legacy materials

[David Lewis]

I would agree with Claire for most languages today, however historically, the collection of languages began occurring in the middle to late 19th century, in the beginning of what we now call linguistics, and well into the 20th century, sort of a middle period (sorry don't know the lingo in historical linguistics...) and in this time period anthropologists and others knew that native languages were disappearing, that native populations were collapsing, even though they never truly went extinct, and did nothing about the survival of these languages. There may be scattered instances of aid from these linguists but for the most part nothing was done and native languages were allowed to go extinct. But then there were many economic, social and societal factors which influenced these periods, that created the collapse of native languages and influenced native peoples to move culturally away. 

Clearly BIA policies of assimilation were a huge factor. 

And now I pose the question of what linguists could have done, back then? Did they have the wherewithall to aid tribes and preserve speakers? or would they even be accepted? I think we would have to answer this tribe by tribe according to context. But still, with all of the resources of the Smithsonian and the Bureau could not something have been done to help tribes to preserve languages. I suppose this is an exercise in "what if" and all we will come away with is that we cannot change history and what has happened was all that was possible at the time. Yet I can not let go of the nagging criticism that if the linguists/anthropologists had devoted a small percentage of their efforts to returning their time and resources to the tribes they were studying that something could have been done. Their careers where more important at that time than the preservation of the tribal languages. I am glad to see today that this situation has changed for the most part. 


David G. Lewis
Manager, Cultural Resources Department
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde




-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology on behalf of Claire Bowern
Sent: Wed 10/31/2007 2:56 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] legacy materials
 
>   We also snap-shot them as anthropological artifacts, ensuring that they
> do not change as they would if they were alive.
>
Mia, I think this implies that linguists have much more power than they
really do in communities. In my experience, the languages that die after
they've been documented are the ones that have already ceased to be used as
everyday vehicles of communication in their communities. That's a community
decision (beit usually an unconscious one) and there's nothing much that a
transient outsider visitor can do about it.

Claire

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