 percent of the school's student population must be eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. Go to the Nike Web site for more info. The deadline for applications is June 15. iLife lessons can also be considered in the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education Grant Program, which supports the development, documentation, evaluation, and dissemination of "innovative, cohesive models" that have demonstrated their effectiveness in (1) integrating arts into the core elementary and middle school curricula, (2) strengthening arts instruction in these grades, and (3) improving students' academic performance, including their skills in creating, performing, and responding to the arts. The U.S. Department of Education expects to grant 33 awards ranging from $293,000 to $836,000. The registration deadline is July 10. Apple itself offers the iLife Educator Awards, which recognize the most innovative uses of iLife. Teachers that use iLife applications "creatively to enhance lessons, exceed instructional standards, and meet the needs of today's students" are encouraged to submit their lesson plans for consideration. The contest is open to all K-12 educators, as well as pre-service teachers and faculty of accredited colleges of education, in the U.S. or Canada (excluding Quebec). The first prize winner will receive a 12-inch PowerBook G4 with an 867 MHz processor, a Canon ZR60 camcorder, and a Canon PowerShot A60 digital camera. The school of the first prize-winning teacher will receive an Apple Mobile Digital Media Studio with eight iBooks, an AirPort wireless access point, Canon digital video camcorders, printers, and other peripherals. Prizes also will be awarded for second and third place and honorable mention. If you're considering funding for Apple's Digital Campus Curriculum, you may wish to check out the Tech-Prep Demonstration Program by the U.S. Department of Education. The $9.9 million program provides grants to enable consortia described in section 204(a) of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 to carry out tech-prep education projects authorized by section 207 of the Perkins Act that involve the location of a secondary school on the site of a community college, a business as a member of the consortium, and the voluntary participation of secondary school students. ED expects to make 14 awards ranging from $600,000 to $700,000. The registration deadline is June 26. Apple's Early Literacy: PreK-3 Mobile Curriculum Cart can be considered under the Reading First Grants from the U.S. Department of Education. Reading First is a formula grant program that provides assistance to states and school districts to establish scientifically based reading programs in kindergarten through third grade classrooms, to ensure that all children learn to read well by the end of third grade. You must apply by July 1. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 1 22:05:33 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash Cash) Date: Thu, 1 May 2003 15:05:33 -0700 Subject: TribalTech Program Message-ID: TribeTech Program, Courses http://www.tribetech.cybercivics.org/index.html Strategic Planning for Tribal Technology - 3/24 to 4/25 The course is taught by Eric Jensen, CEO of Indigicom , a former deputy director at the FCC, and former staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives. The course focuses on thinking and planning strategically about information technology in the tribal government context. Cost: $49 Preserving and Promoting Culture through Technology - 4/28-5/20 The course is taught by Laura Waterman Wittstock (Seneca), President of MIGIZI Communications, an organization committed to serving the communication and education needs within the Indian Community. She is also on the Board of the Minneapolis Foundation and is President of the Minneapolis Library Board. The course provides an introduction to how information technology can be used to preserve and promote tribal cultures. Cost: $49 Enhancing Tribal Governance through Technology - 6/2 - 7/30 The course is facilitated by Sam Goodhope (Inupiat), President of Native Broadband Services and founder of the Law Offices of Sam Goodhope. He serves as an advisor to several tribal governments. The course provides an overview of how technology can be used to improve government services and constituent interaction. Cost: $49 Telephone Registration To register by phone, call (562) 860-2451, x2521. You may complete the entire registration and payment process over the phone if you desire. Payment options: * All major credit cards * Invoice/PO arrangements Telephone registration assistance is available from: * Monday-Thursday 8:00 AM-7:30 PM (PST) * Friday 8:00 AM-4:30 PM (PST) * Saturday 8:00 AM-Noon (PST) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Fax Registration To register via fax, address the fax to Tribe Tech, Cerritos College Community Education, Fax# (562) 467-5013. Your organization will be invoiced directly for course payment. For questions concerning fax registration, call the telephone registration line (see above). In the fax please state: * Name of Course(s) * Name of Student(s) * Institution/agency * Address * Phone * Email address(s) * Form of payment- credit card number or P.O. * Account/Finance Dept. Contact Person * Attach P.O. if applicable Advisory Board A nationally prominent advisory board has been organized and working on general program development issues since the fall of 2002. The Board constitutes a range of expertise in the area of public technology and tribal governance. Name Organization Email Greg Curtin, Ph.D. Civic Resource Group gregc at civicresource.com Kris Monteith (Pending) FCC, Indian Telecom Training Initiative kmonteit at fcc.gov James H. May, Ph.D. CSU Monterey Bay jim at csumb.edu Eric Liang Jensen IndigiCom eljensen at comcast.net Sam Goodhope Law Offices of Sam Goodhope (deceased) Laura Waterman Wittstock MIGIZI Communications, Inc. wittstock at migizi.org From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 2 18:42:35 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Phil Cash Cash) Date: Fri, 2 May 2003 11:42:35 -0700 Subject: Lingistics Professor wins Grant for Language Revitalization Project (fyi) Message-ID: Linguistics Professor Wins Grant for Language Revitalization Project Wednesday, 30 April 2003 by Lori Harwood http://uanews.org/spots/7269.html Natasha Warner, a professor of linguistics at the University of Arizona, has won a Woodrow Wilson Public Scholarship Grant. The partnership grant, worth $10,000, will help fund a revitalization project for the Mutsun language. Only seven partnership grants, which are funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, are given out nationally. According to the Woodrow Wilson Foundation website, ?The Woodrow Wilson Foundation stands for educational excellence and innovation in service to the public good. The Foundation particularly promotes contributions by university-based humanists and artists to the United States? civic heritage and civic future.? The site describes Warner?s project: ?Although linguists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries created extensive notes on Mutsun, a Native American language of central coastal California, the last fluent speaker died in 1930. Drawing on these century-old notes, Natasha Warner of the University of Arizona has already begun working with the tribe to resurrect the language, creating a phonetic spelling system, a partial draft of a textbook for community language classes, and a partial dictionary. The partnership will now expand the dictionary and textbook, provide distance learning software, and support the research team?s travel to conduct face-to-face workshops with the Mutsun.? Warner has been working with the Mutsuns since she was a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley, and has found the work very rewarding. The interest and involvement of the Mutsuns in reviving their language is remarkable, she says. ?I don?t think we can fully understand how much it means to the Mutsuns to regain their language,? Warner said. ?It is part of their identity. Their culture was nearly wiped out. Their language was wiped out. They were told there was no way of regaining that language. But in fact, there are tens of thousands of pages of archival materials on the language.? The grant will allow Warner to hire a research assistant to examine those archival materials that are more difficult to analyze due to problems such as poor handwriting. Warner's efforts have allowed Mutsun community leader Quirina Luna-Costillas to create teaching materials for local children and to conduct community language lessons. Warner has even helped translate Dr. Seuss? ?Green Eggs and Ham? and the ?Happy Birthday? song. Because the Mutsuns are scattered, Warner will be working on creating distance learning tools. Michael Hammond, head of the UA linguistics department, says, ?There is growing interest on the part of Native American communities in revitalizing their moribund or dead languages. Warner?s project is particularly exciting because she is working closely with community members and has already produced some very impressive work. This is also an area which our department and university are committed to, so it fits wonderfully with other work on Native American language maintenance and documentation going on here. This is a wonderful acknowledgment of Warner?s efforts and abilities in this domain as well.? From fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU Mon May 5 17:03:42 2003 From: fmarmole at U.ARIZONA.EDU (Francisco Marmolejo) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 10:03:42 -0700 Subject: FW: Mexico Cultural Immersion Program for Students Message-ID: Please forward to students interested in this cultural immersion program in Mexico. Regards, Francisco Marmolejo Executive Director Consortium for North American Higher Education Collaboration (CONAHEC) University of Arizona PO Box 210300 220 W. Sixth Street Tucson, AZ 85721-0300 USA Tel. (520) 621-9080 / 621-7761 Fax (520) 626-2675 Email: fmarmole at u.arizona.edu http://conahec.org -----Original Message----- THE STUDENTS ORGANIZATION OF NORTH AMERICA (http://http://www2.conahec.org/sona/) INVITES YOU CULTURAL IMMERSION PROGRAM 23 DAYS 73 STUDENTS 10 CITIES Mexicali Mazatl?n Guadalajara Morelia Mexico DF Puebla Acapulco Quer?taro Guanajuato Hermosillo Cultural Immersion Program (CIP), is directed by the UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE BAJA CALIFORNIA through the Accounting and Business Administration School Mexicali. It is a program prepared by students and teachers of UABC for North-American students to promote cultural understanding and to share knowledge and experience. The setting will be Mexico, and students will be exposed to the richness of the country's culture, diversity, economy, and landscape. Our activities will consist in: ? Conferences with government and business leaders. ? Dinner conferences and lectures from teachers of each university. ? Cultural excursions (museums, historic places ) ? Conferences and workshops on the North America Community. ? Business Visits. ? Visits of Government agencies ? Interaction with local students. COST 800 US DLLS JUNE 20th ? JULY 12th Join us For more information contact: sona_cip2003 at hotmail.com or our web page www2.conahec.org/sona Registration will be closed MAY 30th -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 5 18:43:53 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 11:43:53 -0700 Subject: Anisgnabeg Language List Message-ID: Subject: Those interested in Ojibwe Language are invited.... We want to invite all of those interested in the Ojibwe Language to our Ojibwe Language Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ojibwelanguagesocietymiinawaa We have over 350 members and plenty of messages everyday. Our links section is huge and full of information. Please join us. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Mon May 5 21:17:41 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Mon, 5 May 2003 14:17:41 -0700 Subject: Native Language: Keeping the words alive (fwd) Message-ID: Native Language: Keeping the words alive Tribal elders, members endeavor to preserve their native language By CARRIE ANTLFINGER Associated Press 5/4/2003 ONEIDA NATION RESERVATION, Wis. - At the Language House, a log house tucked between sugar maples and white pines, 10 members of the Oneida tribe sit around a table repeating words that rolled off the tongues of their ancestors. They've just finished watching a videotape that recorded elders talking with students. Their assignment is to pick out trouble phrases and determine their pronunciation and meaning. One of the phrases they're struggling with translates to mean: "We're always trying hard to be like the Caucasian race," a telling phrase in their struggle to preserve their language. The members are paid to learn the ancient language and teach it to others in an effort to ensure the language survives. Other tribes nationwide are taking similar steps with help from the federal government, which has poured more than $23.6 million into such language preservation projects since 1994. "If we don't know the language we probably won't be Indian people anymore," said Dennis White, director of instruction in the Lac Courte Oreilles Band, a Chippewa tribe in Hayward. "We'd be Americans with nice tans." Indians say losing the language of their ancestors takes away a tribe's sense of identity and culture partly because many of their meetings and prayers are in their native tongue. Before Europeans arrived in North America, 400 to 600 tribal languages were spoken in the United States and Canada. Today, there are only 211, said Inee Yang Slaughter, executive director of The Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, N.M. The Administration for Native Americans recognizes 558 tribes in the United States. It gives grants to tribes to preserve their language, which usually means having elders teach it to others who will pass it on. Sheila Cooper, acting director of program operations for the federal agency, said it is the only federal entity that provides tribes funding for such programs. Many don't realize the funds are available. The Oneida received $125,000 last year to pay for seven trainees, who meet with two elders, both in their 80s, five days a week. The trainees spend half the day with the elders; the rest of the time is spent in schools teaching the language. But the lessons aren't limited to the classroom. A grocery store on the reservation lists product names in English and Oneida. One sign in the cereal aisle translates to read: "Morning Time Foods." The tribe also has a biweekly tribal newspaper with a full page written in Oneida. Indian languages began disappearing in the 17th century after European missionaries arrived on the East Coast. In the mid-1880s the government established boarding schools that prohibited students from acknowledging their culture, including language. Students were punished for practicing any part of their culture until the 1960s, and many of the elders still alive are afraid to teach children the language. Language tends to be better preserved when a tribe isolates itself from an urban community and its American influences and when tribe members take an active part in language lessons, Slaughter said. Another challenge the tribes face is the languages are passed down from generation to generation orally, so there are few materials or trained teachers. In many tribal communities, members have grown up speaking English. About a year and a half ago, The Indigenous Language Institute of Santa Fe, N.M., started teacher training sessions, including curriculum development. The institute, which is funded through grants and private contributions, also established a teaching material resource center for tribes. Only a handful of states let tribes certify their teachers so they can teach tribal languages in the public school system. In January, the Washington state Board of Education agreed to grant special teaching certificates that would allow speakers of the ancient languages to teach in public schools there. The 3,500-member Tulalip tribe, located about 30 miles northwest of Seattle, stands to benefit from the teaching certificates. Fewer than 10 of its elders age 70 or older speak Lushootseed. "They are the experts," Suzi Wright,a program developer and applied linguist for the Tulalips. "We're unused to recognizing someone's expertise if they don't have some sort of university degree but there's no way you can be an expert in culture unless you've grown up in the culture." The Tulalips have no textbooks; they rely on taping speakers. On Kodiak Island, Alaska, only 25 fluent speakers of Alutiiq are left after 7,500 years. A 25-year-old dictionary and nine videotapes with language lessons are all they have to help preserve their identity. Shauna Hegna, the 25-year-old language coordinator for the island's 10 tribes, which speak different dialects of Alutiiq, is trying to obtain federal and private funding for a three-year master apprentice program. It would identify seven or eight fluent speakers, each of whom will work for 10 hours a week with one or two adults to teach them the language. The tribes will learn this summer if they will receive funding. "I have to get it off the ground because if we don't accomplish this goal our language will die," Hegna said. "To me it's not acceptable because I want my children to know my language." www.oneidanation.org/ From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Thu May 8 16:51:00 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 12:51:00 EDT Subject: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Message-ID: Okii everyone, Please write a letter in support of S. 575. The Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs is having a hearing for S. 575 on Thursday, May 15th in Washington, DC. S. 575 an amendment to the Native American Languages Act which states "it is the policy of the United States to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native American languages." S. 575 will bring the U.S. one step closer to assuring the preservation and revitalization of Native American languages by supporting the continued existence of Native American language survival schools. S. 575 will benefit and support tribes in their efforts to preserve and promote tribal languages. One of the purposes of S. 575 is "to demonstrate the positive effects of Native American language survival schools on the academic success of Native American students and the students' mastery of standard English." Your letter should address two important issues: 1) Why NA languages are important to preserve? 2) Why NA "language survival schools" are an important method to both preserve languages and improve academic achievement? You can send your letter to Senator Campbell, Chairman and Senator Inouye, Vice-Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Indian Affairs, by either: email -- testimony at indian.senate.gov fax -- (202) 224-5429 or mail -- United States Senate, Committee on Indians Affairs, Washington, DC 20510. Please also send your letter to YOUR entire congressional delegation. Kitmatsin -- Rosalyn Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 8 17:56:14 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 10:56:14 -0700 Subject: Athabascan Conference Message-ID: 2003 Athabascan Languages Conference http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/alc/ June 5-7, 2003 Humboldt State University-Arcata, CA For More Info Contact: Zo Devine Esd2 at humboldt.edu Center for Indian Community Development 1 Harpst Street Arcata, CA 95521 202.826.3711 or Dr. Victor Golla Gollav at humboldt.edu From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 9 21:09:43 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 14:09:43 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: FEDERAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITY Department: Education Program: Foreign Language Assistance Grants Summary: The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) provides grants to local educational agencies for innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for elementary and secondary school students. Eligible Applicants: Local educational agencies (LEAs). Deadline: 2003-06-13 Federal Register: Date: 2003-05-09 Page: 24978-25004 URL: for more information: http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.gov/2003/03-11622.htm From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 9 22:05:36 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 15:05:36 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dba at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 9 22:01:36 2003 From: dba at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (Diana Archangeli) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 15:01:36 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC1917.BE0EA817@ncidc.org> Message-ID: To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: "The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support the teaching of English." best, Diana At 02:09 PM 5/9/2003 -0700, Andre Cramblit wrote: >FEDERAL FUNDING OPPORTUNITY >Department: Education >Program: Foreign Language Assistance Grants > >Summary: The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) provides grants to >local educational agencies for innovative model programs providing for the >establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for >elementary and secondary school students. Eligible Applicants: Local >educational agencies (LEAs). > >Deadline: 2003-06-13 >Federal Register: >Date: 2003-05-09 Page: 24978-25004 >URL: >for more information: >http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/14mar20010800/edocket.access.gpo.go v/2003/03-11622.htm > Diana Archangeli Associate Dean, Research, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 520-621-2184 Director, Social and Behavioral Sciences Research Institute University of Arizona 520-621-3930 Professor, Linguistics University of Arizona 520-621-2184 From liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Sat May 10 00:34:39 2003 From: liko at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Liko Puha) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 14:34:39 -1000 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC2630.8FDC98E5@ncidc.org> Message-ID: A question regarding SB 575. Does the Hawaiian language fall under the umbrella of Native American languages? Mahalo (thanks), Liko andrekar at ncidc.org writes: >That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor is >funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate elective >course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our students learn >their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 > > > >Diana Archangeli wrote: > > >To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: > >"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >the teaching of English." > >best, > >Diana > > From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Sat May 10 01:37:09 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Fri, 9 May 2003 21:37:09 EDT Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: >From S. 575: "Native American -- The term 'Native American' means an Indian, Native Hawaiian,or Native American Pacific Islander. Native American Language -- The term 'Native American language' means the historical, traditional languages spoken by Native Americans." Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sat May 10 14:29:44 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 08:29:44 -0600 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: Seems to me that this is an important question. My comments based on my experience are that expanding the cultural view to include Native languages is going to be very difficult, but is worthwhile in its own way for those willing to stand outside the commonly recognized circle of acceptance. I have just completed my first year in the Computer Science PhD program at New Mexico State. I have just finished the first 5 computer courses that I have ever taken, and have a fresh perspective on what it's like to try to learn in an environment where other students have vastly different, and more topically focused, understandings and knowledge. In other words, this year for me has been very similar to the experience that many Native students have when they come from the reservation to school. That said, I can tell you what I encountered in a discipline where "languages" are a topic of primary concern. 1. There is no support on the most basic technical level for Native languages. That is, there are no language codes and no country codes that are available to specify any of the the North American Native languages. There are 3 for South American Native languages, but ONLY because they are the languages of specific countries. 2. There is no recognition, understanding, or awareness that compilers can/should/must be available in something besides English. 3. On the Open Software platforms, which are primarily Linux, translation efforts are in progress, but these occur based on groups volunteering, and more staggeringly painful is that each message, screen and line of text is translated manually, by groups of translators. Clearly this limits software availability in non-English languages. There is more, but this covers the difficulties of starting. . . since there is nothing, a comprehensive understanding of how hard it is simply to Start is perhaps in this case most valuable. People don't generally think of technical resources in the context of Heritage Language revitalization. They think of nests and elders and opportunities to speak in "common, everyday" terms. They think of physical immersion. But from what I have seen, if people don't have places to use their languages in ways besides asking for the butter or buying gasoline, they will not go through the struggle to learn them. I knew a man once, he was very depressed because he couldn't tell his grandmother about his life's work. They are both Navajo, he is a chemist, completing his PhD. He constructed words from his own understandings of Navajo, wrote his paper in Navajo, and read it to his grandmother. She understood the language, but had a difficult time with the concepts, as one might imagine would also happen for English speakers outside the discipline. Which leads me to the real point: a language is a language certainly in terms of its physical characteristcs, but a language is also a language in terms of its Meanings, meanings bound to culture. Understandings common in a culture are abstracted to single words, and one can only "understand" these words correctly if one is immersed in the culture. I'll give you one example ... . consider the noun "object". Everyone knows what this means, yes? Okay, how about this definition: An instantiation of the Class. How many still know what it means? Not many, I'll bet. But this is a real case, can be seen in English, and is exactly what happens with our Native languages and Native students. You go into school thinking that you know what the words and ideas mean because you have been using them all your life. And, if you are in Computer Science, you learn a new definition: an instantiation of the Class. It's a bit metphorical, too, for those who wish to ponder along the lines of how those who are members of different classes (substitute "races") become objectified. Pre-PS: For those who are waiting, with or without realizing that they are still waiting, for our CD: we are finished with the coding, we just have to test the distribution. It has been a particularly challenging semester: I have a 20-hour per week job on campus, drive in 5 days a week, 100 miles each way. And, since I had to learn 5 languages this semester (Flex, Lex, Bison, Rigal, and Java) and strengthen my C coding skills for my compiler class, my nearly-non-existent life has been. . . well, let's just say "challenging". CD will be out soon. Mia Kalish ----- Original Message ----- From: Rr Lapier To: ILAT at listserv.arizona.edu Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 7:37 PM Subject: Re: Where do Native Languages Fit In? From S. 575: "Native American -- The term 'Native American' means an Indian, Native Hawaiian,or Native American Pacific Islander. Native American Language -- The term 'Native American language' means the historical, traditional languages spoken by Native Americans." Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:32:43 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:32:43 -0700 Subject: computer resources Message-ID: There are some resources being developed by individual tribes. Grand Ronde has a Chinook Wawa font and I have heard of other fonts available through other tribes for their languages. Combine this with the fact that Internet explorer is open to programmers to input native words on the interface. There was a story a few years back that I circulatred on the Chinook-L list about how the code for IE was now open. I'll try to find that message and repost it here. David David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:36:48 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:36:48 -0700 Subject: computer resources Message-ID: Linguistlist computer resources:http://www.linguistlist.org/tools/index.html David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:37:44 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:37:44 -0700 Subject: Chinook-l messege of 1998 Message-ID: Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 10:25:33 -0800 Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List Sender: The Chinook Studies List From: David Gene Lewis Subject: Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released (fwd) Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Does anyone know how to develop a jargon web browser? Maybe we could get someone to help with this? ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 19:20:08 -1000 From: Hawaii Nation Info To: Hawaii Nation Info Subject: Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released --- begin forwarded text Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1998 04:02:30 -1000 From: Keola Donaghy Organization: Hale Kuamo'o Subject: Hawaiian language web browser released Hale Kuamo'o - The Hawaiian Language Center College of Hawaiian Language University of Hawai'i at Hilo 200 W. Kawili St., Hilo, Hawai'i 96720 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 18, 1998 Hilo, Hawai'i - Hale Kuamo'o has announced the release of Ka Ho'okele, a Hawaiian language Internet browser for the World Wide Web (WWW). Ka Ho'okele is based on the popular Netscape Communicator Internet program developed by Netscape Communications Corporation of Mountain View, California. It is the first such translation completed for any Native American or Polynesian language, and only the second such project completed independently of Netscape. The translation was enabled through Netscape's Universal Localization Program (ULP). "This Hawaiian language browser demonstrates the viability of the Universal Localization Program and the value of our open source code concept," said Rick Elliott, ULP program manager, Netscape. "We believe this marks the beginning of a new wave of customized Internet browsers that will help many people access the Web in their native language." Ka Ho'okele contains a World Wide Web browser, email, news reader, and a module for creating web pages. All user interface elements - menus, dialog boxes, window names, etc. - are in Hawaiian. At this time only a Macintosh version of Ka Ho'okele is available. Translation of Windows and Linux versions of Ka Ho'okele are being considered. Though designed specifically for the students, teachers, parents and support personnel involved in Hawaiian Medium Education programs, Ka Ho'okele will be made available for the Hawaiian speaking community at large and anyone with a Macintosh computer and an Internet connection. On March 31st of 1998, Netscape Communications Corporation publicly released the source code for Netscape Communicator, and shortly thereafter contacted the Hale Kuamo'o to determine if there was interest in providing a Hawaiian language version of the program. Translation and testing of the program was completely done by staff of the Hale Kuamo'o during the summer, and testing completed in late-September. "We have been told that 97% of all websites on the Internet are implemented solely in the English language," says Keiki Kawai'ae'a, Director of Curriculum and Teacher Development for the Hale Kuamo'o. "We are so pleased to afford public access to those who choose to 'surf the net' through Hawaiian and in Hawaiian." Hale Kuamo'o also runs Leoki, a Hawaiian language Bulletin Board System (BBS) that is used by nearly 1,000 Hawaiian language speakers statewide, and which links all of the Hawaiian immersion schools, Punana Leo preschools, Hawaiian language university offices, and other support organizations. In addition, Hale Kuamo'o designed and maintains Kualono, the most complete and diverse source of information on Hawaiian language on the Internet. It uses a unique dual-language format, allowing users to view most pages in both Hawaiian and English. Funding for these technological initiatives is provided by the 'Aha Punana Leo through its consortium agreement with the Hale Kuamo'o to provide curriculum and support to the Hawaiian immersion schools. Ka Ho'okele homepage: Hale Kuamo'o homepage: Kualono: Netscape ULP homepage: FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT: Keola Donaghy - Director of Media and Telecommunications Hale Kuamo'o, University of Hawai'i at Hilo voice (808) 974-7339 fax (808) 974-7339 Keiki Kawai'ae'a - Director of Curriculum and Teacher Development Hale Kuamo'o, University of Hawai'i at Hilo voice (808) 974-7339 fax (808) 974-7686 David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Sat May 10 18:40:09 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 11:40:09 -0700 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L Message-ID: Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 16:16:57 +0900 Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List Sender: The Chinook Studies List From: Mike Cleven Subject: Re: Chinook browser development (was Fwd: Hawaiian language web browser released (fwd) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Now that Netscape source code is "open", anyone can develop add-ons to it, including other language versions. To get this done, it would have to mean that one of us is familiar with writing code - or we can convince someone to develop it for us. Any takers? I kept notes on this once upon a time - y'know......File-Print, Edit-Preferences, etc. First suggestions "File" = "Ikta", "Edit" = "Mamook", "Save" - "Iskum", "Undo" - "Kilapi", etc. Some of the compounds needed are going to be interesting. Just for fun we could all develop this as a communal whiteboard page; arguing out the possible terms....... Also, there's Opera (www.operabrowser.com I think - maybe www.operasoftware.com). And as a "by the way", I noticed www.slanguage.com listed somewhere - maybe the Herald Tribune. Maybe Jeff's page is already listed there..... Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape ULP - purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find suitable translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" - apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or "Wawahouse" occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree variations on the theme. So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try and evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more straightforward....... David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From miakalish at REDPONY.US Sat May 10 21:06:45 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Sat, 10 May 2003 15:06:45 -0600 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L Message-ID: I hate to say this, but this is not trivial. For example, I have been working on fonts for Athabascan for over a year now. Apache uses rising tone nasals. These are not supported directly as glyphs in Unicode. This means a) the support has to be developed to build the glyphs dynamically; b) the code has to be embedded in the html documents; c) the code will not work for some browsers and oh-by-the-way they ALL have to be tested. Alternatively, a font has to be developed that supports the glyphs directly. You may not, by law, take existing fonts, modify them, and redistribute them because they are the property of the big font companies and are covered under intellectual property law. So you must either get the font companies to modify their fonts to the specifications of the Native language, or you must develop your own, from scratch. (Definitely somewhat non-trivial; the existing fonts have been developed over 400 years.) Then, whichever of these two directions you took, you must find a way of making sure that the new font is available on the viewer's workstation. You can embed them in a .pdf, but then the text cannot be used for other purposes; this is a bad thing in the Indian communities where there is little enough material without it being hung up in capitalistic "protection features". Finally, most of the browers are written in C++; C++ uses base classes; the base classes are dependent, ultimately, on two primitive standards, ISO-639, which defines the language codes, and ISO-3166, which defines the country codes. Using any of the standardized routines for Internationalization (I18N) or Localization (I10N) requires having referencable values in the base class that define these two standards. There is a pretty good overview of the process here, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article.php?sid=6176, for Linux, which is Open Source. To modify a browser that has the necessary base class support for a particular language is not overly difficult. The programmer power required depends on whether one wishes to implement what is called the "interface" in the Native language, or simply modify it to support Native languages. If one wishes to modify the interface, one should go all the way and make it culturally appropriate. Remembering that what is culturally appropriate for one tribe is culturally offensive for another, the interface needs to be configurable with graphics, colors, and text support. Then, the words and messages, help text, menu displays, all need to be "converted" into the target Native languages. HOW one does this is a major language extension questions. My friend who wrote the paper in Navajo for his grandmother said he had to take words for concepts that seemed related in Navajo. When I did my Hopi presentation on DNA, I crafted words, much as photomicrograph, typewriter, computer and alternator were crafted. The Elders were in general pissed with both of us. Sigh. So how you get this massive amount of text "translated" is a major issue. What do you do when there are no words in the language for the icons. For example, on my tool bar for Outlook, which I am using to write this, are "Undo", "Paste", "Check", "Spelling", "Attach", "Priority", "Sign", "Encrypt" and "Offline". Of these, "check" and "attach", possibly "sign", can be expected to exist in most Native languages. But I'll bet only some of the really modern ones like maybe Cherokee have words like "spelling" and "priority". And I'll bet that none have "encrypt" and "offline". To "borrow" the words from English kind of defeats the purpose here, and encourages the development of a complex Nanglish. . . . probably not pretty. You also want to use long descriptive words, like the Hopi word for computers, which essentially describes what it does and consequently is not a good label for an icon. And it goes on. . . to do this, one needs a Group (large group, preferrably), of committed people, with a space, and enough money to support the task. Once you have to have a job and be in school full time, you don't have much left over for volunteering. Our task would be made much easier if we could get someone to change at least the ISO language standard to include Native American languages, and also to convince the font companies to support us with distributable fonts that included the necessary special characters, instead of expecting that our Native people and miscellaneous scholars will spend from $99-$129 for One Single Font. When we install a new operating system, or package like Photoshop, we get 1000's of fonts for English that also support all the Romance languages; some even support Germanic and Cyrillic, and there are the occassional full-ISO 10646 fonts, like Lucida sans Unicode, and the Microsoft 80-bazillion MB one that you can download. I'm actually planning on building a "font engine" this summer that will be distributed for free to Native communities and for a nominal cost to academic researchers, and will take a font and create the necessary characters for the target language using Unicode methodologies. The reason I am distributing it this way is because if you buy a font from the font companies, or get one in a distribution, and You Modify It Yourself, then you can use it as much as you want. You can't sell it or send it to someone outside your organization, however. With the Red Pony Font Engine, you will be able to make your own fonts, send the engine and the specs to your friends, and they will be able to build Their Own fonts that will look exactly the same as yours. This way, people will have fonts for posters, calendars, cards of all kinds, graphics, whatever they can dream up. . . . .this sure ran on. . . . --> Just a Few Thoughts! Mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "coyotez" To: Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2003 12:40 PM Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L > Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1998 16:16:57 +0900 > Reply-To: The Chinook Studies List > Sender: The Chinook Studies List > From: Mike Cleven > Subject: Re: Chinook browser development (was Fwd: Hawaiian language web > browser released (fwd) > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" > > Now that Netscape source code is "open", anyone can develop add-ons to it, > including other language versions. To get this done, it would have to mean > that one of us is familiar with writing code - or we can convince someone to > develop it for us. Any takers? > > I kept notes on this once upon a time - y'know......File-Print, > Edit-Preferences, etc. > > First suggestions "File" = "Ikta", "Edit" = "Mamook", "Save" - "Iskum", > "Undo" - "Kilapi", etc. Some of the compounds needed are going to be > interesting. > > Just for fun we could all develop this as a communal whiteboard page; > arguing out the possible terms....... > > Also, there's Opera (www.operabrowser.com I think - maybe > www.operasoftware.com). > > And as a "by the way", I noticed www.slanguage.com listed somewhere - maybe > the Herald Tribune. Maybe Jeff's page is already listed there..... > > Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) > > Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: > > > Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape ULP > - purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through > the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find suitable > translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not > that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" - > apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the > project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or "Wawahouse" > occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). > > But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have > profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic > communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for > Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I > suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree > variations on the theme. > > So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try and > evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there > are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe > this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and > ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community > members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop > separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... > > I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to > the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more straightforward....... > > David Lewis > Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde > Department Of Anthropology > University of Oregon > > From mslinn at OU.EDU Mon May 12 15:56:18 2003 From: mslinn at OU.EDU (Mary Linn) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 10:56:18 -0500 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EBC2630.8FDC98E5@ncidc.org> Message-ID: In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 > > > >Diana Archangeli wrote: > >>To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: >> >>"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >>the teaching of English." >> >>best, >> >>Diana >> > >-- > >Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >(http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >gallery featuring the art of California tribes >(http://www.americanindianonline.com) > >COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >to Natives subscribe send an email to: >IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo -- Mary S. Linn Assistant Curator of Native American Languages Assistant Professor of Anthropology University of Oklahoma Native American Languages, 250G Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History 2401 Chautauqua Avenue Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 (405) 325-7588 office (405) 325-7699 fax -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon May 12 16:23:25 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (coyotez) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 09:23:25 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? Message-ID: In Oregon, there is now a new teacher credential which certifies native language teachers, and in Northern California, Tolowa is accepted for the foreign language requirement for college entrance. There are models that other areas can use. I would suggest contacting the kanakamoaliallies-L listserve for more specific information on what is happening in Hawaii. I know they have language nesting schools but I am not sure about how they integrate will college entrance requirements. David >===== Original Message From Indigenous Languages and Technology ===== >In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign >language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement >to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So >why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? > > > > >At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >>That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >>substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >>is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >>elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >>students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 >> >> >> >>Diana Archangeli wrote: >> >>>To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call states: >>> >>>"The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>>languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>>Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to support >>>the teaching of English." >>> >>>best, >>> >>>Diana >>> >> >>-- >> >>Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >>Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >>(http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >>meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >>gallery featuring the art of California tribes >>(http://www.americanindianonline.com) >> >>COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >>AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >>to Natives subscribe send an email to: >>IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >>http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=list info > > >-- > >Mary S. Linn >Assistant Curator of Native American Languages >Assistant Professor of Anthropology >University of Oklahoma > >Native American Languages, 250G >Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History >2401 Chautauqua Avenue >Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 >(405) 325-7588 office >(405) 325-7699 fax David Lewis Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde Department Of Anthropology University of Oregon From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 12 18:15:41 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 11:15:41 -0700 Subject: Learning Your lnaguage (education) Message-ID: Denver Post A 'foreign' language Lakota Rare class seeks to reclaim culture, keep kids in school By Eric Hubler Denver Post Education Writer Monday, May 12, 2003 - Beverly Granger cries as she thinks of all that was lost because she couldn't speak to her grandmother in Lakota - and all that is being regained now that her son Robert is learning the language in a course at Denver East High School. "I feel very privileged," said Robert, a 17-year-old junior. "There're not many places to learn Lakota. Plus it's my language, which gives it more meaning. I'm hoping to teach it to my children." This is not an after-school club, but a bona fide language course sanctioned by the Denver Public Schools curriculum department. Students get foreign-language credit - an irony that Rose Marie McGuire, head of the district's Indian Education Program, couldn't help noting. "It's not a foreign language. It's an indigenous language," she said. Instructor Gracie RedShirt Tyon Foote is McGuire's counterpart in Jefferson County schools, and she comes to Denver four times a week to teach the class, which is in its first semester. She and her students are not only preserving history but making it, according to educators involved in American Indian culture. Nationwide, few K-12 schools offer Indian languages. "Usually it's French or German or Spanish or any of those popular European languages. But you never hear, especially in the inner city, anyone teaching a native language. I think it's amazing," said Suzette Brewer, spokeswoman for the American Indian College Fund, which is based in Denver and supports 34 tribal colleges across the country. "That's wonderful news," said Albert White Hat Sr., a Lakota language professor at Sinte Gleska University, a Lakota college in Rosebud, S.D, and the author of the textbook used at East. "Public schools don't generally teach that unless they're on the reservation." For a century, Brewer said, Indian children were sent to boarding schools that discouraged them from speaking their native languages - or worse. "They basically had their languages beaten out of them," said Brewer, a Cherokee. The boarding-school movement allowed two-thirds of Indian languages to slip into extinction and instilled a dislike of school that still harms Indian students, Brewer said. Indians nationwide have worse dropout rates than any other ethnic group, she said. That's true in Denver. In a district where two-thirds of its students graduate from high school - already low by state and national standards - only 46 percent of Indians do, according to DPS figures. RedShirt Tyon Foote's class is part of an Indian Focus Schools system meant to improve those numbers. A quarter of DPS's approximately 850 American Indian students go to three elementary schools and one middle school, in addition to East and the Career Education Center, that offer support services and activities. Some are recent arrivals from reservations and accustomed to tiny rural schools, McGuire said. "Many times our kids get lost. They're just not used to an urban high school," said McGuire, who is a Dakota. (Dakota, Lakota and Nakota are members of the Siouan language group. Speakers of each tongue can understand speakers of the others, McGuire said.) Students who are reserved in other classes come alive in Lakota class, McGuire said: "You'll see more participation. They're more sure of themselves, more connected." Like Robert Granger, Nathan TwoEagles-Downing, a sophomore, is a Lakota looking to reclaim his roots. "I always wanted to be able to communicate with my grandpa," he said. Other students belong to different tribes with unrelated languages, but they're glad to be learning any Indian language at all. Freshman Brandon Ruiz is an Apache, but his elder, or mentor, is a Lakota, and now he's beginning to understand some of his elder's language. A few students aren't Indians at all, just intellectually curious. "Spanish and French, they seem so common. I try to learn new things," sophomore Debby Romero said. Mastering Lakota means recognizing that language can change entire societies, professor White Hat said. Many Lakota words took on new meanings when Christianity came on the scene, and today's students are trying to rediscover their original meanings. The phrase "wakan tanka," for example, meant "every creation," but missionaries translated it as "great spirit." "That's a description of the Christian God," White Hat said. It didn't fit the Lakota philosophy, which held that all people, animals and natural phenomena were relatives, worthy of respect and cooperation but not worship, he said. "In our department here, we are doing what we call laundering the language," White Hat said. "We have to go back to the original meaning of the word and how that addresses the Lakota philosophy, the Lakota way of thinking. We found that the language is very challenging, very complimentary, very honoring, and really kind of a progressive type of thinking." Using White Hat's text, RedShirt Tyon Foote is teaching the students at East High that in Lakota, language and relationships are inseparable. An example: To show respect and preserve household peace, brothers and sisters traditionally did not speak to one another. "Living in tipis, avoidance was practiced to give people their privacy because it's a one-room home," she said. "The class is so much more than just language," RedShirt Tyon Foote added. "There are social rules, philosophy, the culture, history, misinterpretation of different words when it was written down by missionaries." A frequent stumbling block for students is that men and women use different word endings. Brewer said Lakota speakers find Kevin Costner funny in "Dances With Wolves" because he speaks female Lakota. While most Lakota today live in South Dakota, it is appropriate for Denver to play a role in the renaissance of the Lakota language, Beverly Granger said. Lakota routinely traveled through Colorado, where they formed alliances with Cheyennes and Utes, she said. And, in modern times, Denver has emerged as a center of American Indian culture. Granger said she fled the violence, alcoholism and poverty of the Rosebud reservation at 19, lived for many years in Nevada, and only felt her homesickness ebb when she came to Denver in 1989 and saw the annual Denver March Pow Wow. For the first time, she said, she saw Indians of different tribes doing something other than bickering. "Everyone was dancing together. It was an intercultural pow wow. I just sat there and cried," she said. "Denver's just a good place to be for American Indians." From keola at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU Mon May 12 18:41:25 2003 From: keola at LEOKI.UHH.HAWAII.EDU (Keola Donaghy) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 08:41:25 -1000 Subject: more messages (2) FROM CHINOOK-L In-Reply-To: <3EB66330@webmail> Message-ID: FWIW, we did a Hawaiian translation of Communicator into Hawaiian back in 1998. It took two of us about two months to do the work (we did a binary translation for Mac only). Depending on how much of the interface you want to do, the amount of work is not insignificant, and there is constant updating that needs to be done, part of the reason we have not maintained Ka Ho'okele (the name for our translation - http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/eng/resources/kahookele/). For us, it really turned out to be a project that was "cool", as you say, and got us a bit of notoriety, but only served us for a brief period of time. It did require the creation of a considerable amount of new words that needed to go through our new lexicon committee as well. At the time that we did Ka Ho'okele, and when I last checked sometime last year, the tools for translating and maintaining the translation were pretty crude, but the staff of the ULP were quite helpful. If we had staff to spare to maintain it I wouldn't mind continuing on the project, but in our case I felt our limited resources were better served on other projects. Keola Penei ka ~Q?lelo a Indigenous Languages and Technology : >Mike Cleven (hiyu siah kopa huloima illahee) > >Netscape's Universal Localization Program: Netscape ULP homepage: > > >Just thought I'd let y'all know I've been having a look at the Netscape >ULP >- purdy interestin', if I do say so myself. I'm willing to slog through >the "how to" of the damn thing if the rest of you can help me find >suitable >translations/renderings of the drawbar commands and other interfaces. Not >that a Jargon browser is going to have broad appeal; it'll just be "cool" >- >apparently we also can't call it Netscape, according to the rules of the >project, so we also need a suggestion for a name. "Wawabox" or >"Wawahouse" >occurred to me (as replacements for "Communicator"). > >But as I was reading, it occurred to me that the Netscape ULP could have >profound use within the First Nations/Native American linguistic >communities. I don't know if anyone out there is working on this for >Cherokee or Navajo or any other major American native language, but I >suspect someone is already working on Inuktitut/Inuvaluit and Cree >variations on the theme. > >So it's occurred to me to suggest it to you Salishan list people to try >and >evolve a "standard" Salishan vocabulary for browser use; I know that there >are wide disparities in languages within the language family, but maybe >this is an opportunity to derive "New Salish" technological terms and >ideoms......cooperation between linguists and actual tribal community >members would seem to be a must. The alternative would be to develop >separate Secwepemc, Nlaka'pamux, Lushootseed, etc. versions..... > >I'm going to turn a couple of Kwakwala and Tsimshian people I know on to >the idea; at least in their cases it's a little more >straightforward....... ======================================================================= Keola Donaghy Hawaiian Language Curriculum and Technology Coordinator Native Hawaiian Serving Institution Program University of Hawai'i at Hilo keola at leoki.uhh.hawaii.edu http://www.uhh.hawaii.edu/~nhsi Kualono http://www.olelo.hawaii.edu/ ======================================================================= From ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US Mon May 12 21:15:00 2003 From: ssupahan at HUMBOLDT.K12.CA.US (Sarah Supahan) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 14:15:00 -0700 Subject: Where do Native Languages Fit In? In-Reply-To: <3EB730B1@webmail> Message-ID: We have also been able to get Hupa, Yurok and Karuk all accepted to the UC system for college entrance here at Hoopa Valley High School. Sarah Supahan On Monday, May 12, 2003, at 09:23 AM, coyotez wrote: > In Oregon, there is now a new teacher credential which certifies native > language teachers, and in Northern California, Tolowa is accepted for > the > foreign language requirement for college entrance. There are models > that other > areas can use. I would suggest contacting the kanakamoaliallies-L > listserve > for more specific information on what is happening in Hawaii. I know > they have > language nesting schools but I am not sure about how they integrate > will > college entrance requirements. > David > >> ===== Original Message From Indigenous Languages and Technology > ===== >> In Oklahoma public schools, Native languages DO qualify as foreign >> language credit; the BOE has even changed the name of the requirement >> to "World" languages in order to better reflect their inclusion. So >> why this exclusion of Native/Hawai'ian/Pacific? Can't this be fought? >> >> >> >> >> At 3:05 PM -0700 5/9/03, Andre Cramblit wrote: >>> That was my point, in most schools Native Language classes cannot be >>> substituted for "foreign" language college entrance requirements nor >>> is funding available to offer Native language classes as a separate >>> elective course. A catch 22 that doesn't bode well for having our >>> students learn their language in school hence the need to pass SB 575 >>> >>> >>> >>> Diana Archangeli wrote: >>> >>>> To make the Subject header question clear, note that this call >>>> states: >>>> >>>> "The Secretary does not fund projects that propose Native American >>>> languages, Native Hawaiian, other Pacific Island languages or Native >>>> Alaskan languages. In addition, the program is not intended to >>>> support >>>> the teaching of English." >>>> >>>> best, >>>> >>>> Diana >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> >>> Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations >>> Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC >>> (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that >>> meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art >>> gallery featuring the art of California tribes >>> (http:// >>> www.americanindianonline.com) >>> >>> COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE >>> AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest >>> to Natives subscribe send an email to: >>> IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: >>> >> ?location=listi > nfo>http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/ > ?location=list > info >> >> >> -- >> >> Mary S. Linn >> Assistant Curator of Native American Languages >> Assistant Professor of Anthropology >> University of Oklahoma >> >> Native American Languages, 250G >> Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History >> 2401 Chautauqua Avenue >> Norman, Oklahoma 73072-7029 >> (405) 325-7588 office >> (405) 325-7699 fax > > David Lewis > Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde > Department Of Anthropology > University of Oregon > From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Mon May 12 22:50:27 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Lewis) Date: Mon, 12 May 2003 15:50:27 -0700 Subject: from NativeShare: Fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education Message-ID: Fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education (DLESE) The fourth annual Digital Library of Earth System Education (DLESE) Sunday, August 3 - Tuesday, August 5, 2003 at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado for teachers (formal K-grey and informal), curriculum developers, materials developers, content/data providers, scientists, service providers, and library creators. The cost of the meeting would be your airfare plus approximately $350 for lodging in the University of Colorado dormitories, meals and miscellaneous expenses. The additional day for the skills workshop is estimated to be $75. Full and partial funding will be available for a limited number of attendees to the meeting. Funding requests will be prioritized based on need and to achieve balance between educators from all venues, disciplines, and diverse backgrounds, developers from the full range of collections and services, and librarians and education specialists. http://www.dlese.org/ From sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue May 13 20:37:14 2003 From: sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (sdp at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 13:37:14 -0700 Subject: FW: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Message-ID: Everyone, I apologize if this has alread appeared--view it as a reminder! Susan Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D. Department of English University of Arizona Tucson, AZ 85721 -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: ddeleon at email.arizona.edu Subject: S. 575 Native American Languages Act Amendments Act of 2003 Date: Tue, 13 May 2003 13:34:49 -0700 Size: 2611 URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 15 18:26:53 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 11:26:53 -0700 Subject: Language Revitalization Efforts Message-ID: Ancestral Language Revitalization Efforts Complete Successful First Year; Visitors from Northern California Tribes Observe Classes in Luise?o 05/14/2003 - RIVERSIDE CA Kris Lovekin, kris.lovekin at ucr.edu Linguist Eric Elliott works with two young people from Pechanga on mastering Luiseno, the ancestral language. Scholars at the University of California, Riverside and cultural leaders of the Pechanga Band of Luise?o Mission Indians are celebrating the completion of the first year of an ambitious effort to teach tribal members their ancestral language. The work is paying off. Last week, Native Americans from Northern California visited UC Riverside to observe the Takic Language Revitalization Project in action at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters near Temecula. They watched children learn Luise?o, one of approximately 100 tribal languages native to California. Fully half of those languages are now nearly extinct. The Native American Languages Protection Act was approved by Congress in the early 1990s, and right now there is a movement to provide additional funding to help revive many of the endangered native languages across the nation. That could help efforts like the one at Pechanga. The people who observed the language program were from the Paiute Tribe in Bishop, the Tule River reservation near Visalia and individuals representing the Numa Yadoha Program in Bishop. They spent a week at UCR Extension learning teaching techniques that can help in their own efforts to revitalize their native languages. "I really liked seeing the program," said Carrie Franco, who is learning the Yowlumni language on the Tule River reservation, home to 13 different native tribes. She is studying her ancestral language in order to pass it down to her children and grandchildren. Her cousin, Lucy Rodilez, said she enjoyed watching children at Pechanga sing and understand Luise?o. The Tule River reservation covers 56,000-acres, including towering redwood trees and elevations of 7,000 ft. Since there are 13 different tribes on the reservations, issues of language revitalization get complicated. Margaret Valdez, who lives on the Tule River reservation, said her father is Mexican, her mother is Yowlumni and her husband was Navajo. "I have five children and they all understand Yowlumni," she said. She has started to teach her grandchildren. When a language dies, she said, so does the culture. That is the theory that launched the effort to revitalize Luiseno, according to Gary DuBois, director of Pechanga Cultural Resources. "With the death of ancestral languages, the process of comprehending one's own history and describing the landscape is changed. It becomes impossible to transmit fundamental cultural ways of knowing across the generations." He said last week that the first year of the program has gone well, in fact better than he expected. "We are concentrating our efforts on the preschool program, and we have waiting lists of Pechanga children who would like to attend the preschool." Recently, DuBois said, the tribe approved a kindergarten program to start in the fall. The adult classes are geared to support the preschool. "It helps family members and tribal members keep up with the children," said DuBois. Sheila Dwight, director of International Education Programs at UCR Extension, helped assembled a team of language teaching experts to work on the project. And she hosted the group touring the Riverside County language programs this week. The lead linguist for the project is Eric Elliott, who is uniquely qualified for the task. A Southern California native, Elliott spent five years documenting the endangered Luise?o language working closely with Villiana Hyde, native speaker of the Rincon dialect of Luise?o. His doctoral dissertation at UC San Diego was a 1,700 page bilingual English-Luise?o/Luise?o-English dictionary, the result of thirteen years of research on the Luise?o language. For the past eleven years he has documented the Mountain Cahuilla dialect of Cahuilla, and the Serrano language spoken by one remaining native speaker residing at the Morongo Reservation of Riverside County. Joel Martin, Rupert Costo Chair of American Indian Affairs at UCR, helped put all of the parties together. His goal has always been to design a program that could be used as a model nationwide. "We're on our way now," Martin said. "The children are learning so well and the teachers are doing so well. It is very heartening to see how far we've come." This effort is connected to UCR's proposed Center for California Native Nations, which will help facilitate innovative educational partnerships, coordinate important research related to Native Americans, and share best practices. A new Web site at UC Riverside that offers curriculum ideas for language revitalization, free magazines for children and other resources, is available at www.americanindian.ucr.edu THE TAKIC LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION PROJECT ? Has developed teaching models to revitalize the Luise?o language ? Has created successful preschool and adult classes at the Pechanga Tribal Headquarters ? Has trained tribal members to be teachers in Luiseno ? Has taken the model and demonstrated it to national audiences at conferences, as well as accepted visits from observers to see the program in action. Relevance to UCR UCR's focus on American Indian Affairs reflects its location and unique positive heritage. Located at the fastest growing and most diverse campus in the UC system, UCR's Native American Studies program consists of more than 40 courses distributed across many departments. A strong concentration of faculty in History supports one of the country's most highly regarded Ph.D. programs in Native American history as well as a new M.A. program. Efforts are underway to offer an M.A. and Ph.D. in Native American Studies as well, tapping full-time faculty in Anthropology, Dance, English, Ethnic Studies, and Religious Studies. UCR's program enjoys institutional support, including the Rupert Costo Library of American Indian History, the Costo Endowed Chair in American Indian Affairs, the Costo Historical and Linguistic Native American Research Center, and a strong Native American Students Program. Near neighbor to more than 30 federally recognized tribes as well as several unrecognized ones, UCR's program supports interdisciplinary, culturally sensitive, critically sophisticated, and communally based research. A Web site is available at http://americanindian.ucr.edu/ Sheila Dwight Director, International Education Programs University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521 e-mail: sdwight at ucx.ucr.edu; Phone: (909)787-4346 From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Thu May 15 21:09:34 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Thu, 15 May 2003 14:09:34 -0700 Subject: Preserving Language Message-ID: Preserving native language OSU hosts conference in hope of preventing native language extinction By Brenna Doheny Barometer Staff Writer Global development has a detrimental impact on more than just natural resources. Native languages and cultures are becoming increasingly endangered by the globalization trend. OSU is hosting the second annual conference on Native American language preservation in hopes of saving native languages from extinction. "For a number of reasons that go back beyond the 19th century, these languages have been progressively jeopardized," said Joseph Krause, chair of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures. Krause compared language extinction to the disappearance of a species in the environment. "That disappearance has an effect on the larger ecosystem," he said. Similarly, "when a language disappears, a lot disappears with it." The conference will focus on preservation strategies, including curriculum development and methods for archiving languages. The applications of technology to language education, through such methods as language software, video production and distance education will be addressed. Krause expects a large delegation from the Native American community to attend and hopes that each of the 10 recognized tribes in Oregon will be represented. Native Americans from Montana, Arizona, Canada and Alaska will also be in attendance. The theme of the conference is "Speaking to the Seventh Generation." "We are looking toward the future," Krause explained. "Languages will disappear unless something is done to have the younger generation learn them," he said. "If something is done, the seventh generation will still be speaking them." The Oregon state government is aware of the plight of native languages. Senate Bill 690, passed last year, allows for special teacher certification procedures for native speakers to help bring language programs to schools. "Some of the only remaining speakers of Wasco, for example, may be in their 60s or 70s and won't go through the normal procedures of getting a teacher's certification," Krause explained. The new certification program, approved last summer, recognizes the sovereignty of Native American tribes. If an applicant has the tribe's authorization, "the process of obtaining a certificate is expedited," Krause said. Only a few speakers have gone through the certification process thus far, however, and non-native language teachers are somewhat opposed to the program. "One of the fundamental purposes of the conference is so growth can occur between native and non-native language teachers," Krause said. The conference will begin with an opening convocation at noon Thursday in LaSells Stewart Center, and lectures and workshops will continue until the last lecture at 7 p.m., resuming at 9 a.m. on Friday. The conference will conclude on Friday with a presentation of "Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner,"a film that won Camera D'Or at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. Lucy Tulugarjuk, who starred in the film and won Best Actress at the American Indian Film Festival, will give an introduction to the film. The screening will begin at 6 p.m. at Milam Auditorium. All of the conference events are free and open to the public. Roylene Keouli, external coordinator of the Native American Longhouse at OSU, understands the plight of native languages. "The Hawaiian language is dying," she said. Keouli, a native Hawaiian Islander, speaks Hawaiian because she learned it through six years of language courses at a school for natives. She explained that the general population speaks English or Japanese. Through higher education and the use of technology, the prevalence of the Hawaiian language is increasing, she said. "Before there were only 400-500 native speakers," Keouli said. "Now the number is increasing, but [the Hawaiian language] is still not common." Brenna Doheny covers news for The Daily Barometer. She can be reached at baro.news at studentmedia.orst.edu, or at 737-2232. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 16 22:37:18 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 16 May 2003 15:37:18 -0700 Subject: Testimony Begins (language) Message-ID: Senate bill called vital to Native language survival FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2003 A bill to expand the education of Native languages drew so much support at a Senate hearing on Thursday that just about everyone asked to be a part of it. Amendments to the Native American Languages Act, first passed in 1990, will authorize the creation of three "survival schools" in Alaska, Hawaii and Montana. Modeled after a successful Native Hawaiian program, the schools will provide comprehensive education in an all-Native environment. "Language is important," said Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), the bill's sponsor. "It's a link to the past and I think it's an anchor to the future." The idea was warmly embraced by more than a dozen witnesses who documented their own successes in teaching Native languages. During the hearing, which was interrupted several times due to frequent Senate votes on the tax cut, they asked to be included in the survival school initiative. "Given our unique circumstances the Southwest, we hope this committee will entertain a recommendation that a fourth center be established that will serve Native people in the Southwest," said Dr. Christine Sims, chairwoman of the Linguistic Institute for Native Americans and an Acoma Pueblo tribal member. Sims said Pueblo, Apache, Navajo and other tribes will benefit. Speakers also asked the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to address the impacts of the No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates federal standards in public education. They said a teacher certification requirement will hurt Native instructors, some of whom are tribal elders who were forbidden to speak their own languages. "It doesn't take into account our Native language that are endangered and [it] will endanger all Native American children," said Geneva Navarro, 77, who teaches Comanche at the Comanche Nation College in Oklahoma. "These Native languages helped save our country in World War I and World War II," she added. Rita Coosewon, 71, is the only Comanche language instructor in her area's public school system but has to work with a certified teacher. She was taken to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school at a young age and marveled at the changes federal law and policy have brought about in her lifetime. "What a twist for them to ask me to come and teach this language that they wanted so hard for me not to know," she said. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said Education Secretary Rod Paige had an "eye-opening experience" when he visited rural Alaska Native schools last week. "Keeping the languages alive -- we recognize that it is a challenge in the state," she said. "It ought not to be so." Witnesses testified about the benefits of Native language instruction. They said it boosts boosts academic performance, preserves tribal culture and lowers drop out rates. Jocelyn DesRosier started off as a volunteer at the Piegan Institute / Nizipuhwahsin School on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana and is now a teacher. She said graduates of the school, which serves up to grades 8, receive praise when they enter high school. "The principal keeps phoning us and asking us what we did to these children," she said, "because they are so brilliant." Dr. Kalena Silva, director of the Ka Haka~QUla O Ke~Qelikolani College at the University of Hawai'i, said 80 percent of students in the Native Hawaiian immersion program enter college. Aside from the survival school, the bill authorizes "language nests." Tribes, tribal colleges, Native language educational organizations and other organizations can receive funds from the Department of Education for instructional programs. Inouye acknowledged the changes suggested by the witnesses and said he hopes the bill will be approved by the Senate committee by the end of July. From Rrlapier at AOL.COM Sun May 18 21:07:43 2003 From: Rrlapier at AOL.COM (Rr Lapier) Date: Sun, 18 May 2003 17:07:43 EDT Subject: "Blackfeet Push to Preserve Langauge" Message-ID: Sunday, May 18, 2003 Blackfeet push to preserve language Bill would help schools teach native tongues By CHRISTOPHER STEINER For the Great Falls Tribune WASHINGTON -- Two Blackfeet teachers urged a U.S. Senate committee this week to approve a bill intended to ensure that Native American languages don't vanish. The bill would offer grants to schools starting or continuing native language programs. Dollar figures for the bill are not yet available. Of the 300 tribal languages indigenous to the Americas, only 175 are alive today, according to the National Indian Education Association. In 50 years, the group says, as few as 20 could be left. "The loss of native languages diminishes the truth of native ways and dishonors the lifetimes of our ancestors," Rosalyn LaPier told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "True native history is identified by the stories extending back thousands of years and retold out loud in our native languages." LaPier, director of the Piegan Institute's Nizipuhwahsin School on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation, and teacher Jocelyn Davis-DesRosier appeared before the committee Thursday to explain how the school teaches core subjects in the Blackfeet tongue. The Piegan Institute was founded in 1987 to preserve and promote the native Blackfeet language. In 1995, the institute started the Nizipuhwahsin School, which has 32 students, all children in the Blackfeet Tribe. The bill, introduced by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, would amend 1990 legislation that protected the rights of Indians to promote and speak their native languages to fiscally support the programs which it guards. No similar legislation has been introduced in the House. The 1990 bill marked an official reversal in policy for the U.S. government -- which at one time persecuted those who spoke native tongues. An 1868 report from the federal commission on Indian affairs read: "Their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted." Davis-DesRosier, who is learning the Blackfeet language, sends her two boys to the school where she teaches. Early on, she said, her friends and relatives warned her against sending her children to the native-language school, saying her sons "would have lower academic achievement and would never make the transition to public school." The doubters have been proved wrong, she said. "Learning academic subjects in the Blackfeet language has not diminished their academic ability, but enhanced it," she said. This is the case for most children, according to Leanne Hinton, professor and chairwoman of the Department of Linguistics at the University of California at Berkeley. "We know through their intense hard work and leadership that these systems work successfully to educate students to be literate and fluent in their ancestral language and accustomed to using it in daily communications and also are literate and fluent in English, and fully prepared to go on to higher education in English-speaking institutions," she said to the committee. That's exactly the way things have played out at Nizipuhwahsin, said Shirlee Crowshoe in an interview from the school where she is one of two teachers who are fully fluent in the native tongue. "We have had many children go on to the public high schools and have no problems," she said. There would be many more of those children if the school had more fluent teachers like her, she said. Because there are only two teachers fluent in the language at the school, which teaches children from kindergarten through eighth grade, it has to limit its enrollment to around 30. There is a waiting list of more than 100 children, despite the tuition of about $100 a month. This is why, Crowshoe said, the teachers are rooting so hard for the bill to pass -- they need more funding to entice a few of the remaining fluent Blackfeet speakers to teach. Fluent speakers, she said, are scarce -- a survey taken by the Blackfeet in the mid-1990s revealed roughly 200 fluent speakers out of a tribal population of about 15,000. At one time the school employed as many as six fluent speakers, she said. "But funding is such a big factor, we just couldn't afford to bring them on again." Christopher Steiner is a reporter for Medill News Service. Rosalyn LaPier Piegan Institute www.pieganinstitute.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 19 19:29:47 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:29:47 -0700 Subject: Dine Family Institute (language) Message-ID: Farmington Daily Times School: Dine language, culture remain the key to success By Monica Lujan/For The Daily Times Thursday, May 15, 2003 - SHIPROCK "We spoke to our children even while they were in the womb. And since there are seven of them, we each took a separate group with us on occasion; dad with the boys, and mom with the girls, to spend time with them," Pauline and Ezekiel Sanchez told participants of the Dine Family Institute held Friday and Saturday at TseBitAi Middle School in Shiprock. The Sanchez', who are the 2003 Family of the Year, kept the audience alternating between tears and laughter as they told stories of their childhood, their romance and the ongoing process of being parents to a houseful of children. The Sanchez' were first named as Arizona's Family of the Year and then as National Family of the Year. The couple is the first Native American family to be selected for this prestigious honor. "We have always communicated to our children our love for them and the fact that each can achieve whatever he or she desires," Pauline Sanchez said, noting the struggles she had to overcome. Pauline Sanchez spoke frankly about watching her Navajo father beat her mother in drunken rages. As an adult, she was able to reconcile her feelings of conflict about this situation by talking to him and realizing how alcohol had affected his abilities to be a normal father. Ezekiel Sanchez quipped about being a "wetback," and how his parents crossed the Rio Grande into the United States when he was a small child. Despite the hardships of being immigrants and raising 16 children, Ezekiel Sanchez said his parents remained loving and caring toward each other and were never violent. Lenora Williams and her family from Fruitland were so moved by the Sanchez' presentation that they invited them to dinner later that evening. "We felt like we had to express back to them the love they shared with us," said Lenora Williams. Randy Roberts, chair of the Central School District's Indian Education Committee, was also very impressed with the Sanchez' presentation "We were so honored to hear the kinds of teachings that every family should use," Roberts said. Navajo Nation Vice President Frank Dayish Jr. and his wife Virginia made a surprise appearance at the Friday night conference. Both the vice president and his wife reminisced about the days they were students at TseBitAi Middle School, he remembered when the school auditorium was brand new and she recalled her days of being a cheerleader. Dayish reinforced the importance of Navajo parents' involvement in schools on the reservation and stressed the inclusion of Navajo language and culture in all schools serving Navajo students. Virginia Dayish spoke about the many struggles and sacrifices she and her husband endured as they pursued higher education. She credited strong family role models and family perseverance for getting them to where they are today. "It was very nice to hear Mrs. Dayish speak as a mother. Both she and the vice president have assisted us with events twice this spring which is unprecedented," added Tina Deschenie, Central Schools' Director of Bilingual and Indian Education, who also organized the conference. On the second day of the conference, a nine-student panel answered questions about their role models, their parent's role in their educational careers and their futures. The student panel was a hit with attendees as the students from Kirtland Central High, Shiprock High, and Newcomb High, mostly credited their mothers for their achievements thus far in life. The students overwhelmingly believed the best parents tell their children they love them, listen to their children, know who their friends are and attempt to understand the very different issues the students are confronted with today, compared to what the parents might have faced in their own adolescence. The student panel also noted some of their favorite reading included books that had to do with individuals overcoming adversity, but they also preferred magazines featuring current issues. As to future career aspirations, they talked about architecture, engineering, Native American law, music, journalism, and business. The students also agreed inclusion of Navajo language, culture, and history is an important component of their education. Some students believed that all Navajo students should have to take all the Navajo courses offered. And many students indicated that their first Navajo specific learning occurred in school when their teachers introduced the information. "Those students who spoke Navajo fluently did so with great reverence for their family who had raised them knowing the importance of their traditional roots," Deschenie said, "All of the students spoke with refreshing candor and intelligence on each question posed to them." Steve Darden with his Navajo teachings and encouragement to use prayer, song, and culturally based practices to be more loving and joyful drew in a large audience as well. Both Dr. Larry W. Emerson and Sylvia Jackson also reinforced the importance of family commitment to raising children who are strong in their identity as Navajo people and who aspire to do the best they can for society in general. Emerson reviewed historical oppression, which led to degeneration of culture and language among the Navajo, and all Indian people. "This historical process was evidenced in the students' insight on their parents' apathy toward language and culture in many households," Deschenie noted. "However, it's no surprise the students' lack of traditional teaching in the home only creates a thirst for Navajo language and culture teachings through the schools." Starting in July, the New Mexico State Department of Education has opened a new door for public school students to study their tribal languages with funding from the state Bilingual Unit for Indigenous Language Revitalization. Central School District's Indian Education Committee hosted the Dine Family Institute. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Mon May 19 19:33:25 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 19 May 2003 12:33:25 -0700 Subject: Worlds Languages Dissapearing Message-ID: Alarm raised on world's disappearing languages By Steve Connor, Science Editor 15 May 2003 The number of "living" languages spoken in the world is dwindling faster than the decline in the planet's wildlife, according to a new study. A comparison of the factors affecting the loss of languages and the demise of wild animals has found that the world's 6,000-plus tongues are facing the biggest risk of extinction. "The threats to birds and mammals are well known but it turns out that languages are far more threatened," said Professor Bill Sutherland, a population biologist at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. Linguists estimate that there are 6,809 "living" languages in the world today, but 90 per cent of them are spoken by fewer than 100,000 people, and some languages are even rarer ? 46 are known to have just one native speaker. "There are 357 languages with under 50 speakers. Rare languages are more likely to show evidence of decline than commoner ones," Professor Sutherland said. By applying the same principles used to classify the risk to birds and mammals, Professor Sutherland demonstrated that languages were subject to similar forces of extinction. In the study published in Nature, Professor Sutherland found that the factors that increased the diversity of animal species ? notably forest cover, tropical climates and mountainous topography ? were also those that influence the richness of local languages. "Countries with large numbers of languages are those with the most forests, are nearer the tropics and with mountain ranges. The same factors affect the number of bird species," he said. Over the past 500 years, about 4.5 per cent of the total number of described languages have disappeared, compared with 1.3 per cent of birds and 1.9 per cent of mammals. Colonisation has had the strongest influence. Of the 176 living languages spoken by the tribes of North America, 52 have become extinct since 1600. Of the 235 languages spoken by the Aboriginal Australians, 31 have disappeared. Professor Sutherland said that when comparisons were made to threatened animals, there was a substantially higher proportion of languages that could be considered "critically endangered", "endangered" or "vulnerable" ? the three classifications used to describe the threat to birds and mammals. "My extinction risk classification for languages is conservative ... Even with this, it is clear that the risks to languages exceed those to birds and mammals," Professor Sutherland said. A well-established phenomenon that comes into play when a species declines to small numbers is called the Allee effect ? for example when further breeding drops off because animals have difficulty finding a mate. A similar effect may also occur with rare languages. "People just don't want to learn them because they know there are so few others who can speak it," he said. The Leco language of the Bolivian Andes, for instance, is spoken by about 20 people. The Cambap language of Cameroon in Central Africa is used by just 30 native speakers. Some languages are important because they contain unique characteristics. The Yeli Dnye tongue of the people who live on Rossel Island, in Papua New Guinea, for example, contains unusual sounds and a vocabulary that upsets the universal terminology for describing colours. Professor Sutherland found that although mountains, forests and the tropics were common factors behind the diversity of animals and languages, both types of extinction did not necessarily occur in the same regions of the world. Between 200 and 250 languages are spoken by more than a million people, with Chinese Mandarin, English and Spanish being the three most popular tongues. From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Wed May 21 16:34:46 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 09:34:46 -0700 Subject: Language Testimony Message-ID: Professor backs "survival schools" for Native American languages Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 May 2003 BERKELEY ? Native American language "survival schools" must have long-term funding to save these languages from extinction, University of California, Berkeley, professor Leanne Hinton recently told the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. "Native American languages are in a major state of decline. The present and future language survival schools can turn this sad state of affairs around for at least some languages," Hinton said after testifying May 15 in support of legislation proposed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to provide long-term funding for language survival schools. These preschool and other schools offer a complete education through instruction in a Native American language, with the purpose of strengthening, revitalizing or reestablishing a Native American language and culture. Throughout her career, Hinton, a professor of linguistics and chair of the UC Berkeley Linguistics Department, has worked with Native American languages and on issues relating to language revitalization. She is the incoming president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and hosts the biennial "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley to revive languages for tribes with no speakers left. Of 85 indigenous languages in California, Hinton told the committee, 35 have no speakers left and the remaining 50 are spoken only by a handful of elders. "Along with their languages are being lost eloquent speech-making and story-telling skills, powerful oral literature, philosophical frameworks, environmental knowledge, and diverse world views," Hinton testified. Also testifying at the Washington, D.C., hearing was Mary Hermes, an associate professor of education at the University of Minnesota who has two children in an Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis. Hermes noted research showing that Native American children ? like African-American children ? have long been given the message that they can be either a Native American or a smart, educated person, but they can~Rt be both. Language can be the key to reconciling these two identities, Hermes said. By using indigenous languages for instruction in schools, children no longer see a conflict between education and Native identity. "For these endangered indigenous languages, the children come to school already knowing English ? they have learned it at home from their parents, from television, from their peers, and from virtually every experience in their lives involving speech," Hinton testified. "The survival schools level the playing field." A Hawaiian contingent at the committee hearing said that not a single child has dropped out of Hawaiian language survival schools before graduation in the 15 years the highly successful program has been in operation there. The program~Rs graduates boast an 85 percent acceptance rate at colleges and universities, and one is attending Stanford University in the fall. The 1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) established funding for tribes to develop language revitalization programs. A number of successful language survival programs were set up, partially funded by the Administration for Native Americans, which handles NALA funds. Due to NALA~Rs limited budget, however, schools generally can only be funded for about three years. "The challenge is to find long-term funding for these schools, and that is the major issue that S 575 addresses," Hinton told the Committee on Indian Affairs. "Long ago, previous congressional acts devoted enormous efforts to the schools that were charged with the eradication of Native American languages and cultural traditions," she testified. "Now in this hopefully wiser time, it behooves the Congress to devote an equivalent amount of funds to help indigenous peoples retain the languages that we erased from their lives." Inouye expects his bill to emerge from committee and reach the Senate floor for a vote sometime in July. To learn more about the proposed legislation, From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Wed May 21 18:50:41 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 11:50:41 -0700 Subject: Language Testimony In-Reply-To: <3ECBAAA7.5ECE60F0@ncidc.org> Message-ID: Dear ILAT, Along with this article is a webcast (.ram file) of the recent Senate hearing that is avilable for viewing. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/05/20_lang.shtml Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT Quoting Andre Cramblit : > Professor backs "survival schools" for Native American languages > > Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 May 2003 > > BERKELEY ? Native American language "survival schools" must have > long-term > funding to save these languages from extinction, University of > California, > Berkeley, professor Leanne Hinton recently told the Senate Committee > on > Indian Affairs. > > "Native American languages are in a major state of decline. The > present and > future language survival schools can turn this sad state of affairs > around > for at least some languages," Hinton said after testifying May 15 in > support of legislation proposed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to > provide > long-term funding for language survival schools. > > These preschool and other schools offer a complete education through > instruction in a Native American language, with the purpose of > strengthening, revitalizing or reestablishing a Native American > language > and culture. > > Throughout her career, Hinton, a professor of linguistics and chair > of the > UC Berkeley Linguistics Department, has worked with Native American > languages and on issues relating to language revitalization. She is > the > incoming president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and > hosts > the biennial "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley to revive > languages > for tribes with no speakers left. > > Of 85 indigenous languages in California, Hinton told the committee, > 35 > have no speakers left and the remaining 50 are spoken only by a > handful of > elders. > > "Along with their languages are being lost eloquent speech-making and > story-telling skills, powerful oral literature, philosophical > frameworks, > environmental knowledge, and diverse world views," Hinton testified. > > Also testifying at the Washington, D.C., hearing was Mary Hermes, an > associate professor of education at the University of Minnesota who > has two > children in an Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis. > Hermes > noted research showing that Native American children ? like > African-American children ? have long been given the message that > they can > be either a Native American or a smart, educated person, but they > can~Rt be > both. > > Language can be the key to reconciling these two identities, Hermes > said. > By using indigenous languages for instruction in schools, children no > longer see a conflict between education and Native identity. > > "For these endangered indigenous languages, the children come to > school > already knowing English ? they have learned it at home from their > parents, > from television, from their peers, and from virtually every > experience in > their lives involving speech," Hinton testified. "The survival > schools > level the playing field." > > A Hawaiian contingent at the committee hearing said that not a single > child > has dropped out of Hawaiian language survival schools before > graduation in > the 15 years the highly successful program has been in operation > there. The > program~Rs graduates boast an 85 percent acceptance rate at colleges > and > universities, and one is attending Stanford University in the fall. > > The 1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) established funding for > tribes to develop language revitalization programs. A number of > successful > language survival programs were set up, partially funded by the > Administration for Native Americans, which handles NALA funds. Due to > NALA~Rs limited budget, however, schools generally can only be funded > for > about three years. > > "The challenge is to find long-term funding for these schools, and > that is > the major issue that S 575 addresses," Hinton told the Committee on > Indian > Affairs. > > "Long ago, previous congressional acts devoted enormous efforts to > the > schools that were charged with the eradication of Native American > languages > and cultural traditions," she testified. "Now in this hopefully wiser > time, > it behooves the Congress to devote an equivalent amount of funds to > help > indigenous peoples retain the languages that we erased from their > lives." > > Inouye expects his bill to emerge from committee and reach the Senate > floor > for a vote sometime in July. To learn more about the proposed > legislation, > From coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU Wed May 21 20:55:29 2003 From: coyotez at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU (David Lewis) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 13:55:29 -0700 Subject: PDA software potentials In-Reply-To: <1053543041.63ace51997822@localhost> Message-ID: Klahowya, Just last week I had a birthday and received a PDA, a Toshiba Pocket PC, as my present. Some of the software for this mini computer is called Letter Recognizer and Block Recognizer. These are a few of the ways that the folks at Microsoft figured out to help PDA users to write on their devices since they have no easy to use keyboard installed. You can get a keyboard and I have, but most people probably do not go this route. I was reading the manual and the Letter recognizer software is designed to learn as you write. So its meant to learn to recognize new words that each person habitually writes. I remembered this fact this morning when playing with this new toy-(er)-computer device. and then I though about using native languages on this device... I began typing in the names of tribes in oregon. most do not appear in any computer spelling dictionary. names like siuslaw, kalapuya, santiam... but after writign a native word once, the device recognized the word the next time I wrote it. So what about the application of this software for native language programs? do people who are actively engaged in langauge survival programs think this sort of software can potentially be useful? I wonder if somehow the software can be liberated from the PDA/Pocket PC format and used on regular computers? Are there examples of this software already in use in a PC or Mac format? Just an idea, David From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 22 00:35:16 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 21 May 2003 17:35:16 -0700 Subject: Baucus Pushes to Increase Technology on Tribal Lands (fwd) Message-ID: BAUCUS PUSHES TO INCREASE TECHNOLOGY ON TRIBAL LANDS Senator Questions Role Of Federal Commission In Providing Telecommunications For Tribes May 20, 2003 (Washington, D.C.) - In an effort to improve telecommunications and create jobs in Indian Country, Montana Senator Max Baucus and Senators Tom Daschle (D-SD) and Tim Johnson (D-S.D) are asking the Federal Communications Commission to provide information on the status of telecommunications on tribal lands. ?The availability and affordability of telecommunications in Indian Country is of extreme importance to the economic well-being of Indian people and the entire nation,? Baucus and the senators said in a letter to the FCC. ?Collecting accurate data on the status of telecommunications on Indian lands will lead to a better understanding of the problems Indian people face.? Noting the FCC and states have struggled with how best to promote and advance telecommunications on tribal lands, Baucus is seeking to clarify what the agency is doing to boost the use of technology in tribal areas. Baucus said the FCC is obligated to promote and advance telecommunications into all areas of the country, including Indian lands. However, telecommunications on many tribal lands is inadequate. Baucus and the senators want answers on what the FCC is doing to promote and advance telecommunications on tribal lands. Baucus said the economies in Native American communities are suffering from a lack of telephones, computer and Internet access. The luxury of a telephone is taken for granted by most Americans, Baucus said, pointing to a U.S. Department of Commerce study showing telephone ?penetration? levels on many reservations can range from 20-70 percent compared to the national average of over 98 percent. Due to the difficulty of accessing telephone service on many of the nation?s reservations, access to Internet service is even more difficult. Previous Commerce studies show that when Native Americans gain access to computers and the Internet, they are among the highest users of those tools for information, such as job listings. ?We ask the FCC to collect and report more accurate data on the status of telecommunications on Indian lands,? the senators wrote. ?This will allow lawmakers a better understanding of the problems Indian people face.? Baucus said he is committed to helping advance technology on tribal lands because it will help them compete in today?s world and boost the economy by creating jobs. Baucus may introduce a bill later this spring to accomplish this goal. ?I?m committed to working together with Senators Daschle and Johnson and the FCC to help provide Indian people with the technology they need to compete in today?s world,? Baucus said. ?Expanding all Montanans? access to technology will help create jobs and boost the economies on the reservations.? ~~~ (sorry, no indentified news source) From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 23 22:01:04 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:01:04 -0700 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: http://www.sioux.org/page21.html From miakalish at REDPONY.US Fri May 23 22:00:29 2003 From: miakalish at REDPONY.US (Mia@RedPony) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 16:00:29 -0600 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: sound. we need sound. sigh. mia ----- Original Message ----- From: "Andre Cramblit" To: Sent: Friday, May 23, 2003 4:01 PM Subject: Kool Use Of Technology > http://www.sioux.org/page21.html > > From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Fri May 23 22:05:37 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 15:05:37 -0700 Subject: Kool Use Of Technology Message-ID: I agree, I am checking with our language program to see if we could do something similar with real audio added (even a vido of an elder pronouncing it would be great) -- Andr? Cramblit: andre.p.cramblit.86 at alum.dartmouth.org Operations Director Northern California Indian Development Council NCIDC (http://www.ncidc.org) is a non-profit that meets the development needs of American Indians and operates an art gallery featuring the art of California tribes (http://www.americanindianonline.com) COMMUNICATION IS THE KEY TO THE FUTURE OF AMERICAN INDIANS/NATIVE AMERICANS/ALASKAN NATIVES & HAWAIIAN ISLANDERS. For news of interest to Natives subscribe send an email to: IndigenousNewsNetwork-subscribe at topica.com or go to: http://www.topica.com/lists/IndigenousNewsNetwork/subscribe/?location=listinfo From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat May 24 05:33:37 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 23 May 2003 22:33:37 -0700 Subject: Reference Materials for Multilingual Computing (link) Message-ID: Dear ILAT, I have come across a nice beginners reference on multilingual computing. Take a look and let me know what you think. http://cet.middlebury.edu/rsrc_multilingual.php heneek'e (again), Phil Cash Cash UofA, ILAT From andrekar at NCIDC.ORG Tue May 27 05:23:38 2003 From: andrekar at NCIDC.ORG (Andre Cramblit) Date: Mon, 26 May 2003 22:23:38 -0700 Subject: Language STruggle Message-ID: Tribes struggle to keep languages alive As population ages, the spoken word of Indian ancestors is beginning to die off By Doug Abrahms Desert Sun Washington Bureau May 26th, 2003 WASHINGTON -- The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians had to hire an outside linguist last year to help preschoolers learn the Luiseno language because the only native speakers left in the tribe were in their 70s and 80s. "We can~Rt use them as resources because they~Rre too frail," said Gary DuBois, director of the Temecula tribe~Rs cultural resources program. "We~Rre running against time." The Pechangas are spending $200,000 from their casino profits to fund a preschool language-immersion program that they plan to expand into kindergarten, and perhaps to later grades. Fewer than 10 of the tribe~Rs 1,500 members speak Luiseno. The Pechangas~R situation is typical for California tribes, said Leanne Hinton, chairwoman of the University of California at Berkeley linguistics department. More than 85 native languages were once spoken in the Golden State. Today, 35 languages have no native speakers and each of the other 50 are only spoken by a handful, she said. "Here in California we have 50 languages ... almost all of them are spoken by people over 60," Hinton said. "As soon as the kids stop speaking it, essentially it~Rs a dead language." Many American Indians and educators worry that tribes throughout the nation are in a race against time to save their languages -- a vital part of American Indian culture -- before they die off with tribal elders. Consider: A 1997 study by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians found 3 percent of children under 6 could speak the language. Only an estimated 2,000 Ojibwes, or Chippewas, out of more than 100,000 in the United States speak the language. About 80 percent of the nation~Rs 175 existing Indian languages will disappear in the next generation if nothing is done because the vast majority of speakers are older than 60, according to one study. But tribes are taking steps to revive their languages, with the help of funds from gambling or the government. Some tribes are spending their casino profits on preschools where children are immersed in their native tongue. And Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, has sponsored a bill to provide more funds to language-immersion schools. Language revitalization started in the 1970s in Hawaii, where the Aha Punanan Leo language organization brought together preschoolers with island elders. The children then were moved into language-immersion schools. Members of the first senior class, who speak both Hawaiian and English, graduated in 1999. Federal funds could help Inouye~Rs bill would provide roughly $10 million a year to help fund private school efforts to teach Indian languages and provide money for teacher training. Inouye has introduced similar legislation in previous congressional sessions that failed to pass. Congress passed legislation in the early 1990s that funded language revitalization programs but these short-term grants leave programs in a constant hunt for funds, said Mary Hermes, an education professor at the University of Minnesota in Duluth. She also is a board member and parent at the Waadookodaading Ojibwe language-immersion school in Hayward, Wis. American Indians blame the government for eradicating their languages by pushing them off their lands, removing children to English-speaking boarding schools, and barring them from talking in school in their native tongue. Governments in New Zealand and Canada have acknowledged their roles in eradicating native languages and have provided funding to tribes, Hermes said. "It is really the responsibility of the government that we~Rre in this situation," Hermes said. "We~Rre not asking for money because of the harm suffered. We~Rre asking for efforts to revitalize our language." Reasons to save languages Cindy LaMarr heads Capitol Area Indian Resources, a nonprofit group in Sacramento that offers cultural and academic programs for area Indian youth. She believes bringing back the languages that American Indians have used for centuries to pass on their culture and history will give Indian children more confidence and a better education. LaMarr, president-elect of the National Indian Education Association, said few studies have been done on the relatively new language-immersion schools to back up her belief. "To me, it~Rs pretty much a no-brainer: If you feel good about your culture and identity, then you will feel better about yourself," said LaMarr. Her parents were taken from the Pit River reservation in northern California to boarding schools in Riverside and Carson City, Nev. "Language is essential to the continuance of our cultural and spiritual traditions and is an acknowledgement of our gift from the great creator," she said. Torres Martinez in Thermal California Indian groups might seek legislation to help fund language-immersion schools, she said, because the state~Rs tribes have so few native speakers left. Some California tribes have started master-apprentice programs where a native speaker teaches an instructor who then can teach classes. But those programs can be difficult, even when you~Rre learning the language from your mother. Faith Morreo, language program coordinator at the Torres Martinez tribe in Thermal, was part of a group that met with her mom, Tina, several times a week to learn Cahuilla. But it was difficult fitting the classes into daily life, Morreo said. "We started out with a big group," she said, "but we got burned out." The Torres Martinez tribe, which has 14 native speakers among its 600 members, hopes to start a day-care center next fall that will include some teaching of Cahuilla, she said. From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Tue May 27 21:35:53 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 14:35:53 -0700 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways May 27, 2003 By DAVID BERREBY For the past decade, scholars and political activists have been working to get the rest of us worried about the future of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they argue, are like species heading for extinction. A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that when standard measures of species risk are applied to language communities, human tongues come out even more endangered than the animals. The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. Language preservationists have been using this analogy for years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda or the California condor?" It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics begins. How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, once gone, is gone forever. If the information and political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our neighbor, not our invention. Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's currently spoken languages will be around in a century. It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But there is no danger of that, because the reserve of language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the language changes. Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with almost all other living languages are being altered by speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of England now pronounces her English less aristocratically than she used to. As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently settled island can be as rich in languages as a long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to suit changing times and places. In an era when languages continue to change with time, can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, to blossom into families of related but distinct new tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of the last four centuries. For example, on the preservationist Web site terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of human history. So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? Preservationists call this an argument for accepting injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about language and a preservationist, notes that "language death does not happen in privileged communities." "It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," he continues. This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, modernization and national identity, so the preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such practices. It is important, though, to be clear about what - or rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions created to describe what human beings did yesterday. The difference between a living creature with blood in its veins and a general notion should be obvious: your auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The concept of "red" does not. But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a particular place and time, members of a culture will argue with one another about what those resources are. When we describe culture as an organism, we do not see the individuals inside it. So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political question: which voices represent the communities whose languages are fading? Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the younger? Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English. The elucidation of language in all its complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But "saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1&en=189342f2df585fdd Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company From DQuitiquit at HOPLANDTRIBE.COM Wed May 28 17:17:21 2003 From: DQuitiquit at HOPLANDTRIBE.COM (Denise Quitiquit) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 10:17:21 -0700 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: Nice article, maybe the funding sources in government can use it as a reason why native languages should no longer be funded....as long as its been recorded, taped, written down a language can be revived even like Hebrew 2,000 years from now. How wonderful, and I will be very sad when there are no more pandas in the world, like the other 400+ species already gone FOREVER...but with genetic engineering we can fix that to..just make sure we have some cell samples hanging around in some museum or lab (maybe 2000 years from now). But with native languages its even more than just the spoken word, it is a spirit linked directly to the earth mother, a sense of being right in the world and being able to communicate with it...its not for the linguist to teach (maybe only to assist) in developing new strategies for language preservation, revival it is up to communities and speakers of that particular language to yes learn it again or strengthen its use once more, but more so to instill into a new/old speaker the connection with the earth, ancestors and a world viewpoint that might just enable all of us to continue as a species. Thanks for all the flow of information, I always look forward to opening up my email. This is my first response to any subject but it got my goat. -----Original Message----- From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU [mailto:cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU] Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2003 1:36 PM To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways May 27, 2003 By DAVID BERREBY For the past decade, scholars and political activists have been working to get the rest of us worried about the future of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they argue, are like species heading for extinction. A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that when standard measures of species risk are applied to language communities, human tongues come out even more endangered than the animals. The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. Language preservationists have been using this analogy for years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda or the California condor?" It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics begins. How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, once gone, is gone forever. If the information and political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our neighbor, not our invention. Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's currently spoken languages will be around in a century. It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But there is no danger of that, because the reserve of language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the language changes. Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with almost all other living languages are being altered by speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of England now pronounces her English less aristocratically than she used to. As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently settled island can be as rich in languages as a long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to suit changing times and places. In an era when languages continue to change with time, can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, to blossom into families of related but distinct new tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of the last four centuries. For example, on the preservationist Web site terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of human history. So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? Preservationists call this an argument for accepting injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about language and a preservationist, notes that "language death does not happen in privileged communities." "It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," he continues. This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, modernization and national identity, so the preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such practices. It is important, though, to be clear about what - or rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions created to describe what human beings did yesterday. The difference between a living creature with blood in its veins and a general notion should be obvious: your auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The concept of "red" does not. But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a particular place and time, members of a culture will argue with one another about what those resources are. When we describe culture as an organism, we do not see the individuals inside it. So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political question: which voices represent the communities whose languages are fading? Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the younger? Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English. The elucidation of language in all its complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But "saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1 &en=189342f2df585fdd Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company From mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US Wed May 28 17:44:26 2003 From: mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US (Matthew Ward) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 11:44:26 -0600 Subject: Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways (article) Message-ID: I found this article to be pretty useful, as it sums up a lot of the (in my mind, bogus) arguments against language preservation. I'm sure you all can find reasons why it's wrong (or even, in places, right) but just two that come up to my mind right away: 1). Using Hebrew to argue "You can revive a language, but you can't revive an extinct species" The conditions that Hebrew were revived were, shall we say, unique, and not likely to be repeated. Other "dead" languages do not find themselves in the same situation. I strongly support efforts to revive "dead" languages, but the fact is, when all native speakers are gone, reviving a language poses an enormous challenge. Keeping languages alive, while a great challenge in itself, is far easier than reviving a language which has lost all of its native speakers. 2). "Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his grandfather's language are not morally different from the language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into learning English." Who, exactly, are the real "language bullies?" I fully support linguistic self-determination, which means, among other things, that speakers of endangered languages have the right to let their languages die if they so choose. What we are talking about is simply reversing the course of centuries of real "language bullying," by giving speakers of endangered languages the resources and rights that have been taken away from them by force--no-one is forcing anyone to preserve their languages. At this point, the real "language bullying" is the status quo the equivalent to beating someone nearly to death, and then refusing to give that person medical help. Hey, I do support the right to die, but it doesn't follow that I support murder as well. Thanks for the article, at any rate, I'm sure it will get us all thinking. cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU wrote: >Fading Species and Dying Tongues: When the Two Part Ways > >May 27, 2003 >By DAVID BERREBY > >For the past decade, scholars and political activists have >been working to get the rest of us worried about the future >of the world's 6,000 or so spoken languages. One tool is an >analogy: languages with fewer and fewer speakers, they >argue, are like species heading for extinction. > >A paper published on May 15 in Nature gives the comparison >a statistical basis. The analysis, by Prof. William J. >Sutherland of the University of East Anglia, notes that >when standard measures of species risk are applied to >language communities, human tongues come out even more >endangered than the animals. > >The metaphor of "endangered languages" is both easy to >grasp and appealing to the sense of fair play: fluent >speakers of languages like Kasabe, Ona and Eyak are dying >off, while their children and grandchildren increasingly >speak languages like English, Chinese, Spanish or Swahili. >Language preservationists have been using this analogy for >years. The often-quoted question posed by Dr. Michael >Krauss, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the >University of Alaska, for instance, is: "Should we mourn >the loss of Eyak or Ubykh less than the loss of the panda >or the California condor?" > >It is no surprise that linguists and activists promote >maintaining spoken languages. Just as the Poultry and Egg >Council wants us to eat eggs, linguists want languages to >study. I wonder, though, where science ends and politics >begins. > >How, really, are the panda and Ubykh equivalent? The panda, >once gone, is gone forever. If the information and >political will are present, Ubykh can be revived 500 years >from now. Hebrew, after all, was brought back from ancient >texts into daily use after 2,000 years. Ubykh, a language >of Turkey, is a human creation. The panda is not; it is our >neighbor, not our invention. > >Talk of endangerment and extinction suggests languages as a >finite resource, like gas in a tank heading toward empty. >Preservationists have predicted that only half the world's >currently spoken languages will be around in a century. > >It would be a terrible thing to run out of languages. But >there is no danger of that, because the reserve of >language, unlike the gas tank, is refueled every day, as >ordinary people engage in the creative and ingenious act of >talking. Old words, constructions and pronunciations drop >away, new ones are taken up, and, relentlessly, the >language changes. > >Every day, English, Spanish, Russian and French, along with >almost all other living languages are being altered by >speakers to suit changing times. In 2000, for example, >another Nature paper revealed that even the Queen of >England now pronounces her English less aristocratically >than she used to. >As Professor Sutherland noted in his paper, languages are >in "continual flux." That probably explains why a recently >settled island can be as rich in languages as a >long-inhabited continent. That flux never stops. Even this >morning, languages are being altered by their speakers to >suit changing times and places. > >In an era when languages continue to change with time, >can't we expect the big languages, like Latin before them, >to blossom into families of related but distinct new >tongues? Already, more than 100 new languages have been >created out of the vast mixings of peoples and cultures of >the last four centuries. > >For example, on the preservationist Web site >terralingua.org, one can find the organization's statement >of purpose in Tok Pisin, a language of Papua New Guinea. >Tok Pisin did not exist 150 years ago. Like Haitian Creole, >it is a new language, born of the last few centuries of >human history. > >So maybe the human race has all the languages it needs, and >deserves. When we need a new one, we invent it. Language >evolution is taking place every day; why interfere with it? > > >Preservationists call this an argument for accepting >injustice. James Crawford, a thoughtful writer about >language and a preservationist, notes that "language death >does not happen in privileged communities." > >"It happens to the dispossessed and the disempowered, >peoples who most need their cultural resources to survive," >he continues. > >This is certainly true; many of the dying languages were >systematically attacked by missionaries and governments in >cruel, despicable ways. The game they lost was rigged. >Abuses continue to be committed in the name of education, >modernization and national identity, so the >preservationists do good work in noting and protesting such >practices. > >It is important, though, to be clear about what - or >rather, who - deserves protection. The right to remain safe >and whole belongs to human beings, not to abstractions >created to describe what human beings did yesterday. > >The difference between a living creature with blood in its >veins and a general notion should be obvious: your >auburn-haired neighbor, nicknamed Red, has rights. The >concept of "red" does not. > >But don't people need their "cultural resources"? Sure, but >because culture is reinvented by each person to suit a >particular place and time, members of a culture will argue >with one another about what those resources are. When we >describe culture as an organism, we do not see the >individuals inside it. > >So if the study of languages is a scientific enterprise, >the effort to preserve them is not. It is a political >question: which voices represent the communities whose >languages are fading? > >Hearing how his ancestors were punished for speaking their >own language at school, a young speaker might be persuaded >by an elder to learn the ancestral tongue. That is a reason >to preserve that language in the archives. Suppose, though, >that the tales of days long gone do not resonate with this >hypothetical child. Is it science's job to help the elder >preserve his sense of importance at the expense of the >younger? > >Language bullies who try to shame a child into learning his >grandfather's language are not morally different from the >language bullies who tried to shame the grandfather into >learning English. The elucidation of language in all its >complexity is an enthralling scientific enterprise. But >"saving endangered languages" is not a part of it. > >http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/27/science/27ESSA.html?ex=1055067597&ei=1&en=189342f2df585fdd > >Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company > > > From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Thu May 29 00:21:58 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Wed, 28 May 2003 17:21:58 -0700 Subject: CASTS Conference 2003 (fwd) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The Canadian Aboriginal Science & Technology Society is pleased to announce its upcoming sixth Conference. The CASTS Conference 2003 will be held September 18-20, 2003 in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Conference posters and brochures are now available - please email amounts needed. The theme of our conference is the "Integration of Science, Technology, and Traditional Knowledge in Today's Environment". The objectives of the conference are: a.. To celebrate and showcase a national profile of Aboriginal S&T research and researchers b.. To celebrate and showcase successful initiatives of Aboriginal participation and excellence in S&T c.. To provide a forum for a three day assembly of the national Aboriginal S&T community to network - sharing information, resources, and perspectives d.. To provide a forum for a discussion of "the Integration of Science, Technology, and Traditional Knowledge in Today's Environment" e.. To promote an interest in science-related careers among Aboriginal students The CASTS Conference 2003 will have six main areas of interests in which presenters will have the opportunity to showcase their research by conducting an oral presentation, workshop, or submitting a poster presentation. There will also be an option to purchase booth space to sponsor your organization. The six main areas of interest are as follows: Science & Technology, Health, Environment, Education, Traditional Knowledge, and Careers. Submit Abstracts online or by e-mail - Submit early!!! For more information visit the conference webpage at: http://www.usask.ca/casts2003 Best Regards, Philip McCloskey, Conference Coordinator Department of Chemistry 110 Science Place, Room 180 University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, SK. S7K 5C9 Tel: 306-966-5533 Fax: 306-966-4730 Email: conference.coordinator at usask.ca From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Fri May 30 15:54:36 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 08:54:36 -0700 Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Message-ID: Thursday, May 29, 2003 Ojibwe elder teaches language By Molly Miron Staff Writer mmiron at bemidjipioneer.com http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/Main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=83&ArticleID=9967 CASS LAKE -- A little boy answers the door at Leslie Harper?s home in Cass Lake with a cheerful ?Biindigen!? The toddler calling visitors to ?Come in!? is Leslie?s 3-year-old son, Theo Liberty. He is learning Ojibwe as naturally as he is absorbing English. ?He?s getting there,? Leslie said of Theo?s Ojibwe skill. ?He understands a lot more than any of us. We have to really encourage him to speak Ojibwe because of all the English around us. His dad (Adrian Liberty) speaks only Ojibwe to him.? Theo and his mother are part of a project in which language apprentices work with masters to bring their language back to younger generations. Leslie, 28, and by osmosis Theo, are apprentices of Josephine Dunn, 70, of Cass Lake, a native Ojibwe speaker. ?I only do it one-on-one,? Josephine said. ?I don?t think I could do it in a class.? Leslie?s sister, Laurie Harper, directs the master/apprentice program as part of Anishinaabe Wi Yung (We are Anishinabe people), an Ojibwe project funded in part by a grant from the Minnesota Department of Education. Masters and apprentice families are also working together in Mille Lacs and St. Croix Bands. The grant provides stipends for both teacher and learner. ?It?s a living situation. It?s not ?This is today?s lesson,?? Laurie said of the project. ?You?ve baked bread with Josephine. You?ve done laundry. You?ve gone shopping.? The learning takes patience and determination, but Laurie described a scene that always reminds her the effort is totally worthwhile. Leslie and Theo were with Laurie in the supermarket when an elderly stranger came to her, almost in tears, saying, ?Do you know how long it?s been since I heard a young mother speaking to her child like that?? Josephine said English sometimes comes between her and her apprentices, but they keep working. ?I think anybody can learn,? Josephine said. She recalled the non-Indian owner of a grocery store in Cass Lake who learned to speak Ojibwe with his Indian customers. Laurie and Leslie said their parents, Dennis and Judy Harper of Cass Lake, heard Ojibwe spoken around the house when they were small children, and probably spoke the language, too. But the knowledge has skipped a generation. Laurie and Leslie have visited the Piegan Institute, which is a Blackfeet immersion program, and a similar Hawaiian program, Ka Haka Wa O Keelikolani in Hilo. Laurie said she was especially moved to hear Blackfeet students the same age as her own children speaking their language confidently. ?They were not shy. They were very proud of who they are,? Laurie said. ?That day was very emotional.? Learning a language is more than words: with the process comes an understanding beliefs, culture and life perspectives of the speakers. Laurie began Anishinaabe We Yung by organizing language conferences. She said elders at the conferences told her they had been trying to transmit the language for years, so she decided to stop talking about the concept and do it. ?This is a step in a bigger plan,? Laurie said. ?You have to be patient. I know I am,? Josephine said. ?I?ve been the happiest I?ve ever been in my life working on Ojibwe,? Leslie said. Theo, happily unaware of the experiment he is living, ran to his father who called him in Ojibwe to come put on his makizinan (shoes) to go outside. ?I think that?s where we can start, anyway, with the little ones who are just learning,? Josephine said. ?That?s how I learned. I don?t know when I started talking English. I suppose when I went to school. I didn?t even have an English name on my birth certificate.? From mikinakn at SHAW.CA Sat May 31 03:10:03 2003 From: mikinakn at SHAW.CA (Rolland Nadjiwon) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 23:10:03 -0400 Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Message-ID: Great story...I have posted it to most of my friends. ---- wahjeh rolland nadjiwon ----- Original Message ----- From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU Sent: Friday, May 30, 2003 11:54 AM Subject: Ojibwe elder teaches language (fwd) Thursday, May 29, 2003 Ojibwe elder teaches language By Molly Miron Staff Writer mmiron at bemidjipioneer.com http://www.bemidjipioneer.com/Main.asp?SectionID=3&SubSectionID=83&ArticleID=9967 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU Sat May 31 04:43:38 2003 From: cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU (cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU) Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 21:43:38 -0700 Subject: Ed grants can be used for Apple technologies (fwd) Message-ID: Ed grants can be used for Apple technologies By Dennis Sellers dsellers at maccentral.com http://maccentral.macworld.com/news/2003/05/29/edgrants/ May 29, 2003 11:30 am ET There are a variety of grants available now to educational users that can include Apple technologies. The Foreign Language Assistance Grants from the U.S. Department of Education can be used for Apple's Mobile Curriculum Carts. This U.S. Department of Education (ED) program will provide US$10 million in grants to local educational agencies for "innovative model programs providing for the establishment, improvement, or expansion of foreign language study for elementary and secondary school students." For 2003, preference will be given to proposals that establish, improve, or expand foreign language learning in grades K-8 -- especially Russian, Chinese, and Arabic -- or proposals that establish a foreign language program in underserved schools. Preference also will be given to applications that make effective use of technology -- such as computer-assisted instruction, language laboratories, or distance learning -- to promote foreign language study. ED expects to make about 90 awards ranging from $50,000 to $175,000. The deadline for application is June 13. iLife lessons are a possibility for the Jordan Fundamentals Grants from the Jordan Brand, a division of Nike Inc. Since 1999, basketball star Michael Jordan's Jordan Fundamentals program has donated up to 400 grants of $2,500 each year. The grants fund resource materials, supplies, equipment, transportation, or other costs related to field trips, software, and other items required to implement and assess a proposed lesson or thematic unit. Teachers or paraprofessionals who work with students in grades 6-12 in a U.S. public school -- and who also demonstrate "instructional creativity and exemplify high learning expectations for economically disadvantaged students" - are eligible to apply. Applicants must develop an original lesson plan or thematic unit. Unique teaching methods and projects are encouraged. At least 40 percent of the school's student population must be eligible for the free or reduced-price lunch program. Go to the Nike Web site for more info. The deadline for applications is June 15. iLife lessons can also be considered in the U.S. Department of Education's Arts in Education Grant Program, which supports the development, documentation, evaluation, and dissemination of "innovative, cohesive models" that have demonstrated their effectiveness in (1) integrating arts into the core elementary and middle school curricula, (2) strengthening arts instruction in these grades, and (3) improving students' academic performance, including their skills in creating, performing, and responding to the arts. The U.S. Department of Education expects to grant 33 awards ranging from $293,000 to $836,000. The registration deadline is July 10. Apple itself offers the iLife Educator Awards, which recognize the most innovative uses of iLife. Teachers that use iLife applications "creatively to enhance lessons, exceed instructional standards, and meet the needs of today's students" are encouraged to submit their lesson plans for consideration. The contest is open to all K-12 educators, as well as pre-service teachers and faculty of accredited colleges of education, in the U.S. or Canada (excluding Quebec). The first prize winner will receive a 12-inch PowerBook G4 with an 867 MHz processor, a Canon ZR60 camcorder, and a Canon PowerShot A60 digital camera. The school of the first prize-winning teacher will receive an Apple Mobile Digital Media Studio with eight iBooks, an AirPort wireless access point, Canon digital video camcorders, printers, and other peripherals. Prizes also will be awarded for second and third place and honorable mention. If you're considering funding for Apple's Digital Campus Curriculum, you may wish to check out the Tech-Prep Demonstration Program by the U.S. Department of Education. The $9.9 million program provides grants to enable consortia described in section 204(a) of the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act of 1998 to carry out tech-prep education projects authorized by section 207 of the Perkins Act that involve the location of a secondary school on the site of a community college, a business as a member of the consortium, and the voluntary participation of secondary school students. ED expects to make 14 awards ranging from $600,000 to $700,000. The registration deadline is June 26. Apple's Early Literacy: PreK-3 Mobile Curriculum Cart can be considered under the Reading First Grants from the U.S. Department of Education. Reading First is a formula grant program that provides assistance to states and school districts to establish scientifically based reading programs in kindergarten through third grade classrooms, to ensure that all children learn to read well by the end of third grade. You must apply by July 1.