Native educators struggle to fund language programs

[Susan Penfield]

*Native educators struggle to fund language programs - Sunday, April 15,
2007*

*By JODI RAVE of the Missoulian*

http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2007/04/21/jodirave/rave70.txt


 BOZEMAN - Verda King gets excited when she talks about teaching youths in a
nearby public school how to speak the Cheyenne language from her office at
the Dull Knife Community College.

"This class has done a marvelous job," said King of her 12 students. "We've
translated nursery rhymes, like Humpty Dumpty. And it's been fun. We've
learned Cheyenne songs and I'm learning my own language."

She's teaching 12 students in an elementary school in Colstrip by satellite
from a tribal college classroom on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in
southeastern Montana.

  King spoke during a panel presentation at the 26th annual conference of
the Montana Indian Education Association where teachers across the state
discussed tribal language preservation efforts.

Language teachers like King are fervent in their need to preserve the
language, and believe they can make a difference. But they face many
obstacles - no K-12 curricula and a lack of state support - that effectively
prevent them from teaching students their Native languages like Cree, Gros
Ventre, Kootenai and Nakota.

Typically, the number of new language speakers remains stagnant.

-- 
____________________________________________________________
Susan D. Penfield, Ph.D.

Associate Director, Center for Educational Resources in Culture, Language
and Literacy (CERCLL)
Department of English (Primary)
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI)
Second Language Acquistion &Teaching Ph.D. Program (SLAT)
Department of Language,Reading and Culture
Department of Linguistics
The Southwest Center (Research)
Phone for messages: (520) 621-1836


"Every language is an old-growth forest of the mind, a watershed of thought,
an ecosystem of spiritual possibilities."

                                                          Wade Davis...(on a
Starbucks cup...)
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