Indian-owned business helping to save dying languages (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Indian-owned business helping to save dying languages
Original speakers are fast diminishing

Sam Lewin 11/17/2004
http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=5525

With a new study showing that American Indian languages are being lost
at an alarming rate, the work of an Indian-owned business has become
even more relevant.

Experts say that 25 Native languages are still spoken in Oklahoma, but
10 of them are only one generation from extinction. The reason is that
elders who speak the languages are dying out.

Swifteagle Enterprises may have the answer, marketing a product called
TRAILS, an acronym for Teaching, Restoring and Archiving International
Languages Software. Swfiteagle is co-owned by Hanoi Horton Crews, an
enrolled member of the New York-based Shinnecock Indian Nation. Crews
and her husband, Jim, developed TRAILS because the Shinnecock have lost
all speakers of their native tongue.

"I wanted to work with the Shinnecock because they have no speakers left
and haven't since the 1800's," Jim Crews told the Native American Times
from the company's headquarters in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. "We
developed a language education program and we made our initial
presentation to the Mashantucket Pequot. We did some improvements on
it. It was originally a very rudimentary program comparing English and
Native words and we improved it so we could teach any Native language
in the world. This is an ideal program for tribes. We can archive
words, do illustrations-the whole schmear."

Swiftgeagle officials made a pitch to Shinnecock tribal officials
earlier this year. The company has also attracted the interest of
non-Indians, receiving request for information from as far away as
Europe.

According to the Intertribal Wordpath Society, Oklahoma has 21,359
Indian language speakers, but 10 tribes have 10 or fewer fluent
speakers and another 15 have fewer than 200.