<br><span class="detailheadline style9"><strong>Native educators struggle to fund language programs - Sunday, April 15, 2007</strong></span><br><p>
                              <span class="detailbyline"><em>By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian</em></span></p><p><a href="http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/04/21/jodirave/rave70.txt">http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/04/21/jodirave/rave70.txt
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                          <p><span class="detailstory">BOZEMAN
- Verda King gets excited when she talks about teaching youths in a
nearby public school how to speak the Cheyenne language from her office
at the Dull Knife Community College.<br><br>"This class has done a
marvelous job," said King of her 12 students. "We've translated nursery
rhymes, like Humpty Dumpty. And it's been fun. We've learned Cheyenne
songs and I'm learning my own language."<br><br>She's teaching 12
students in an elementary school in Colstrip by satellite from a tribal
college classroom on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern
Montana.</span></p>
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                          <span class="detailstory">King
spoke during a panel presentation at the 26th annual conference of the
Montana Indian Education Association where teachers across the state
discussed tribal language preservation efforts.<br><br>Language
teachers like King are fervent in their need to preserve the language,
and believe they can make a difference. But they face many obstacles -
no K-12 curricula and a lack of state support - that effectively
prevent them from teaching students their Native languages like Cree,
Gros Ventre, Kootenai and Nakota.<br><br>Typically, the number of new language speakers remains stagnant.<br></span><br>-- <br>____________________________________________________________<br>Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.<br><br>
Associate Director, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language and Literacy (CERCLL)<br>Department of English (Primary)   <br>American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)<br>Second Language Acquistion &Teaching 
Ph.D. Program (SLAT)<br>Department of Language,Reading and Culture<br>Department of Linguistics<br>The Southwest Center (Research)<br> Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836<br><br><br>"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought, an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities." 
<br>           <br>                                                          Wade Davis...(on a Starbucks cup...)