Students learn Blackfeet (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Students learn Blackfeet
CMR, GFH language curriculum opens 'window to another culture'
http://www.greatfallstribune.com/news/stories/20040209/localnews/380816.html

By PETER JOHNSON
Tribune Staff Writer

Tribune Photo by Stuart S. White

[photo insert] Instructor Klane King writes a conversation during his
Blackfeet language class at Great Falls High.


Students in Klane King's Great Falls language classes enjoy reciting
everyday phrases they've learned in Blackfeet and listen eagerly as
their teacher tells them how Native American songs, games and dances
came to be.

It's a heady experience for King, who learned Blackfeet from his parents
as a preschooler in southern Alberta, only to have boarding school
teachers try to drum it out of him by whacking his wrists with a
yardstick.

"I almost forgot the basics of my native tongue," he said.

But King had the last say.

After college, he came home to the Blood Reserve, as reservations are
known in Canada, and started a video production company that
specialized in features about Blackfeet elders and legends. Teachers
used many of those videos in classrooms of the reservation schools,
which had reformed and stressed the importance of Blackfeet culture and
language.

Since mid-January King has been teaching an introductory Blackfeet class
at both Great Falls and C.M. Russell high schools.

It's the only Indian language class being taught at a nonreservation
Montana high school.

The Great Falls district offered a similar intro class to the Cree
language three years ago. It was dropped after three semesters when
enrollment tapered off.

This semester, 23 GFH students and 11 CMR students are taking the class.

There are 1,243 Indian students in the Great Falls public schools, about
11 percent of the total, said Assistant Superintendent Dick Kuntz, who
was instrumental in starting and renewing the Indian language classes.

The district has reduced its Native American dropout rate from a
sky-high 80 percent to a state low 10 percent in the 30 years it has
had an Indian Education Program featuring tutoring and home counseling,
Kuntz said. But that's still about four times the dropout rate for the
entire student body.

"Any way you can help Native American kids identify with their culture,
you've given them another incentive to stay in school," Kuntz said.
"And if we get them coming to school every day, they'll do better in
their other subjects, too."

Great Falls High School Principal Fred Anderson said school officials
hope to sustain interest this time by adding more advanced classes if
enough students want to keep going.

"I think it's an excellent class that will provide an opportunity for
both Native American and other students to increase their cultural
awareness," Anderson said. He was enthralled after hearing King
describe the Blackfeet's original territory, which sprawled from
present-day Edmonton to Yellowstone Park, between the Rockies and
eastern Montana.

"Window to another culture"

"The Blackfeet language is a window to another culture," agreed Deanne
Leader, director of the Indian Education Program. "Without the words,
you can't understand a group's customs and beliefs."

The new language class is not all that the district is doing. This year
Great Falls sophomores are required to take a Montana civics class
divided evenly between tribal government and nontribal government. Next
fall high school students can take an optional class that gives an
overview of the history and culture of Montana's 11 Indian tribes.

"I'm glad to see them start teaching the language here," said Jewell
Snell, 65, who with her husband, Frank, is raising four school-age
grandchildren. "A lot of people my age never had the chance. The
government sent us from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana to a
boarding school in Oregon where nobody spoke our language."

"I learned a little bit of Blackfeet from my mother and aunts, but not a
lot," said parent Mary Marceau, 37. "I think Indian kids should be able
to learn their language and cultural background, but it's harder in an
urban setting off the reservation."

"I knew a few Blackfeet words, but am learning a lot more," said her
son, GFH sophomore Ché Marceau, 15. "It's easy the way Mr. King teaches
with repetition and stories."

"I've spent half my time growing up in Great Falls and half in Browning,
so I learned a few basic words from my grandparents," said GFH junior
Roger Cruz, 17. "I wanted to learn more about my culture, and the class
is already helping. It's the class I most look forward to every day."

"I grew up in Great Falls and didn't know any Blackfeet," said freshman
Virginia Yazzie, 16. "I'm looking forward to going to a powwow some
time and striking up a conversation in Blackfeet."

GFH senior Joe Eagleman, 17, is a senior of Chippewa-Cree descent.

"This (Blackfeet class) is learning about another Indian culture that is
like mine in some ways but different," he said. "It can be hard
starting from scratch with an unwritten language."

One-quarter of the Blackfeet language students at both schools are
non-Indian.

Exchange student interested

One is Hanneke Stubbe, 18, a Dutch exchange student at GFH.

"I really like languages and in Europe we're required to take four," she
said. "I want to become an anthropologist and this class is great,
because I'm learning about a culture I knew nothing about."

GFH senior Josh Werkheiser, 17, also is a language buff, and said it's
not hard to learn a new language once you realize that internal English
rules do not apply.

"It's definitely been fun to start learning the Blackfeet language and
culture," he said.

King stressed that Blackfeet should be spoken "in a flat and low tone,
with no musical lilts up and down." There are other differences between
English and Blackfeet, too, he said.

"In the United States and Canada people almost seem to panic when there
is a lapse in conversation," he said. "In Blackfeet, it's common to
pause every now and then, maybe take a swig of coffee, and let
companions absorb what's been said."

King also thinks the Blackfeet language has more specific nouns, with
some words taking the place of whole sentences in English.

For instance, the word "iniwa" means buffalo. When Blackfeet add a long,
tongue-twisting suffix, the word signifies "the buffalo are rumbling
toward you with their back, dew claws clicking."

You can almost feel the dust and better scramble for cover.

But King, 50, was at the tail end of the similar Canadian and U.S.
government practices of sending Native American kids to boarding
schools where they were directly or indirectly discouraged from using
their own language.

Starting at age 6, he spent weekdays at a boarding school across the
reservation from his home. Teachers demanded that students speaking
Blackfeet place their hands on the table and smacked their wrists.

He said they drove the colorful language from his lips, and almost from
his memory, but not from his heart.

King attended college in Edmonton, picking up degrees in Canadian
studies and Native communication, including broadcast and video
production skills. But the instructors who spoke a Native language were
Cree, he said.

When he returned home he remembered how rich his native tongue and
traditions were when he began making videos of tribal elders.

King moved to Great Falls in 2000, where he has been a volunteer
cameraman for the public access television channel and a disk jockey
for KGPR, the public radio station.

Offer to teach

King jumped at the chance to teach Blackfeet when Kuntz approached him.
He demonstrated he was fluent in the language to Blackfeet tribal
officials, a requirement to get his education certificate from the
state.

King has several goals for his students. He wants to teach them enough
conversational Blackfeet so they can walk up to tribal elders and
politely chat. He also will teach them a few Blackfeet meditations,
thanking the Creator and asking for blessings.

Last week, King chanted his brief, eloquent personal song for the
students, suggesting if they listen carefully they can catch a rhythm
and make their own song to see them through adversity.

"Mine is a really sweet and calming little ditty that came to me one
time," he said, quipping: "And there's no copyright infringement
worries to prevent me from singing it over and over."

Johnson can be reached by e-mail at pejohnso at greatfal.gannett.com, or by
phone at (406) 791-1476 or (800) 438-6600.

Originally published Monday, February 9, 2004