Preservation Project group meets (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Preservation Project group meets

Apache Moccasin
Published on Wednesday, June 7, 2006 9:43 AM MST
http://www.silverbelt.com/articles/2006/06/07/apache_moccasin/apache02.txt

The first public meeting of the San Carlos Apache Language Preservation
project was held on May 30, with 16 people in attendance, from all
areas of the reservation, and ranging in age from teenagers to elders.

Members of the San Carlos Apache community are increasingly concerned
about the decline in people's ability to speak and understand the
Apache language. This meeting was the first of a series of community
meetings to be held around the reservation regarding language
preservation.

The program is supported by a grant from the Administration for Native
Americans. According to Joyce Johnson, the program coordinator, it is
vital that the loss of Apache language be addressed soon. “If you go
from the oldest members of the community to the youngest members of the
community,” she said, “you go from a group of people who are all fluent
Apache speakers to a group of people who are all English-only speakers.
That's how quickly it can all disappear - in the span of one lifetime.”

Johnson said the statistics revealed in the 2000 census are particularly
alarming. While two-thirds of the adult population on the reservation
speaks at least some Apache, fully 85 percent of Apache children under
18 are monolingual English speakers. According to the census, different
areas of Gilson Wash have the highest and lowest rates of children with
some Apache language ability. The highest appears to be in the Front
Line area, the lowest being in Beverly Hills.

The Language Preservation Office is currently preparing a door-to-door
community language survey in order to understand more completely the
status of Apache language on the reservation. The survey will also ask
how people would like to address the issue of language preservation.
Johnson is currently visiting the University of Massachusetts at
Amherst to begin this work. David Samuels, a professor at the
university, said, “It is crucial for the community to have more
detailed information than we can get from the census. The census is not
designed to help communities identify fluency in the Apache language.”

The next community meeting will be held on Tuesday, June 13, at 10 a.m.
in the education conference room in San Carlos. Anyone who is
interested is urged to attend.

Ms. Johnson can be contacted at the tribal planning department on San
Carlos Avenue, or phone her at (928) 475-2331, email
ndee_biyati at yahoo.com.