Where do Native Languages Fit In?

[Mia@RedPony]

Seems to me that this is an important question. My comments based on my experience are that expanding the cultural view to include Native languages is going to be very difficult, but is worthwhile in its own way for those willing to stand outside the commonly recognized circle of acceptance. 

I have just completed my first year in the Computer Science PhD program at New Mexico State. I have just finished the first 5 computer courses that I have ever taken, and have a fresh perspective on what it's like to try to learn in an environment where other students have vastly different, and more topically focused, understandings and knowledge. In other words, this year for me has been very similar to the experience that many Native students have when they come from the reservation to school. 

That said, I can tell you what I encountered in a discipline where "languages" are a topic of primary concern. 
1. There is no support on the most basic technical level for Native languages. That is, there are no language codes and no country codes that are available to specify any of the the North American Native languages. There are 3 for South American Native languages, but ONLY because they are the languages of specific countries. 
2. There is no recognition, understanding, or awareness that compilers can/should/must be available in something besides English. 
3. On the Open Software platforms, which are primarily Linux, translation efforts are in progress, but these occur based on groups volunteering, and more staggeringly painful is that each message, screen and line of text is translated manually, by groups of translators. Clearly this limits software availability in non-English languages. 

There is more, but this covers the difficulties of starting. . . since there is nothing, a comprehensive understanding of how hard it is simply to Start is perhaps in this case most valuable. 

People don't generally think of technical resources in the context of Heritage Language revitalization. They think of nests and elders and opportunities to speak in "common, everyday" terms. They think of physical immersion. 

But from what I have seen, if people don't have places to use their languages in ways besides asking for the butter or buying gasoline, they will not go through the struggle to learn them. I knew a man once, he was very depressed because he couldn't tell his grandmother about his life's work. They are both Navajo, he is a chemist, completing his PhD. He constructed words from his own understandings of Navajo, wrote his paper in Navajo, and read it to his grandmother. She understood the language, but had a difficult time with the concepts, as one might imagine would also happen for English speakers outside the discipline. 

Which leads me to the real point: a language is a language certainly in terms of its physical characteristcs, but a language is also a language in terms of its Meanings, meanings bound to culture. Understandings common in a culture are abstracted to single words, and one can only "understand" these words correctly if one is immersed in the culture. I'll give you one example ... .  consider the noun "object". Everyone knows what this means, yes? Okay, how about this definition: An instantiation of the Class. How many still know what it means? Not many, I'll bet. But this is a real case, can be seen in English, and is exactly what happens with our Native languages and Native students. You go into school thinking that you know what the words and ideas mean because you have been using them all your life. And, if you are in Computer Science, you learn a new definition: an instantiation of the Class. It's a bit metphorical, too, for those who wish to ponder along the lines of how those who are members of different classes (substitute "races") become objectified. 

Pre-PS: For those who are waiting, with or without realizing that they are still waiting, for our CD: we are finished with the coding, we just have to test the distribution. It has been a particularly challenging semester: I have a 20-hour per week job on campus, drive in 5 days a week, 100 miles each way. And, since I had to learn 5 languages this semester (Flex, Lex, Bison, Rigal, and Java) and strengthen my C coding skills for my compiler class,  my nearly-non-existent life has been. . . well, let's just say "challenging". 

CD will be out soon. 
Mia Kalish

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Rr Lapier 
  To: ILAT at listserv.arizona.edu 
  Sent: Friday, May 09, 2003 7:37 PM
  Subject: Re: Where do Native Languages Fit In?


  From S. 575:
  "Native American -- The term 'Native American' means an Indian, Native Hawaiian,or Native American Pacific Islander.
  Native American Language -- The term 'Native American language' means the historical, traditional languages spoken by Native Americans."


  Rosalyn LaPier
  Piegan Institute
  www.pieganinstitute.org
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