ELL: Transparent Language Systems offer and smaller communities

Thu Apr 8 08:40:36 UTC 1999

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Date: Thu, 08 Apr 1999 03:40:36 -0500
To: endangered-languages-l at carmen.murdoch.edu.au
From: "Richard A. Grounds" <richard-grounds at utulsa.edu>
Subject: ELL: Transparent Language Systems offer and smaller communities
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At 03:01 PM 4/1/99 -0500, you wrote:

>Presumably, the Navajos or the Cherokees could figure out a way to raise
>that kind of money. But the money could presumably be put to better use on
>improving the living conditions of tribe members. Also, their languages
>aren't nearly as endangered as, say, Euchee or Oneida, languages that are in
>danger of dying out in this generation. It seems to me that TLS has made/is
>making money off these templates in their sales of French, German, Spanish,
>Italian, Russian, and other CDs. They could also work out an arrangement to
>sell the endangered-language CDs and make money off those, too. So why do
>they need to request so much money for the templates themselves?
>
>What do others think about this? I know that many on the list don't feel the
>technology would be very beneficial to the speech communities, anyway. But
>I'd be interested in hearing some opinions. Am I wrong to think that
>$100,000 is an awful lot of money?
>
>Thanks,
>
>David Harris
>Washington, DC
>
A few somewhat belated remarks concerning the TLS "offer" from the vantage
point of Yuchi language efforts and the smaller communities in Oklahoma.

The possibility of a project developed around the commercialization of
electronic media raises several concerns from community perspectives.  I
agree with the earlier remarks that the amount of money required is almost
completely prohibitive.
Beyond the difficulty of funding, the prospects of such a project do seem
to take seriously the extreme urgency of the situation.  However, they
perhaps fail to take account of the contexts out of which traditional
community members may operate.

I think that many of the smaller Native American communities in the
Oklahoma area would respond with reluctance and some--such as the
Kickapoos--would respond with absolute resistance to the idea.  I would not
want to frustrate the possibilities of gaining needed assistance, nor am
trying to foreclose further exploration on the issue but it seems to me
that communities have strong reasons for being cautious...

The common Native concern about commercialization is directly related to a
long and continuing history of exploitation.  Many communities are
concerned about the familiar pattern of someone else profiting from their
intellectual and cultural heritage. Further, the present reality for our
rural communities is that few members have working access to the electronic
medium within which this conversation is now being conducted.

The guardedness of communities does not represent some kind of quaint
backwardness but grows out of generations of harsh experience, including
physical and cultural genocide, with consequences that are still felt
today.  (In fact, the brutality of the so-called Trail of Tears was
discussed just today by Yuchi elders as we went to procure traditional
seeds for the garden which we are developing as the center-piece for our
Euchee Language Children and Beginners Class)

Beyond these broad-brush issues, there probably are concerns about the
technology itself (not only loss of control over the context of usage, the
unknown purposes for learning, etc.) but the texture of the medium is
problematic and foreign to the experience of people who--as in the case of
the Yuchis--lack even a standard orthography.  Our elders who can speak
fluently often do not read what those of us who are only learning to speak
may put on paper.  I remember well the long discussions about the
appropriateness of audio taping and videotaping Yuchi elders as part of the
community language preservation efforts.  When the discussion later turned
to the possibility of developing CD-ROM materials in 1996 with the Iowa
Multimedia Workshop for Endangered Languages all the issues had to be
revisited during protracted deliberations.  This cautious consideration was
over a program which was intended to develop CDs solely for the use of
community members.

This leads to the concerns about public access to language learning.  I
think that many traditional leaders would have some concern about the
advent of wantabees and New Agers in the domain of language acquisition.
Its awkward enough when a scout troop claims your name as its totem, but I
can think of little more disturbing than the prospects of a scout troop
attempting some kind of Pidgeon Yuchi derived from a web-language program
while our own community children go without.

Of course, the issues would have to be taken beyond my summary
characterizations and actually negotiated with elders and community
leaders.  Many remain guarded because of a sense that vital power rests in
the language (as seen in its required usage in ceremonial contexts, for
example).  And in recent generations perhaps the primary social function
has been precisely the maintaining of community boundaries.  Our family
still talks about how my grandmother who only learned English in her
mid-teens would switch into Yuchi language the minute the physician at the
Indian Hospital would appear in the room.  The number of accounts of
present generation adults in Indian Country who talk about their parents
switching to Indian so that they, their own children, wouldn't understand
what they were saying is overwhelming.  It is this language pattern of
internalized colonialism against which the current generation of community
members is struggling.  It is why I am now going back--after years of
studying languages in the European colonial tradition--to learn the
language of my grandmother for the first time.

As for my own stance, if not carried forward by the community itself, I see
little point to an artificial and a-contextual preservation of the spoken
language within a foreign community.  I am, of course, willing to work with
non community members within a community setting where the purpose is to
keep the language as a living part of the ongoing community.

On the other hand--speaking only for myself--the push to have only one
language in the USA works fine for me--as long as its Yuchi.  However, our
elders are more practical and less supportive of such a plan.

It is the progression of colonial ironies and the patterns of dispossession
and supersessionism which complicate the seemingly straightforward
technological possibilities.

Guess I've filled more than the accepted amount of space....

KAdatA (that's enough)

RAG
*  *  *  *

Richard A. Grounds		richard-grounds at utulsa.edu
Dept. of Anthropology			1-918-631-3759 (office)
University of Tulsa				       1-918-631-2540 (fax)
Tulsa, OK  74104  USA
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