NATIVE TONGUES: If They're Lost, Who Are We? (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

NATIVE TONGUES
If They're Lost, Who Are We?

By David Treuer
Sunday, April 6, 2008; Page B01

LEECH LAKE, Minn. I am not supposed to be alive. Native Americans were supposed
to die off, as endangered species do, a century ago. And so it is with great
discomfort that I am forced, in many ways, to live and write as a ghost in this
haunted American house.

But perhaps I am not dead after all, despite the coldest wishes of a republic
that has wished it so for centuries before I was born. We stubbornly continue
to exist. There were just over 200,000 Native Americans alive at the turn of
the 20th century; as of the last census, we number more than 2 million. If you
discount immigration, we are probably the fastest-growing segment of the U.S.
population. But even as our populations are growing, something else, I fear, is
dying: our cultures.

Access full article below:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/04/AR2008040403216.html