Oneidas struggle to protect ancient language (fwd)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Posted Apr. 06, 2003
http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/local_9554809.shtml

Oneidas struggle to protect ancient language
Elders pass down nearly lost tradition

The Associated Press

ONEIDA ? At the Language House, a log house tucked between sugar maples and
white pines, 10 members of the Oneida Tribe of Indians sit around a table
repeating words that rolled off the tongues of their ancestors.

They?ve just finished watching a videotape of elders talking with students.
Their assignment is to pick out trouble phrases and determine their pronunciation
and meaning.

One of the phrases they?re struggling with translates to mean: ?We?re always
trying hard to be like the Caucasian race,? a telling phrase in their struggle
to preserve their language.

The members are paid to learn the ancient language and teach it to others
in an effort to ensure the language survives. Other tribes nationwide are
taking similar steps with help from the federal government, which has poured
more than $23.6 million into such language preservation projects since 1994.

?If we don?t know the language, we probably won?t be Indian people anymore,?
said Dennis White, director of instruction in the Lac Courte Oreilles Band,
a Chippewa tribe in Hayward. ?We?d be Americans with nice tans.?

Indians say losing the language of their ancestors takes away a tribe?s sense
of identity and culture partly because many of their meetings and prayers
are in their native tongue.

Before Europeans arrived in North America, 400 to 600 tribal languages were
spoken in the United States and Canada. Today, there are only 211, said Inee
Yang Slaughter, executive director of The Indigenous Language Institute in
Santa Fe, N.M.