United States considered the place `where languages come to die' (fwd)

Mon Aug 16 17:41:40 UTC 2004

Posted on Mon, Aug. 16, 2004

United States considered the place `where languages come to die'

BY GWENDOLYN DRISCOLL
The Orange County Register
http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/news/nation/9413651.htm

SANTA ANA, Calif. - (KRT) - To become one of the last living speakers of
the Acjachemen language, you first have to pass an unusual test.

Ka`chi Lobo Golden, the ceremonial teacher and "Revealer" of the San
Juan Capistrano, Calif.-based Acjachemen tribe, will sit on a hill near
her home and "release" your name into the wind. She will wait six days
for a response.

"If the wind says yes, I will teach."

For a tribe such as the Acjachemen, a scattered and as-yet federally
unrecognized group of approximately 3,000 Orange County American
Indians, such mysticism may seem a lackadaisical response to a pressing
dilemma: the extinction of their language.

Golden, however, is phlegmatic.

"I'm the last Mohican," she said, referring to her status as the last
living speaker of the Acjachemen language. "But I come from the
knowledge that nothing is ever lost. It just goes into the belly of
Earth Mother for a time."

Golden instructs a few students every year in the Acjachemen "spiritual"
language, a derivative of the Acjachemen common tongue that is used
mostly for ceremonial and spiritual purposes. Her efforts, and those of
a handful of others within and outside the tribe, may determine the
life or death of Orange County's first - and currently smallest -
language group.

It also illustrates the difficulty of preserving language in a nation
that linguists often grimly refer to as the "language cemetery."

"The United States is where languages come to die," said Rosemary Feal,
Executive Director of the Modern Language Association. "We often see
the first generation speaks (a language) but by the third generation
their children may know only a few words."

Different factors contribute to the loss of languages, including
migration, economics and the pressure to fit in, Feal said.

In the case of Acjachemen, racist attitudes in existence since the time
of first contact - the arrival of the Spanish in California in the 16th
century - are responsible for the steady erosion of native language,
according to Damien Shilo, chairman of the Acjachemen Nation Tribal
Council. In the mid-1800s a bounty encouraged white settlers to hunt
and kill American Indians, prompting many Acjachemen people to speak
Spanish and adopt Mexican names. California - once one of the most
linguistically diverse places in the world - lost up to 70 percent of
its native languages in the process.

"Your language and your culture had to be pushed underground, because to
openly admit that was a death sentence," Shilo said.

By the 1980s, as the last native speakers approached their 90s, many
tribes launched language revitalization programs to save what remained
of Navajo, Comanche, Creek and other native languages. California
tribes were aided by the discovery in the Smithsonian Institution of
notes and taped recordings of fluent speakers made in the 1930s by
famed linguist John Peabody Harrington. But the Acjachemen, embroiled
in a decades-long quest for federal recognition and riven by tribal
squabbles, say they do not have the resources to devote to learning
their mother tongue.

"So much energy is taken by this tribe trying to define themselves,"
said Micael Merrifield, a professor of anthropology at Saddleback
College who is writing a book about the tribe. "They don't have time to
organize a whole, structured language learning program."

A "dead" language may be a liability for the Acjachemen, who currently
stand second in line in the arduous process of federal recognition.
Some within the tribe say that the lack of a living language makes it
easier for the government to deny their existence. Others play down the
issue, noting that even federally recognized tribes are struggling to
preserve their languages.

In the meantime, well-meaning - if not always well-funded or organized -
volunteers try to fill the gap.

Ka`chi Golden teaches language through traditional song.

Kelina Lobo, a University of Arizona graduate student, conducted a
statistical comparison between the Acjachemen and the related Luiseno
language.

She drew on living dictionaries such as Marguerite Lobo, 89, who
remembers her mother speaking "Indian."

Her brother, Wick, 70, preserves a handwritten "Lobo Lexicon" compiled
in 1937 by his late sister, Viola, of 212 phonetically spelled
Acjachemen words.

"We need to find somebody who can speak it fluently and have classes,"
said Wick Lobo. "If we can reach a critical mass of speakers, it's
conceivable that in the next 20 years, our language will rise again."

---