Last fluent speaker of Wichita tribal language preserves what's left (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Last fluent speaker of Wichita tribal language preserves what's left
In the end, one woman passes on what's left

12:00 AM CST on Sunday, January 20, 2008
By PAUL MEYER / The Dallas Morning News
pmeyer at dallasnews.com

ANADARKO, Okla. – The silence can't be far off now, Doris knows. She'll die and
an old Indian language will die and the world will move on slightly smaller
than before.

No, she never expected to be the last one, the fair-skinned illegitimate
daughter of a Wichita woman and white father. But everyone just kept
disappearing: her mom, Mae, and brother, Newton, and tribal elders like Bertha
Provost and then Vivian McCurdy five Decembers ago.

Now it's just her, Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, the 80-year-old last fluent
speaker of the Wichita language, driving alone through the dense fog of an
early November morning to preserve what's left. Like most Fridays of late, she
left her small house behind a budget motel before 8 a.m., rattling in a white
Ford Escort wagon down a two-lane highway to the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes
complex.

Full article link below:
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/stories/DN-wichita_20met.ART0.State.Edition2.383793f.html