CU researchers help native speakers save history (fwd link)

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CU researchers help native speakers save history

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
June 3, 2008

BOULDER — The Wichita language, once spoken by thousands, has one remaining
voice.

Doris Jean Lamar McLemore, 80, considers it a happenstance that she — the
daughter of an Indian mother and white father — has become the guardian of her
tribe’s language that is precariously close to extinction.

“Ever since I’ve had a memory, I could speak Wichita,” said McLemore, who was
raised by her grandparents. “I never expected to be the last one, though. I can
remember when everyone spoke Wichita, and in our home, we didn’t speak English.”

In 1965, McLemore was among 200 in Anadarko, Okla., who had a fluent command of
the language. David Rood, then a graduate student, came to the small
southwestern Oklahoma city — the “Indian Capital of the Nation” — as an
outsider, taking handwritten notes and using reel-to-reel tape recorders to
begin archiving Wichita words. The complex language showed stark warning signs
that it was headed toward endangerment.


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