Last hope for native languages (fwd link)

[phil cash cash]

Published - Sunday, June 01, 2008

Last hope for native languages
By JASON STEIN | Lee Newspapers

Note: This is the first in a three-day series by the Wisconsin State Journal
about declining native languages, “Down to a whisper.”

BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. — In the country of the white pines, by the waters of
Lake Superior and the banks of the Wisconsin River, the voices are dying one by
one.

The first languages of Wisconsin, the vessels bearing ages of American Indian
history, song, medicine and prayers, could be as little as a generation away
from an all-abiding silence. Languages that are grafted to the land and that
together once counted tens of thousands of native speakers in the state, now
have only an aging few here.

Without unprecedented action, the state’s tribes will test the Ho-Chunk belief
that the fate of a people is tied to their native tongue.

Access full article below:
http://www.lacrossetribune.com/articles/2008/06/01/news/06language01.txt