LL-L "Language death" 2007.09.19 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  19 September 2007 - Volume 02
Song Contest: lowlands-l.net/contest/ (- 31 Dec. 2007)
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From: Mike Wintzer <k9mw at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language death" 2007.09.18 (01) [E]

for crying out loud ..... and silently in bed when one thinks of what
humanity can do to itself.
Deeply sad Mike Wintzer

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From: Mark Williamson <node.ue at gmail.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language death" 2007.09.18 (01) [E]

Unfortunately, the removal was but one event in a series of many that
were aimed at eliminating indigenous peoples entirely, which can be
quite accurately termed "genocide", although many American scholars
today shy away from the term because of the implications it has.

Most of the events were not aimed specifically at native languages. It
was not until relatively recently that it was finally decided that the
indigenous people could live, but that their languages and cultures
should be eradicated (still cultural genocide).

By and large, this was done through BIA-operated boarding schools. In
the early years of "Indian education", it was carried out in
indigenous languages. However, this was soon changed to English-medium
schooling, including harsh punishments for anyone caught speaking
native languages, such as beatings, putting soap in the offending
party's mouth, etc.

To accelerate the adoption of English, many boarding schools mixed
individuals from diverse groups speaking mutually unintelligible
languages. The boarding schools fostered a sort of "self hatred" in
American Indian society that is still not completely gone today - the
idea that native customs are backward or wrong and that native
languages are inadequate or inferior.

The vast majority of "healthy" indigenous languages in the United
States today made it due to their remoteness or their political
history.

Most surviving languages are spoken in either Arizona and New Mexico,
once part of "New Mexico Territory" gained from Mexico in 1848 and
1854, or Alaska, purchased from Russia in 1867.

The history of settlement in these areas also gives some hints as to
why native languages have survived longer in these places:

Arizona's population recorded by the Census (i.e. including Anglos,
Mexicans, and Chinese but mostly excluding natives at that time) was
only 6,482 in 1860. By 1920, this number had increased to 334,162, but
the vast majority were concentrated in mining towns such as Prescott
and Bisbee, or other settlements such as Phoenix and Tucson. Native
populations on the other hand were concentrated in different areas. At
that time the population density of non-indigenous people was
approximately 1 per square kilometer (it is now approximately 17 of
the same unit, but now including indigenous peoples), compared to the
modern 395/km2 in the Netherlands, or the contemporary density of
Oklahoma (11/km2). Some of the largest reservations in the country
were established in the ancestral homelands of many of the indigenous
peoples of Arizona - what is now the Tohono O'odham Nation, the Navajo
Nation, Hopi, White Mountain Apache, San Carlos Apache, the Gila River
Indian Community, the Hualapai reservation, as well as several smaller
ones, are today among the largest reservations in the country in terms
of both land area and population.

Looking at a map of Arizona reservations, it is easy to see who got left
out:
http://ag.arizona.edu/edrp/images/azres.gif

The largest areas without any major reservations are North-Central
Arizona, one of the first areas of Anglo settlement, home of the
Yavapai and to a lesser extent the Apache, including the Prescott
area, and Southeastern Arizona, home to the Chiricahua people, and an
important area for early Anglo settlement for copper mining.

There is only one language spoken in the US east of the Mississippi
river with over 1000 speakers: Mohawk.

Mark

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