Blackfeet children immersed in history, culture of language (fwd)

[Phil CashCash]

Blackfeet children immersed in history, culture of language

Associated Press
http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?display=rednews/2003/11/05/build/state/25-blackfeet.inc

Jesse DesRosier begins each high school day like a lot of kids. The
eighth grader hangs up his coat, pulls off his muddy boots and lopes
into his classroom, raising a hand in greeting. Then he opens his
mouth, and out comes a small miracle.

"Oki, aahsaapinakos!"

Hello, good morning!

Bantering easily in the drawn-out vowels and clipped endings of a nearly
extinct language, Jesse and his 35 classmates are the first fluent
Blackfoot speakers in more than two generations. Here at the
Nizipuhwahsin, or Real Speak School, on the Blackfeet Reservation in
far northwestern Montana, the kids spend all day speaking their
ancestral tongue. From kindergarten through eighth grade, they study
math, reading, history and other subjects in Blackfoot.

"Some people think our language is dead, but it's not," DesRosier tells
Smithsonian magazine contributor Michelle Nijhuis. "We still have our
language and we're bringing it back."

What's at stake is more than words. Filled with nuance and references to
Blackfeet history and traditions, the language embodies a culture. "The
language allows kids to unravel the mysteries of their heritage," says
Darrell Kipp, director of the school and one of its founders.

The Blackfoot language, also known as Piegan, has been in danger of
disappearing for nearly a century. From the late 1800s through the
1960s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs forced tens of thousands of Native
Americans into English-only government boarding schools.

Taken hundreds of miles from the reservations, the children were often
beaten for speaking native languages, and were sent home ashamed of
them. As adults, they cautioned their own children to speak English
only.

Over the decades, many tribal languages fell silent. Of the 300
languages spoken in North America at the time of European settlement,
150 have disappeared completely, and only a handful of the survivors
are acquiring new speakers. By 1980, the remaining Blackfoot speakers
were more than 50 years old, and Blackfoot was headed down the
well-worn road to oblivion. But in 1982, Darrell Kipp, now 59, a
Harvard graduate and technical writer, moved back to the reservation's
windblown plains after a 20-year absence. He met up with Dorothy Still
Smoking, who had also returned, in 1979, after earning a master's from
the University of South Dakota, to become a dean at the reservation's
community college. Both wanted to learn the language they occasionally
heard but rarely spoke as children. "There was always a missing piece
in my life," says Still Smoking, "and that was the cultural component.
The language contains everything -- our values and wisdom, our outlook
on the world."

In 1987, Kipp, Still Smoking and a fluent Blackfoot speaker named Edward
Little Plume founded the nonprofit Piegan Institute, dedicated to
restoring Blackfoot and other tribal languages. Because many on the
reservation still associated their language with humiliating
experiences at boarding school, the institute was controversial. To
calm the waters, the founders made a video about tribal elders'
experiences with the language and distributed 2,000 copies among the
reservation's 7,000 residents. The video did the trick.

Today, demand for the few openings at the school, where tuition is $100
a month, has parents signing up their toddlers, and the school's large,
airy classrooms explode with activity. Supporters say the impact runs
deep. "This is a way to heal the identity of confusion that so many of
our students go through," says Joyce Silverthorn, a tribal educator and
member of the Montana Board of Public Education. In Indian country,
where the frequency of suicide among adolescents is more than double
the national rate, such confidence can be, literally, a lifesaver.