Soboba enlist kiosk to revitalize language (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Soboba enlist kiosk to revitalize language

Posted: March 09, 2005
by: James May / Today staff
http://www.indiancountry.com/content.cfm?id=1096410473

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - The Soboba Band of Luiseno Indians may have found a
tool to help them revitalize their language. The tribe recently
installed a language kiosk in their sports center that will hopefully
boost that effort.

''We had a great opportunity to use technology to appeal to a larger
audience,'' said Soboba tribal historian Charlene Ryan.

The 860-member Soboba Band is one of six federally recognized bands of
Luiseno Indians. A seventh Luiseno group at San Luis Rey currently
lacks federal recognition. In recent years, the Luiseno language has
declined to the point that just a few elderly speakers were spread
throughout the bands.

Ryan reports that Soboba no longer has any members, even among its
elderly population, that would be classified as fluent speakers. A few
elders in their 70s and 80s can still speak a broken version of the
language and know some vocabulary.

This trend is not specific to Soboba or to the Luisenos as a whole.
Language decline is a nationwide problem; however, in California the
decline has been the most precipitous. Most tribes and bands in the
Golden State are down to a few elderly speakers if they are lucky. Many
tribes have already lost their last fluent speakers, many just in the
last few decades.

It is often difficult to gauge just how much elders understand, since in
their younger days they often were punished for speaking their own
languages at boarding schools. Parents, being fiercely protective of
their children, forbade them to speak the language outside the home and
a sense of shame and fear permeated their experience with language.

Countering the trend, the various Luiseno factions have made one of the
more concerted efforts to revive their tribal languages. Many of the
Luiseno bands are gaming tribes and have at last found the money and
resources to start a major revitalization effort.

At Pechanga, another of the Luiseno bands, the tribe uses language
immersion as part of the regular elementary school curriculum and a
non-tribal linguist has taught classes there.

The various Luiseno bands have begun to hold what they expect to be
regular consultations with each other on language issues and
standardization, and the bands are proving receptive to the idea. For
example, all the bands agreed to only incorporate new words and
coinages if the other bands were all in agreement.

Smaller-scale efforts were made at Soboba. The tribe offers sporadic
language classes at their tribal offices. The most recent lessons were
taught last fall and Ryan reports that classes will begin again ''in
the next few weeks.''

School vacations make summertime the best time in which to take classes.
Ryan said last summer tribal members ranging from preschoolers to elders
attended the classes. The classes were heavily attended by elementary
and high schoolers on summer break.

Soboba and the other Luiseno tribes also put their efforts into making a
CD ROM of their language, and for Soboba this proved a revelation.

IconNicholson, a high-tech firm based in New York City, visited Soboba
last year. The company previously designed an interactive kiosk for the
Eastern Pequots in Connecticut. Though the Pequot kiosk primarily dealt
with their tribal history, company representatives told Soboba
officials that they could adapt the kiosk to deal with language.

''We view this continued opportunity to help sustain the Luiseno
language as particularly significant,'' said Janine Salo, vice
president

of IconNicholson's Indian Country Technology Services.

The company built the kiosk and turned it over to the tribe, which will
maintain the machine. Once the machine was built the tribe began adding
content, taking words and their sounds from the CD ROM. Tribal families
scoured their photo albums for images and icons for the machine as
well. The tribe said the offerings on the machine will be expanded from
time to time.

The kiosk uses a touch screen format and is divided into five
categories. When a category is selected, a list offering words and
phrases drops down. For example, on the word for ''brother'' is a
picture of a young man, and when touched the machine then sounds out
the English and Luiseno words for ''brother.''

Though Soboba originally wanted to have the kiosk in the schools, the
tribe decided they would reach a broader audience by locating the kiosk
in their sports complex.

Ryan thinks the machine will prove a valuable tool in the tribe's
language revitalization effort. In fact, Ryan thinks it's a vital
element of cultural necessity.

''The re-birth of the language is the re-birth of culture.''