Teaching Indian languages preserves heritage, too

[Andre Cramblit]

Teaching Indian languages preserves heritage, too

As the number of elders whose native tongue is their first language  
pass on, tribes are racing to preserve their languages. They are  
compiling the first dictionaries for languages that were entirely  
oral; recording elders; transcribing tapes; and especially, teaching  
the next generation of speakers.

http://seattletimes .nwsource. com/html/ localnews/ 2008493591_  
language11m0. html?syndication =rss


Thursday, December 11, 2008 - Page updated at 12:34 AM

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ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Second-grader Alisyanna Henry opens the door after a Lushootseed  
language class at Tulalip Elementary. The words on the door mean  
"respect" and "pay attention."



ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Language teacher Teresa Whitish works with the children in the  
advanced Lushootseed class at Tulalip Montessori School.



ERIKA SCHULTZ / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Third-grader Ashley Williams works with Lushootseed language teacher  
Natosha Gobin at Tulalip Elementary School.


Teaching Indian languages preserves heritage, too

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seattle Times staff reporter

TULALIP INDIAN RESERVATION —

This classroom at first sounds like any other, as fourth- and fifth-  
graders belt out the Pledge of Allegiance. But then they slip  
seamlessly into Lushootseed, one of Washington state's native languages.

The kids want to show off what they have learned. Many have been  
getting 40 minutes of Lushootseed instruction a day at Tulalip  
Elementary, a public school in Snohomish County.

Teacher Natosha Gobin gets instant decorum just by promising to call  
on whoever is sitting quietly, so eager are her students for a turn at  
the board.

As the number of elders whose native tongue is their first language  
pass on, tribes throughout Washington and the rest of the country are  
racing to preserve their languages. They are compiling the first  
dictionaries for languages that were entirely oral; recording elders;  
transcribing tapes; and especially, teaching the next generation of  
speakers.

The program, run and paid for by the Tulalip Tribes, has grown since  
1993 to 12 employees, including seven full-time instructors teaching  
some 500 students, from low-income preschool kids to college- level  
classes.

Some 80 percent of the students in the Tulalip Elementary classes are  
Indians, but their nonnative classmates are just as interested. By  
fourth grade, many are speaking sentences, writing and following  
Gobin's commands, all in Lushootseed.

The students seem to take to the language — a tongue twister to the  
uninitiated — with ease, especially in the earliest grades, where  
kids shout out the names of animals they recognize in their homemade  
Lushootseed lesson books. Nothing in the curriculum is off the shelf;  
instructors create all the lesson and curriculum materials.

"I love teaching them something positive, that they can't get anywhere  
else," Gobin said of her students. "That gives them pride, and it's  
something that helps bring the community together."

Language is also an intimate connection with culture. "The language is  
who you are, it's that anchor, it's another way to believe in  
yourself, to know yourself," said Mel Sheldon, chairman of the board  
of the Tulalip Tribes.

Dwindling languages

Language scholars think that before the arrival of Christopher  
Columbus, more than 300 languages were spoken in North America. Today  
an estimated 175 or so indigenous languages are spoken in the United  
States but about 90 percent are moribund, with very few children  
speaking them as their first language, according to Michael Krauss,  
professor emeritus from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, an expert  
in native languages.

"It's a very woeful situation," Krauss said.

Languages are repositories of knowledge: local, historic and  
environmental, specific to their place. Every language contains unique  
cultural information, such as concepts of kinship and time.

There are about 16 native languages still spoken in Washington. They  
are languages as musical as their names: Makah; Okanagan, Klallam,  
Quileute, Lushootseed.

"People who haven't heard our language, the first thing they say is  
how beautiful it is," Gobin said of her native tongue.

Even for the Tulalips, comparatively better off because of casino  
wealth than many others, language recovery is a tall order. There is  
no classroom instruction available in the middle- school grades,  
because of a lack of teachers.

When the Tulalips sought to recruit teachers, there were only three  
applicants, said language-program director Michele Balagot. And she  
knows how hard it is to compete with the cacophony of mainstream  
American culture.

"My daughter would rather be playing Nintendo," she said of her 8-year- 
old.

Resurrecting a tongue

In Washington, tribes have formed partnerships with school districts  
and the state to reach tribal and nontribal kids in public schools. As  
of the 2006-07 school year, 14 instructors were certified by tribes to  
teach language in the public schools. Tribes work with school  
districts to fit language classes into the school day.

"It's a priority," said principal Teresa Iyall-Williams at Tulalip  
Elementary. Language instruction boosts native students' achievement,  
she said. "It increases engagement when they are able to see  
themselves in the curriculum."

Non-Indian students benefit, too: At Port Angeles High School in  
Clallam County, where the student body is about 97 percent nonnative,  
Lower Elwha Klallam language instructor Jamie Valadez has since 1999  
taught Klallam as one of the elective languages any student can take.  
Her classes are made up not only of students from Lower Elwha and  
other tribes but nonnative teens curious to learn.

"It is just something they are interested in and enjoy, they are  
fascinated with learning about the native culture," Valadez said.

Learning another language also hones her students' knowledge of  
English grammar and syntax, which they use to decode and build  
sentences in Klallam.

The Lower Elwha Klallam Tribe began its language program in 1991. The  
tribe is fortunate to have recordings of elders made by linguists and  
anthropologists dating back to the 1950s, a trove of tapes tracked  
down by the tribe in university collections and elsewhere.

Hours of the tapes were painstakingly transcribed by Lower Elwha  
Klallam elders Bea Charles, 90, and Adeline Smith, 91.

"That is really the biggest achievement," Valadez said. "Otherwise we  
wouldn't even know what those tapes say."

Charles and Smith also are working to create the tribe's first  
dictionary, with the help of Tim Montler, a visiting linguist from the  
University of North Texas.

Elders working to keep their tribes' languages in use were  
ceremonially wrapped in blankets at a dinner hosted by the Skokomish  
tribe last year to honor them for doing work no one else can — before  
it's too late.

Charles seemed to speak for many as she told of the passion she holds  
for keeping her tribe's language alive.

"I will teach," she said, "until my last breath."

Lynda V. Mapes: 206-464-2736 or lmapes at seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company



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