Language Testimony

[Andre Cramblit]

Professor backs "survival schools" for Native American languages

Kathleen Maclay, Media Relations | 20 May 2003

BERKELEY ? Native American language "survival schools" must have long-term
funding to save these languages from extinction, University of California,
Berkeley, professor Leanne Hinton recently told the Senate Committee on
Indian Affairs.

"Native American languages are in a major state of decline. The present and
future language survival schools can turn this sad state of affairs around
for at least some languages," Hinton said after testifying May 15 in
support of legislation proposed by Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, to provide
long-term funding for language survival schools.

These preschool and other schools offer a complete education through
instruction in a Native American language, with the purpose of
strengthening, revitalizing or reestablishing a Native American language
and culture.

Throughout her career, Hinton, a professor of linguistics and chair of the
UC Berkeley Linguistics Department, has worked with Native American
languages and on issues relating to language revitalization. She is the
incoming president of the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, and hosts
the biennial "Breath of Life" conference at UC Berkeley to revive languages
for tribes with no speakers left.

Of 85 indigenous languages in California, Hinton told the committee, 35
have no speakers left and the remaining 50 are spoken only by a handful of
elders.

"Along with their languages are being lost eloquent speech-making and
story-telling skills, powerful oral literature, philosophical frameworks,
environmental knowledge, and diverse world views," Hinton testified.

Also testifying at the Washington, D.C., hearing was Mary Hermes, an
associate professor of education at the University of Minnesota who has two
children in an Ojibwe language immersion school in Hayward, Wis. Hermes
noted research showing that Native American children ? like
African-American children ? have long been given the message that they can
be either a Native American or a smart, educated person, but they can~Rt be
both.

Language can be the key to reconciling these two identities, Hermes said.
By using indigenous languages for instruction in schools, children no
longer see a conflict between education and Native identity.

"For these endangered indigenous languages, the children come to school
already knowing English ? they have learned it at home from their parents,
from television, from their peers, and from virtually every experience in
their lives involving speech," Hinton testified. "The survival schools
level the playing field."

A Hawaiian contingent at the committee hearing said that not a single child
has dropped out of Hawaiian language survival schools before graduation in
the 15 years the highly successful program has been in operation there. The
program~Rs graduates boast an 85 percent acceptance rate at colleges and
universities, and one is attending Stanford University in the fall.

The 1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) established funding for
tribes to develop language revitalization programs. A number of successful
language survival programs were set up, partially funded by the
Administration for Native Americans, which handles NALA funds. Due to
NALA~Rs limited budget, however, schools generally can only be funded for
about three years.

 "The challenge is to find long-term funding for these schools, and that is
the major issue that S 575 addresses," Hinton told the Committee on Indian
Affairs.

"Long ago, previous congressional acts devoted enormous efforts to the
schools that were charged with the eradication of Native American languages
and cultural traditions," she testified. "Now in this hopefully wiser time,
it behooves the Congress to devote an equivalent amount of funds to help
indigenous peoples retain the languages that we erased from their lives."

Inouye expects his bill to emerge from committee and reach the Senate floor
for a vote sometime in July. To learn more about the proposed legislation,