NY Times article

[Emmett Chase]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/us/17arapaho.html


October 17, 2008
Its Native Tongue Facing Extinction, Arapaho Tribe Teaches the Young

By DAN FROSCH
RIVERTON, Wyo. — At 69, her eyes soft and creased with age, Alvena
Oldman remembers how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school on
the Wind River Reservation would strike students with rulers if they
dared to talk in their native Arapaho language.

"We were afraid to speak it," she said. "We knew we would be punished."

More than a half-century later, only about 200 Arapaho speakers are
still alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming's only Indian
reservation, fear their language will not survive. As part of an
intensifying effort to save that language, this tribe of 8,791, known
as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a new school where students
will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will
create a new generation of native speakers.

"This is a race against the clock, and we're in the 59th minute of the
last hour," said a National Indian Education Association board member,
Ryan Wilson, whom the tribe hired as a consultant to help get the
school off the ground. Like other tribes, the Northern Arapaho have
suffered from the legacy of Indian boarding institutions, established
by the federal government in the late 1800s to "Americanize" Native
American children. It was at such schools that teachers instilled the
"kill the Indian, save the man" philosophy, young boys had their
traditional braids shorn, and students were forbidden to speak tribal
languages.

The discipline of those days was drummed into an entire generation of
Northern Arapaho, and most tribal members never passed down the
language. Of all the remaining fluent speakers, none are younger than
55.

That is what tribal leaders hope to change. About 22 children from
pre-kindergarten through first grade started classes at the school — a
rectangular one-story structure with a fresh coat of white paint and
the words Hinono' Eitiino' Oowu' (translation: Arapaho Language Lodge)
written across its siding.

Here, set against an endless stretch of windswept plains and tufts of
cottonwoods, instructors are using a curriculum based on one used at
the Wyoming Indian Elementary School to teach students exclusively in
Arapaho. All costs related to the school, which has an operating
budget of $340,000 a year, are paid for by the tribe and private
donors. Administrators plan to add a grade each year until it
comprises pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade classes.

"This environment is a complete reversal of what occurs too often in
schools, where a child is ridiculed or reprimanded for speaking one's
heritage language," said Inée Y. Slaughter, executive director of the
Indigenous Language Institute, a group in Santa Fe, N.M., that works
with tribes on native languages.

"I want my son to talk nothing but Arapaho to me and my grandparents,"
said Kayla Howling Buffalo, who enrolled her 4-year-old son, RyLee, in
the school.

Ms. Howling Buffalo, 25, said she, too, had been inspired to take
Arapaho classes because her grandmother no longer has anyone to speak
with and fears she is losing her first language.

Such sentiments are not uncommon on the reservation and have become
more pronounced in the five years since Helen Cedar Tree, at 96 the
oldest living Northern Arapaho, made an impassioned plea to the
tribe's council of elders.

"She said: 'Look at all of you guys talking English, and you know your
own language. It's like the white man has conquered us,' " said Gerald
Redman Sr., the chairman of the council of elders. "It was a wake-up
call."

A group of Arapaho families had sent their children to a
pre-kindergarten language program for years, but it was not enough.
Heeding Ms. Cedar Tree's words, the tribe began using Arapaho
dictionaries, night classes, CDs made by the tribe, and anything they
could find to help resuscitate the language. In the end, "we knew in
our hearts that immersion was the only way we were going to turn this
around," said Mr. Wilson, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.

He was referring not just to the potential for the Arapaho language's
extinction but to a host of other problems that have long plagued the
vast reservation, which the tribe shares with the Eastern Shoshone.

"Language-immersion schools offer an environment that goes beyond
teaching the language," Ms. Slaughter said. "It provides a safe place
where a child's roots are nurtured, its culture honored, and its being
valued."

According to tribal statistics and the United States Attorney's Office
in Wyoming, 78 percent of household heads on the reservation are
unemployed, the student dropout rate is 52 percent and crime has been
rising.

Most recently, in June, three teenage girls were found dead in a
low-income housing complex. The F.B.I. has not yet released autopsy
results, but many tribal members think drugs or alcohol were involved.
The deaths left the reservation reeling. Officials here hope that the
school will herald a positive change, just as programs elsewhere have
helped native youth become conversational in their tribal languages,
enhancing cultural pride and participation in the process. A
groundswell of language revitalization efforts has led to successful
Indian immersion schools in Montana and New York.

Studies show that language fluency among young Indians is tied to
overall academic achievement, and experts say such learning can have
other positive effects.

"Language seems to be a healing force for Native American
communities," said Ellen Lutz, executive director of Cultural
Survival, a group based in Cambridge, Mass., that is working with the
Northern Arapaho. At a recent ceremony to celebrate the school's
opening, held in an old tribal meeting hall, three young girls sang
shyly in Arapaho. Behind them, a row of elders sat quietly, their
faces wizened and stoic, legs shuffling rhythmically as familiar words
carried through the building.

"They are the ones who whispered it on the playground when nobody was
looking," Mr. Wilson said, referring to the elders. "If we lose that
language, we lose who we are."

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 20, 2008
Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about a new school
in Wyoming that will teach students in Arapaho in hope of preserving
the language described similar schools in Hawaii incorrectly. They are
native Hawaiian language schools; they are not Indian immersion
schools like ones in Wyoming, Montana and New York.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: October 23, 2008
An article on Friday about a new school in Wyoming that will teach
students in Arapaho in hopes of preserving the language referred
incorrectly to the school's curriculum. The curriculum, which will be
taught in the Arapaho language, is based on a curriculum used at the
Wyoming Indian Elementary School, a public school that teaches its
students in English and adheres to Wyoming state education standards.
The state did not specifically approve an Arapaho curriculum for the
new school.


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