Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Danielle E. Cyr]

When I was working as an elementary school principal in a Mi'gmaq
community, we had French Immersion, English Mainstream and Mi'gmaq. The
latter was taught mostly orally. After only a few months in school,  the
French Immersion kids (G1) started to ask their Mi'gmaq language teacher to
teach them written Mi'gmaq. I think we should listen to kids' wisdom.
And, when we teach adults, especially those who have been emotionally
molested in so many different ways, we should absolutely have a few prep
sessions to explain various universal language phenomena as well as
language specific ones.
I've had the privilege to teach courses in Algonquian linguistic
certificates (both for Mi'gmaq and Innu). It was really amazing what
positive effects  this kind of knowledge has on the students.
This being said, some students have learning difficulties/disabilities that
cannot be dismissed. These may include dislexia, adult ADD, depression,
substance use and abuse, family situations, long work hours, etc. 
Also, there are students who don't know anything about learning strategies
and practices. Especially when it comes to language learning. A lot of lay
people have this kind of naive Chomskyan view on language, i.e. that their
heritage language is "in them" and will pop out given minimal stimulation.
And, very marginally, I've noticed that metathesis seems to be somehow
frequent among speakers of Algonquian languages. When we did our dictionary
(Metallic, Cyr & Sevigny), I saw many occurrences of metathesis that were
accepted as dialect and idiolect variations. This might explain why some
students have difficulties in pronouncing syllables in the correct order.
I'm not really sure if I have a point here, but ... it certainly reinforce
my view that teaching the written form would help on this front as well.
Best,
Danielle
---- Original Message ----
From: Tanya Slavin 
To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
Sent: Tue, Mar 4, 2014, 12:47 PM
Subject: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
the language classroom
Hi all,

Thank you for your insights! I really appreciate them. 
Connor, you precisely describe what I witnessed myself in a native
community up north, which is actually pretty well-off in terms of language
health. When people would learn that I was a linguist working on Oji-Cree,
the first thing they would often say to me (those were intermediate
speakers or even actually fluent speakers of younger generations) would be
"You know, I don't think I speak my language right. Elders make fun of me
all the time." So, a lot of linguistic insecurity on the reserve as well,
not just in urban centres, and also among pretty fluent speakers. (That
also made me worry that they thought I was there to make sure everyone
spoke proper Oji-Cree or something, so I felt compelled to talk about
language variation on the local radio once.) Maybe it would be great to
have a language class for different generations and/or different levels of
speakers, where people would learn from each other and learn about language
variation, and where learning the language would also be a way for them to
connect. 
Danielle, that's interesting that you mention that reading and writing
should be emphasized more. Somebody on the other e-mail list also suggested
a similar thing, that reading and writing should be taught prior to
speaking as important confidence-building tools, or self-help tools, as you
say. 
Tanya
2014-03-03 17:53 GMT-05:00 Danielle E. Cyr :
Hi All,
I've seen all these factors at play in the community I worked with several
years ago. It is, indeed, very difficult to counteract, especially in a
culture where teasing and laughing at each other is pervasive. What helped
a little bit was to explain language variation as a natural phenomena among
languages. Another useful concept was language identity, both at the social
AND individual levels. 
Beside these, another tool that I would have loved but did not really
happened. was the teaching of the written language and grammar. Teachers
just held to the notion that their language was an oral one and, therefore,
should not be taught through too much writing. Grammar, they tough, would
discourage or bore the students. 
However, it is known that teaching the grammar and the writing of
aboriginal languages is key to keeping students motivated. Because,
firstly, it provides a lot of help yourself tools, so students can make
faster progress through studying on their own and memorizing morphological
paradigms. It is a lot easier to start speaking when one knows all the verb
forms of a conjugation, for instance. Secondly, students who have the
opportunity to study and understand the grammar of their heritage language
are usually in awe when they see the beautiful articulation and complexity
of these languages. Pride is a great source of motivation. 
Another thing too, is that it is of crucial importance to get the students
to understand that learning a new language takes at least as long for an
adult as for a child - more or less 3-4 years full time. So they have to be
patient with themselves and with others. Once the have understood that
learning a language takes time and patience, and a certain amount of
modesty, if not humility, generally there are better results. 
Finally, as we know, Aboriginal people love to joke, tease and laugh. So,
engaging students to start telling jokes in their heritage language may
prove to yield good results in terms of motivation. I say this based on my
own experience. I've learned several languages, and I can tell you that
when I reached the level of understanding and/or telling jokes, I felt I
had achieved something. At some point, I was even able to make my Mi'gmaq
teacher laugh. I had to prepare myself for the chapter on fishing. When my
teacher arrived and asked me, in English, what I had done the day before, I
had prepared a reply based on lobster fishing. I used all of my little
knowledge in Mi'gmaq, saying that yesterday the weather was lousy, with
strong winds, rain and big waves, but I didn't care and went lobster
fishing even though. My teacher started laughing. And she laughed even more
when I added : This is all true ! I'm no liar ! 
Hope this can be of some use.
N'multioq m'set uen !
Danielle Cyr
---- Original Message ----
From: Bernie 
 To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
(mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG)
Sent: Mon, Mar 3, 2014, 4:20 PM
Subject: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
the language classroom
Hey Con,
Unfortunately much of what you write is true. What hurts most in the Nova
Scotia area is when fluent speakers knock the ones who missed out on the
language because of the residential school experience. Some of these
victims are lawyers today who are accused of not having/or told will never
have an accurate understanding of the Mi'kmaw culture and therefore will
NEVER be good representatives of our nation. Being told that due to their
lack of facility in the Mi'kmaw Language, they're just not Mi'kmaw enough.
This stings them very badly. 
I set the wheels in motion to repair this erroneous way of thinking. Those
lawyers will be my future students this summer coming. I'm hoping I will be
able to get them to see things differently simply by lecturing on the
conceptual differences between English and Mi'kmaw at least for starters. 
It kind o' reminds me of Obama's plight with many people in the U.S. when
it was stated that he just "wasn't Black enough."
Hasta luego mi amiguito. 
berni
Sent from my iPad

On 2014-03-02, at 2:47 PM, "Conor Quinn"  wrote:
Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!

One of the harshest aspects of language endangerment that I've seen is that
each generation gets slapped with shame no matter which way they go.  The
speaker generations get made to be ashamed for speaking their supposedly
inferior (etc.) language, while the non-speaker generations get made to be
ashamed for not being able to speak their heritage language.  And people
who are somewhere between completely fluent and completely non-speaker get
shame(d) for not speaking it well enough.
The first kind of shame is the one that gets the most attention in language
revitalization circles, but the latter two are just as pervasive and
painful for those who experience it.  And it's quite possible to experience
all three at once, and/or in different combinations.
The last two strongly influence learner success and persistence.  If you
feel that (despite all the historical, social, etc. pressures outside of
your control), you somehow "should" already know language, then it puts an
enormous amount of pressure on you: "If I don't learn the language, I won't
be [fill-in-the-blank] enough...AND it will disappear."  This makes every
stumble in learning the language even more fraught than it already is for
any second-language learner.  Which very often can be overwhelming, and
drive people away completely.
So it's probably helpful to have these three kinds of shame brought up and
out front, so that everyone  can feel a lot safer.  
Particularly since these feelings are most often experienced very
individually.  That there's something wrong with ME, that it's MY
deficiency.  Having that public/group acknowledgement that all of us are
also going through one or more of these shames can help a lot.  We're no
longer individually isolated in them, and can work together to help each
other find good ways to keep them from holding us back.
This also helps these three different groups work together better.  If I'm
a speaker with shame type #1, and you are a learner with shame type #2, we
both might not fully understand what's worrying the other person when we go
to speak the language.  Since what holds us back might be really quite
different.
This public acknowledgement is perhaps most important for
intermediate-status speakers.  It gets mentioned, but it still doesn't
really get addressed nearly enough how often people who are not 100%
perfectly fluent get shamed and scared out of speaking by the more fluent
speakers.  Not just the really harsh language policers---who very often
call those speakers lazy/inattentive, not realizing that they were never
given the same degree and quality of exposure to the language---but even
people who just let themselves laugh at these speakers' errors.  
These reactions terribly reliably drive great potential speakers back to
the safer space of the dominating language.  We can't ask all the fluent
speakers to "please be nicer to and less judgmental of the less fluent
speakers", but precisely because of that, it's that much more crucial to
set up and constantly work to maintain safe places for them to speak what
they can.
Public/group discussion of this range of feelings---helping people work
their way to finally feeling that they really do have nothing to be ashamed
of, and in fact plenty to be proud of---is, as far as I can tell, probably
not just a good idea, but really essential.
Till later, keep safe and sane.

Slán,
do chara
On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Tanya Slavin  wrote:
 Ben, thank you so much for the links. I'm definitely going to suggest this
documentary to the workshop participants.
 Tanya

2014-03-01 14:20 GMT-05:00 Ben Levine :
 Hi Tanya - We made the documentary Language of America
(languageofamerica.com (http://languageofamerica.com)) with just this use
in mind. We show the film ( it’s 80 minutes divided into 12 minute
chapters) or parts of it and use it to trigger an emotional response which
then let’s students own their family and tribal experience and identity. 
We facilitate the discussion which is to say give the responder the support
they need whether it be encouragement or connecting their experience to an
other’s or even balancing conflicting responses, basically creating a
safe space where the fragmented pieces of experience can come together.
There’s more on the web site and also more about our work at speaking
place.org (http://place.org).
 Please be in touch if you wish more information.
Ben Levine and Julia Schulz
On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Tanya Slavin  wrote: 
Dear all, 
 [I just sent this message to another mailing list, but I figured I'd send
it here as well, apologies if you're getting it twice!] 
We're having a local workshop on indigenous language teaching at the
University of Toronto, an event organized for school and university
language teachers to share ideas on some of the challenges specific to
native language teaching in an urban setting. One of the topics that we
hope to address in some way (perhaps as a roundtable discussion) is the
question of how to deal with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
the language classroom. One of the biggest obstacles for aboriginal
students wishing to regain their language is the painful history of their
relationship with it (e.g. their parents were forbidden to speak the
language, they may have grown up discouraged speaking their language or
feeling that their language was somehow inferior). All that baggage
influences negatively their success in the classroom: they either reach a
certain plateau or can hardly progress at all, or are unable to start
speaking the language. As a result, the drop-out rate of native students in
a university language classroom is much higher than that of non-native
students wishing to learn a native language. I witnessed it myself when I
was teaching Ojibwe in a university setting, and I'm seeing it now teaching
it in a community setting. The question is how to deal with that and help
these students succeed (also keeping in mind that they don't necessarily
have the support of their community in an urban setting). Is it a good idea
to actually raise this issue in the classroom, in order not to ignore the
elephant in the room, so to speak? Would having separate classes for native
and non-native students help the issue? So I wanted to ask if anybody had
any ideas about this they would be willing to share, or experiences they
had, or any stories they have about students that were dealing with this
obstacle. If that's ok, I'd love to share your ideas and experiences at the
workshop (obviously, giving everybody credit for them), which would also
hopefully generate a productive discussion. I would appreciate any ideas
you might have, and thank you in advance! 
Tanya
	


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