She's a voice of tradition (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

She's a voice of tradition
Area Indian tribes work to save native languages

By Dena Sloan
Globe Staff Writer
http://joplinglobe.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=141236&c=87

MIAMI, Okla. - She doesn't have any textbooks. There aren't any
dictionaries. The instructional tapes she uses are the ones she's made
herself. Her workbooks are her own handiwork.

There's an element of self-reliance and determination wrapped up in
73-year-old Ardina Moore's crusade to save a little-spoken language.
The Miami woman said she's the last person in the area, and one of the
very few last people in the country, who still speaks Quapaw fluently.
And if the endangered language is to be saved, she's got to help do it.

"I'm getting up there in years," she said. "It's imperative that I do
what I can as soon as I can, and try to pass that on."

Moore was raised by her Quapaw-speaking grandparents who lived in a
Quapaw community along Spring River about three miles east of Miami.
They encouraged her to speak English at home, but Moore couldn't help
but learn to speak and understand the language. Though she no longer
has other native speakers with whom to converse, reciting daily prayers
in Quapaw helps her remember the language she heard growing up. Her
grandparents' generation, as children, was disciplined for speaking the
native language. Now Moore works with adult students who travel to
Miami from as far away as Tulsa in the hopes that they'll pass the
language along to their children.

"They want to be who they are, they're Quapaw people. It's in the
blood," she said of her students. "When we lose our language, we lose
our culture. Our culture is very important to us."

After past decades of government policies aimed at eliminating American
Indian cultures and trying to wipe out native languages, organized
efforts are under way to bring them back. Scholars say many of the
indigenous languages are in danger of disappearing all together.
Because these languages were traditionally taught orally and weren't
written down, they were more vulnerable.

>From volunteer programs at local American Indian cultural centers to
university courses in native languages, scholars and grassroots groups
offer a wide assortment of classes in tribal tongues. Many say it's an
uphill battle and a race against time as those who grew up hearing
native languages are dying. For those tribes whose members don't live
in a concentrated area, the forces of assimilation can be hard to
overcome. But for groups of local American Indians, preserving and
revitalizing the languages of their ancestors have taken on both a
special importance and a special urgency.

"There's an incredible number of native languages that are just
disappearing," said Gus Palmer, an associate professor of anthropology
and director of the Native Language Program at the University of
Oklahoma. "Among Indian communities, there's a crisis."

Forbidden

Before contact with European explorers, an estimated 400 to 600
indigenous languages were spoken in the United States and Canada, said
Ine Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute
in Santa Fe, N.M. An estimated 210 languages are spoken today, but only
about 20 are being learned by children from parents and elders. Many
more are spoken by older tribal members, but are not systematically
being passed on to younger generations, she said.

Government-run schools aimed at assimilating Indian children during the
late 19th and early 20th centuries prohibited students from speaking
their tribe's language in an effort to "kill the Indian, save the man."
Several local tribal members who grew up with parents or grandparents
who spoke the language said they were discouraged from learning it. As
children, their grandparents would be punished for speaking tribal
tongues in missionary and government-run schools, so they discouraged
children from learning the languages that were formerly forbidden.

Now representatives of a number of area tribes, including the Peoria,
Modoc and Eastern Shawnee, said they don't know of any people fluent in
their native languages.

"Unfortunately, assimilation worked pretty well for a lot of tribes
around here," said John Froman, chief of the Peoria Tribe in Miami,
whose grandfather was the product of several Indian boarding schools.
"One of the first things they did was cut your hair and (forbid
children) to speak their native languages. As a youth, if you were
shipped out of your climate, you didn't have the opportunity to speak
(the language), you pretty much lost it. The assimilation of the Native
American worked to some extent. A vital part of our culture is gone."

'Foreign' language

Movements begun in the early 1990s have been trying to turn the trend
around both in Northeastern Oklahoma, as well as in other parts of the
country. Slaughter said legislation passed by Congress in the early
1990s called for preserving indigenous languages and began allocating
money for language programs helped spark what had previously been a
much smaller effort to preserve tribal vocabulary. Northeastern
Oklahoma A&M University in Miami began offering courses in native
languages about 10 years ago, and revitalization efforts have since
gotten under way among local tribes, including the Miami, Ottawa,
Seneca-Cayuga and Wyandotte. In addition to the Cherokee courses now
offered at NEO, the school previously offered classes in the Ottawa,
Quapaw, Seneca and Cayuga languages, said Te Nona Kuhn, director of the
Native American Studies program. When she was involved in Quapaw
classes at NEO, Moore said she found it ironic that it was listed under
foreign language course offerings.

"We want to think of the European languages as the native language (in
the United States), but it's probably the tribal languages," Kuhn said.

And while colleges and universities in Oklahoma, Arizona, New Mexico and
other states have formal language programs, Paul Barton meets every
Monday night with his class of 10 to 12 students to learn the Seneca
and Cayuga languages. (Both are similar to the Iroquois language and
are almost identical.) Barton, the cultural resource representative of
the Seneca-Cayuga tribe, said outside forces like sports teams
schedules and pow wow season sometimes causes a few weeks' break in the
class where students learn words, greetings and how to introduce
themselves and others. But even Barton, who has traveled to New York
and Canada to learn the language and get resources from other tribal
members, doesn't speak the language fluently, and he doesn't seem
hopeful that others in the area will pick up that skill.

Many of the tribe's ceremonies and prayers are still conducted in the
native tongue, helping it to survive, he said. Many of the words can't
be translated exactly into English, and even the simple greeting of
"hello" carries with it deeper meanings.

"At the same time, you're talking about culture, heritage and history,
where we come from and who we are," Barton said. "They're the gifts
from the Creator. In order to retain them, we must keep them in our
mind. The language is a vital part of that."

'An obligation'

A few members of the Ottawa tribe attend a yearly summer camp in
Michigan to study the tribe's language, Anishinaabemowin, said Rhonda
Dixon, the tribe's librarian, historian and archivist. All of the local
tribal members who spoke it fluently have already died, so Dixon and a
few others try to organize an annual class to teach the language. She
said she's been studying it since college, and has some language books
and an Ottawa-English dictionary written by one of the local chiefs in
the early 1980s. Knowing the language is helpful in her job for the
tribe, but there's also a more personal reason for her studies.

"Without the language, there's really no history to the tribe," she
said.

Though her grandparents wouldn't formally teach it to her, Ardina Moore
continues to try to get students together to learn the Quapaw language.
It can be difficult to coordinate the schedules of so many people who
are scattered around the area. But it's learning that must be done in
person, she said. The sounds, inflections and pronunciations aren't
native to English, and Moore said she sometimes has to physically show
students how to make particular nasal or guttural sounds. It's a more
difficult language to learn than French or Spanish, which have words
and influences that are a part of everyday life. Native tongues are far
less prevalent in everyday life, but Moore said it's necessary that she
help her people know who they are and from where they come.

"It's not something everyone can do," she said. "I feel an obligation."
 
2004 The Joplin Globe.