Struggle To Survive (native languages)

[Andre Cramblit]

Indian languages are struggling to survive

Tribes are trying to bring back native tongue

Doug Abrahms Gannett News Service May. 27, 2003 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - Rita Coosewoon, whose last name means "gray eyes" in Comanche,
remembers being forced to skip a meal or sit on the basement steps of her
school all night for speaking her native language.

"I sure had a hard time, because I couldn't ask any (questions) because
they would punish me for not speaking English," said Coosewoon, 71. "What a
twist that they want me to teach a language that they wanted to get rid
of."

Coosewoon is the only public school teacher in Oklahoma teaching Comanche.

She and others worry that tribes are in a race against time to save their
languages, a vital part of American Indian culture, before they die off
with tribal elders. Consider:

 o A 1997 study by the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians found 3 percent
of their children younger than 6 could speak the language.

 o Only an estimated 2,000 Ojibwes, or Chippewas, out of more than 100,000
in the United States speak the language.

 o One study predicts that 80 percent of the nation's 175 existing Indian
languages will disappear in the next generation if nothing is done because
the vast majority of speakers are older than 60.

The situation is especially dire in California, where there are no longer
any native speakers of 35 tribal languages and only a handful who speak 50
other languages, according to Leanne Hinton, chairwoman of the University
of California at Berkeley linguistics department.

"Here in California we have 50 languages . . . almost all of them are
spoken by people over 60," Hinton said.

But tribes are taking steps to revive their languages, with the help of
funds from gambling or the government. Some tribes are spending their
casino profits on preschools where children are immersed in their native
tongue.

Language revitalization started in the 1970s in Hawaii, where the Aha
Punana Leo language organization brought together preschoolers with island
elders. The children then were moved into language immersion schools.
Members of the first senior class, who speak both Hawaiian and English,
graduated in 1999.

The Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians in Temecula, Calif., started a
preschool program last year that teaches both English and Luiseno.

With fewer than 10 native speakers, all older than 70, the tribe voted to
spend $200,000 of its casino profits on the program, said Gary DuBois,
director of cultural resources. The Pechangas hired Eric Elliott, a
linguist who has learned four California Indian languages, to repeat in
Luiseno what English-speaking teachers say in class.

"We can't use (elders) as resources because they're too frail," DuBois
said. "We're running against time."

The Pechangas could eventually expand their language immersion classes
through elementary and even high school, similar to the Hawaiian system, he
said.

Most tribes don't have big casino profits to plow into language programs.
Congress passed legislation in the early 1990s that funded language
revitalization programs but these short-term grants leave programs in a
constant hunt for funds, said Mary Hermes, an education professor at the
University of Minnesota in Duluth. She also is a board member and parent at
the Waadookodaading Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis.

American Indians blame the government for eradicating their languages by
pushing them off their lands, removing children to English-speaking
boarding schools, like the one Coosewoon attended, and barring them from
talking in school in their native tongue.

"It is really the responsibility of the government that we're in this
situation," Hermes said. "We're not asking for money because of the harm
suffered. We're asking for efforts to revitalize our language."



Find this article at:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/0527dyinglanguages27.html