Indians hope saving languages will revitalize cultures (fwd)

Wed Apr 6 17:56:49 UTC 2005

Posted on Wed, Apr. 06, 2005

Indians hope saving languages will revitalize cultures

AMERICAN INDIAN ISSUES: Native language revitalization organizers hope
to learn lessons from New Zealand's Maori.

BY STEVE KUCHERA
NEWS TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/local/11322769.htm

CARLTON - American Indians and the Maori of New Zealand live nearly half
a world apart. But they've shared the experience of watching their
languages approach extinction.

Some Maori, however, have worked for more than 20 years to revitalize
their language.

"Without it, we have no culture. ... We are no one," Timoti Karetu,
director of the Institute of Excellence in the Maori Language, said
Tuesday.

Karetu and two other Maori attended the three-day Minnesota Indigenous
Language Symposium to share their experience with more than 200
attendees.

"We brought them here because we are in the embryonic stages of language
revitalization," said Gabrielle Strong, program officer for the Grotto
Foundation.

The foundation co-sponsored the symposium with Fond du Lac Tribal and
Community College and the University of Minnesota Duluth. In 2001, the
Twin Cities-based foundation began a 15-year native language
revitalization effort.

"Language is more than words," Strong said. "It's about whole systems of
knowledge and philosophy that are embedded in that language. There's
healing in language. We have a lot of desire to revitalize the
languages."

But the desire is not matched evenly by skills. The symposium's goal is
to showcase model native language revitalization programs.

"There's great things going in small pockets all over," said Amy
Bergstrom. "This is a start -- coming together and laying out the path
for our efforts."

Bergstrom is director of the Gekinoo'imaagejig (the Ones Who Teach)
Teacher Education Program, a collaboration between Fond du Lac Tribal
and Community College and UMD. The schools developed the program to
recruit and train American Indian students interested in becoming
teachers. The students earn a teaching minor in the Ojibwe language.

Linguists estimate that 500 years ago, American Indians in what was to
become the continental United States spoke more than 300 languages.
About half survive. Some were lost when tribes were exterminated.
Others vanished or faded as schools and missionaries worked to quash
native languages and cultures.

A 1995 survey of reservations in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan found
418 fluent Ojibwemowin speakers, none younger than 45. Most were elders.
And fewer than 30 fully fluent Dakota speakers remain in Minnesota,
according to the Dakota Ojibwe Language Revitalization Alliance.

"Much of what happened to you happened to us," Karetu said.

By the 1970s, fewer than 20 percent of Maori could speak their language
fluently. Most of those were elderly.

Maori began efforts to keep their language alive in the late 1970s. In
1987, New Zealand declared Maori an official language. By 1997, more
than 55,000 children had learned Maori.

But saving a language requires more than classroom lessons, Karetu said.

"If you want your language to survive, use it," he said. "It will
survive by being spoken all the time."

When the Institute of Excellence in the Maori Language began, Karetu
began the practice of requiring Maori be spoken all the time,
everywhere.

"Drown the children in language," he said. "Expose children to the best
speakers, which for you is probably the grandmothers and grandfathers
-- like it was for us."

Pania Papa, an institute member accompanying Karetu, noted that one of
the island nation's three television channels is now Maori.

"That's a wonderful thing for our kids," she said.

In addition to the Maori, symposium attendees heard from people involved
in language revitalization efforts across Minnesota, in Hawaii, Montana
and New Mexico.

STEVE KUCHERA can be reached at (218) 279-5503, toll free at (800)
456-8282, or by e-mail at skuchera at duluthnews.com.