Funding for Native language immersion moves forward (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Funding for Native language immersion moves forward

Posted: December 06, 2006
by: Jerry Reynolds / Indian Country Today
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096414089

WASHINGTON - In a race too close to call until two weeks after the Nov.
7 midterm elections, Republican Heather Wilson has regained her seat in
the House of Representatives. New Mexico's District 1 voters, including
many Indians, provided Wilson with just enough votes to edge Democratic
challenger Patricia Madrid. Wilson's margin was fewer than 1,000 votes
when Madrid conceded.

Wilson's presence in Congress now and next January will continue
momentum toward passage of a law to provide federal grant funding for
Native language immersion schooling. Wilson introduced House Bill 4766
in the House. With the support of committee chairman Buck McKeon,
R-Calif., the bill passed in the House prior to the election and now
awaits Senate action.

Ryan Wilson (no relation) said the Native vote protected Heather Wilson
once her commitment to Native languages became evident. Ryan Wilson,
president of the newly formed National Alliance to Save Native
Languages, campaigned for the bill as president of the National Indian
Education Association, which continues to support H.R. 4766 among its
other priorities. In Washington for an appearance on Capitol Hill of
Navajo code talkers, he said tribes had rallied as never before behind
the bill. He called on American citizens at large to join them.

''Nothing is more American than the languages of her first people,'' he
said. ''This is part of the sacred heritage of America, not just a
treasured form of expression in Indian country.''

Noting the contribution of code talkers to U.S. war efforts, he
referenced the recent film ''Flags of Our Fathers,'' focused on the
iconic flag-raising at Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima island during World
War II. Only days after the opening of a Marine museum near Washington,
its architecture abstractly modeled on the famous photograph of U.S.
Marines - including Ira Hayes, a Pima soldier - transfixed the
mid-Atlantic seaboard region and much of the nation, Wilson underscored
the profound contribution of code talkers to the Pacific theater of
operations in particular. By putting their oral language to use as an
unbreakable code that kept military intelligence from imperial Japan,
Native code talkers helped U.S. forces stage the storied combat that
ultimately broke the islands.

''It was the Navajo, through their language, who helped uplift that flag
at Iwo Jima,'' Wilson said. ''It was that language that helped get them
up the mountain.''