Indigenous language survival

Wed Apr 2 17:11:29 UTC 2014

I would only respond by saying what we have built up to this point could
not have happened without the relationship we have with Miami University in
Oxford, OH and the current efforts of the Myaamia Center at Miami
University.  We recognized early on that language has a community and
cultural context.  For a group like ours, revitalization in the broad sense
of the word must include the community and cultural revitalization work
necessary to support language revitalization.  The real 'energy' for that
larger effort comes from youth...the real 'wisdom' comes from elders/adults
who have to support what the youth 'want for their lives'------as adults we
may think we know what is best, and maybe we do to some extent, but the
reality is that we are not the future...building an educational effort from
our own participation in research, material development, and teacher
training is essential for us to move forward and the university has help us
do this in the way we want/need to do that work----this is the lesson we
have taken from the Hawiian movement.

I just want to say how much I have enjoyed the recent conversations on this
list --- especially insights on historical trama and community ideological
issues.........It makes me think of how much we have all learned along the
way and I think its great we can share on that level....

kikwehsitoole (respectfully)

Daryl Baldwin

Myaamia Center
Miami University
351 E. Spring St.
200 Bonham House
Oxford, OH 45056
(513) 529-5648
(513) 529-9234 (fax)
www.myaamiacenter.org <http://www.myaamiaproject.org>
Baldwidw at miamiOH.edu

On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 12:30 PM, Conor Quinn <conor.mcdonoughquinn at maine.edu
> wrote:

> Dia dhuit, a chara!
>
> Kil na kulasuweltomulonen psi te tan kisuwikhomon.  Woke me right up to a
> whole other aspect of the problem.  And in the meantime (mesq
> tuhkiyawolotihtihq psi te governments and universities), I guess the
> challenge is to find and recover spaces in everyday life where speakers and
> learners can regularly get together and just use the language
> naturally---preferably with as many small ones underfoot (and included) as
> possible.  The Myaamia seem to have developed a really strong system of
> agreements between families to help get everyone speaking as much as
> possible.
>
> Apc ote kulasuweltomulon,
>
> Conor
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 2, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Andrea Bear Nicholas <abear at stu.ca>wrote:
>
>> I greatly appreciate the responses from you Danielle and Conor. Am still
>> wondering what it will take to wake up our governments and universities
>> before it is too late for most languages.
>>
>> I will certainly check out the Harold Shiffman website.
>>
>> Kci weliwen!
>> Andrea
>>
>>
>>  On Mon, 17 Mar 2014 17:53:58 +0000
>>
>>  "Danielle E. Cyr" <dcyr at YORKU.CA> wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> I fully agree with you, dear Andrea and Conor.
>>>
>>> I remember a paper given by Harold Shiffman some years ago:  It was
>>> something like : When equality is not enough: the case of minority
>>> languages.
>>> I tried to retrieve it, without success. However, a look at his website
>>> list of publications is really enlightening in this regard:
>>> http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/public/
>>> Cheers,
>>> Danielle E. Cyr
>>> ---- Original Message ----
>>> From: Conor Quinn To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>>> Sent: Mon, Mar 17, 2014, 11:57 AM
>>> Subject: Re: Indigenous language survival
>>>
>>> Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
>>> Well put!  Some might argue that not all communities have the resources
>>> for
>>> full MTM education, but that misses the point: denial (and devaluing) of
>>> MTM educational resources is what the problem actually is, and always has
>>> been.  It puts Native education in a second-class position, and children
>>> never fail to pick up on that, no matter how hard teachers work to
>>> counter
>>> it.  Equality's only equality if it's actually equal. Other efforts can
>>> be (and are) valuable steps along the way, but when
>>> people on the ground succeed in bringing MTM education back, it's then
>>> that
>>> the tide has really turned.
>>> Thank you, Andrea, for reminding us that half of the solution is
>>> remembering to challenge the original framing of the problem.
>>> Slán,
>>> bhur gcara
>>> On Mon, Mar 17, 2014 at 10:20 AM, Andrea Bear Nicholas wrote:
>>> I have finally had a chance to read through the ongoing conversation
>>> about
>>> how to deal with the sense of shame and embarrassment that Indigenous
>>> students experience in learning their language, and it fills me with
>>> sadness and impatience. It strikes me that the conversation is missing an
>>> enormous point---the fact that the source of the shame is ongoing today in
>>> any school where a dominant language is forced on Indigenous children as
>>> the main medium of instruction, and it is forced if there is no option
>>> for
>>> education in the medium of one's mother-tongue. (Like Tove
>>> Skutnabb-Kangas I believe that a child's mother-tongue is the language of
>>> his or her community, whether or not that child has had opportunity to
>>> learn to speak that language.)
>>>  So clearly, the larger question for people interested in saving
>>> Indigenous languages, is not how to deal with the historical trauma and
>>> shame, but how to stop traumatizing Indigenous children altogether. And
>>> that can only be done if students have the option of education in the
>>> medium of their mother-tongue. So rather than training Indigenous
>>> students
>>> just to teach in English or French, or training speakers of Indigenous
>>> languages just to teach their languages in core programs, universities
>>> need
>>> to train speakers of Indigenous languages to teach all subjects IN the
>>> medium of their mother-tongue (MTM education).
>>>  With the help of Dorothy Lazore, the founder of the first immersion
>>> school in a First Nations community, we at St. Thomas University in
>>> Fredericton, NB, established just such a program, over twelve years ago.
>>> It
>>> is our Native Language Immersion Teacher Training Program (composed of 13
>>> courses) which currently certifies speakers, both with and without
>>> teacher-training to teach in the medium of their mother-tongue. Since
>>> establishing this program we have trained the first cohort of teachers
>>> who
>>> began the very successful Mi'kmaq immersion program at Eskasoni, Cape
>>> Breton. As in the case of other immersion programs, this one at Eskasoni
>>> has begun the most essential task for maintaining their language---that of
>>> creating functional child speakers BEFORE they have a chance to develop
>>> the
>>> shame and humiliation experienced by their peers taught only in the
>>> medium
>>> of English. And like other immersion programs, it has also demonstrated
>>> that immersion does no educational harm, but generally enhances the
>>> learning of a dominant language and improves educational outcomes.
>>> Of possible interest is the fact that our immersion teacher training
>>> program is movable. Where numbers warrant we send instructors to teach
>>> in a
>>> First Nation rather than requiring students to come to campus. We sent
>>> Dorothy Lazore and others to Eskasoni to train the teachers in that
>>> community, and that could be done for any community across the country.
>>> But ideally every university truly interested in the survival of First
>>> Nations languages should offer a program to train Indigenous language
>>> speakers to teach in the medium of their mother-tongue. Considering that
>>> a
>>> relatively poor country such as Papua New Guinea can support schools
>>> taught
>>> in the medium of over 380 Indigenous languages, surely Canada and its
>>> universities can support MTM education for the mere 60 or so languages
>>> indigenous to this country.
>>> Rather than spending resources focused on teaching Indigenous languages
>>> in
>>> core programs (which generally do not work to create speakers), and
>>> rather
>>> than wringing our hands over how to deal with the ongoing trauma of an
>>> imposed education in the medium of English or French, we would do far
>>> more
>>> for the survival of Indigenous languages if we could pull together to
>>> replace this traumatic form of education with MTM education. If this is
>>> not
>>> done we might just as well resign ourselves to the fact that the current
>>> wave of shame and trauma will soon become a tsunami that will swallow
>>> most,
>>> if not all, First Nations languages in the next few decades.
>>> Sincerely,
>>> Andrea Bear Nicholas, Native Language Immersion Programs, St. Thomas
>>> University, Fredericton, NB
>>> PS
>>> I was unable to attach an important piece on this topic by Tove
>>> Skutnabb-Kangas and Robert Dunbar, so will try to send it separately.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>

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