"Take away their language, destroy their souls" -- Stalin

[Dave Robertson]

Klahowya,

My boss handed me a photocopy of an article from _Indian Country Today_
headlined "Prop. 203 ignites protest from Indians", date unknown but recent.
 It is an account of Arizona's referendum on whether to adopt an
"English-only" policy, which would mean the end of bilingual education in
that state.

Our foreign list members, if unaware of such referenda, may be surprised (or
not) to learn that they appear very often on the state and even national
election ballots in the USA.  They seem to reflect a genuinely popular
sentiment, that those who choose to live in America must learn English in
order to function well in this society.  It would seem that those who hold
this view have immigrants in mind, thus the rhetoric of "choice", which
shows up in many other places in the popular political discourse.  Mexicans
in particular bear the brunt of these ballot initiatives, though in some
places other immigrants are targeted.  In my town, Spokane, Washington,
Russian immigrants are a huge new addition to the population, and there is
some resentment of them.

What is apparently overlooked by every one of these English-only movements
is the fact that many people who have lived in this land for generations,
particularly Native Americans, have languages other than English.  Thus the
original intent of such movements results in a much wider effect, that of
damaging already desperate, underfunded efforts to preserve Indian languages
by teaching them in public schools.  As an article in _Smoke Signals_, the
newspaper of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde (Oregon), noted on
August 15, 2000, "only about 20 of the 155 Native American languages in the
United States are expected to survive this century".  (The same issue
featured advertisements for Chinuk-wawa classes for adults, and for the
Chinuk Lu7lu 2000, encouragingly.)

If you couldn't discern it from the subject line of this email, this is an
editorial essay on my part.

It is my feeling that the money put into these supposedly grassroots
initiatives--Arizona's is funded by California millionaire Ron Unz--, and
the sheer effort that accompanies it, could be fairly swapped for a
one-hundred per cent increase in funding for Native American language
programs.  Unz's folks apparently want to replace bilingual education for
Navajo kids with "a one-year English immersion program".  That kind of help
is not likely to be welcomed by the People, I'm guessing; in the words of an
elder whom several of our list members have met, "you [White] people have
helped us to death."  Hundreds of languages around the world have already
and hundreds more are undergoing the same rapid extinction process, due to
the same causes, as North American Indian languages.  An enormous segment of
the human species' knowledge is being not just thrown into the garbage heap
of history, but burned for fuel.

Chinook Jargon is in some ways in a fortunate position, I grant.  It's the
heritage language of a tribe whose good fortune it is to own a marvelously
profitable business base, a tribe which makes a point of funding its CJ
language programs with a steady budget.  And the Jargon enjoys not just a
reputation among linguists and other scholars as a unique contribution to
our knowledge of humanity, but also a sizeable group of devoted students,
many or most of whom are reading this now.

Nonetheless, I would like to point out, for future reference and action if
you feel it necessary, that any state in the USA can and is likely to
propose more English-only laws.  Consider the possible effect, given the
federal education funding that is often a crucial part of indigenous
language-teaching programs.  Perhaps Chinook Jargon can change with the
times, and "privatize", to use another popular political concept.  But the
point is, what possible use can there be in attacking the Indian languages
of this country?  Imagine the development of the Northwest without a Chinook
Jargon to *help* settlement and growth.  Imagine the USA's added
difficulties in overcoming Japan in World War 2 without the help of Navajo
Code Talkers.  Imagine any Indian language of this country actually being a
threat to English at this point!

Even if I were a supporter of Arizona's Proposition 203, I imagine I would
favor including a "loophole" for Indian languages.

For further reading on these subjects, you might look at the SSILA
electronic bulletins, which are probably still on that website; the general
mass media of America is an interesting study in journalistic objectivity
being exercised by reporters who very often are not dissociated from the
same assumptions that drive the English-only movement.

Kloshe nanich,
Dave