I wonder if this would be true for Native languages

[Richard Zane Smith]

Thanks Rolland,

i feel it almost every day too..there is a heavy weight dragging on any
attempt to revitalize our language,
 maintain ceremony or even gathering for social dance pot-lucks. One of the
curses is "busyiness"
and it has so infected us, that gatherings, for language practice or study
or even sacred gatherings
must be "fit into a schedule" . I doubt our ancient ancestors were idle
much, but there were some things that
weren't designed to fit in your schedule...you just were to be there.

ske:noh
Richard Zane Smith
(Sohahiyoh)


On Tue, Mar 27, 2012 at 8:26 PM, Rolland Nadjiwon <mikinakn at shaw.ca> wrote:

> **
>
>         Another rant maybe. Perhaps 9/10ths of the unseen iceberg as a
> metaphor, is these languages were never meant to survive in a so called
> 'post colonial' New World. Their intentional destruction is 'fact' well
> known by the survivors and historically documented. Perhaps language loss
> is merely a symptom of why these languages are being lost. Perhaps the
> problem is not even with the 'peoples' but external to them and built into
> the fabric of what has become 'the Americas'. If there is such a great
> moral interest in the survival of endangered indigenous languages and the
> home and community are the conduits for language transmission then the
> family, people and the community must also be repaired from the ravaging
> destruction of both overt, covert and insidious colonialism. Perhaps the
> people and communities must be involved in the development of their own
> language survival programs in a manner which validates their own
> intelligence and worth, culture, cosmology and life paths. There is not
> much point bringing into the communities, 'for the people', a
> pre-formulated pedagogy for language skills when the real problem is their
> total cultural, linguistic and spiritual survival. All of the tribes
> survived with their myriad of languages until 'somebody done somebody
> wrong' and have never identified or corrected that wrong. It must be
> understood, accepted and dealt with that these 'tribal' languages have
> their own 'already there' which is as different from everyone else's
> 'already there'. Their 'already lived in languages' are as different from
> each tribe and the rest of the world as Chinese is from Gaelic. These
> tribal languages have absolutely no 'cognate' relationship to any other
> language than their own dialects and those languages are generated in a
> 'primary orality'. Any linguist must be aware of this...guess I should stop
> here before I am reminded I am off topic again...apologies. There is so
> much more can be said...I live 'inside' this destruction and loss. I deal
> with it every day and not from some evangelical ardor.
>         I agree with many of the points you make Rudy outside the idea
> that institutionalization can be an solution. Institutions have not yet
> provided or even acted on any long term survival, a fact which is becoming
> even more apparent as we move with ever increasing speed toward the demise
> of this present civilization and perhaps even the earth itself. These
> endangered languages are symbiotically tied to the earth and the cosmos.
> Institutions have little if anything to offer them other than jobs teaching
> endangered languages. You cannot expect these peoples to embrace
> institutionalization which has no history of benefits to them...in fact
> documented evidence to the opposite. There has to be something new and
> innovative to accommodate a new and changed environment. Please don't ask
> me what it is...I have been working on it for almost 50 years. My greatest
> successes happened in the mid-60s and early 70s.
>         During the early 70s, I was a coordinator for Keewatinung
> Institute, a cultural, educational and spiritual center for our people in
> our area. We were the very first of our kind in Canada. From that position,
> I had the absolutely fantastic opportunity of coordinating The Indian
> Ecumenical Conference...a gathering of spiritual leaders from as many
> tribes we could get representatives from. It was 'ecumenical' in the
> broader meaning of the term. We had a Steering Committee of elders and
> spiritual leaders to help with the development of logistics and content for
> the first great gathering at Morley, Alberta. During the planning sessions
> over many months and in many locations, the idea of an 'agenda' came up.
> The Steering Committee after thinking on it told us we didn't need an
> agenda. Those of us 'trained' to think 'inside the box' felt we had to have
> plans and objectives and to know what we were going to do. The elders and
> spiritual leaders told us what we would do is to look at how we were 500
> years ago, how we look today and how we want to look in another 500 years.
> So, that was the 'gist' of our getting together. I still think of that
> especially when I hear out tribal councils and politicians speaking of five
> year plans, 10 year plans and sometimes a 20/25 year plan. Our gatherings
> were very, very successful and the spin off is still felt today...and we
> are still at it 40 some years later. You can read about it in a book
> entitled 'Around the sacred fire: a native religious activism in the Red
> Power era : a narrative map of the Indian Ecumenical Conference' by James
> Treat. I am adding a short review if anyone is interested.
>
> *Around the sacred fire*: a native religious activism in the Red Power
> era : a narrative map of the Indian Ecumenical Conference. James Treat<http://www.google.ca/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=inauthor:%22James+Treat%22> .
> Palgrave Macmillan, 2003 - History<http://www.google.ca/search?tbo=p&tbm=bks&q=subject:%22History%22&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0>- 376
> pages
> [image: Front Cover]<http://books.google.ca/books?id=r-0L3IUPDRQC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0>
>
>
>  Around the Sacred Fire is a compelling cultural history of intertribal
> activism centered on the Indian Ecumenical Conference, an influential
> movement among native people in Canada and the U.S. during the Red Power
> era. Founded in 1969, the Conference began as an attempt at organizing
> grassroots spiritual leaders who were concerned about the conflict between
> tribal and Christian traditions throughout Indian country. By the
> mid-seventies thousands of people were gathering each summer in the
> foothills of the Rockies, where they participated in weeklong encampments
> promoting spiritual revitalization and religious self-determination. Most
> historical overviews of native affairs in the sixties and seventies
> emphasize the prominence of the American Indian Movement and the impact of
> highly publicized confrontations such as the Northwest Coast fish-ins, the
> Alcatraz occupation, and events at Wounded Knee. The Indian Ecumenical
> Conference played a central role in stimulating cultural revival among
> native people, partly because Conference leaders strategized for social
> change in ways that differed from the militant groups. Drawing on archival
> records, published accounts, oral histories, and field research, James
> Treat has written the first comprehensive study of this important but
> overlooked effort at postcolonial interreligious dialogue.
>
> The closing review statement may sound like it was a failure...it was not
> or there would be no global indigenous peoples movement and an increasingly
> unified global voice. Treat's book will be the most you ever find on it
> because, it was meant to be that way. Our only paper trails were briefs for
> funding and resulting financial statements. There were no
> native 'political' so called leaders, tribal councils or politicians...they
> didn't even know it was happening...not that any of them would have cared.
> Anyhow, I had best conclude my rant and thanks for listening...if you did
> so. I am turtle clan and usually have slow and sometimes lengthy
> excursions through my own thoughts. megwetch....
>
> wahjeh
> rolland nadjiwon
> _____________________________________
> "Political correctness is a doctrine, fostered by a delusional,
> illogical minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream
> media,
> which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up
> a piece of shit by the clean end."
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [
> mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU <ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>] On Behalf
> Of Rudy Troike
> Sent: March-27-12 7:12 PM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ILAT] I wonder if this would be true for Native languages
>
> I agree with James Crippen's concerns about highly endangered languages:
>
> "There's a dangerous temptation to somehow make schooling into the saviour
> for highly endangered languages. ... Depending solely on education
> institutions to solve language decline just seems to make things worse, not
> better, because it encourages people to *not* take an active role in
> keeping the language alive."
>
> As I noted in a subsequent post, the Navajo bilingual program at Rock
> Point, before it declined, demonstrated that for a Native language, it IS
> possible to develop a thorough K-12 curriculum which matches the English
> curriculum (but includes native cultural and historical content, and even
> in math is sensitive to linguistic features of the language differing from
> or lacking in English). Where there are enough speakers to support the
> effort, it could be possible in communities like the Dakota to restore the
> level of literacy which once existed -- though the window of opportunity is
> rapidly closing down.
>
> But as James said, this cannot be carried just by the schools, since real
> language learning begins in the home and in interpersonal inter- action.
> However, thanks to the tradition of government and parochial schooling,
> many if not most parents are unable to provide that 'home nest' for the
> child. That is why a community effort like that in New Zealand and Hawaii,
> to place young children with older fluent speakers in 'nests' or day-care
> centers (better yet, for a whole summer) can be effective in establishing
> early natural (not formally instructed) acquisition, which can then be
> brought to school and reinforced. A holistic plan is needed which involves
> more than just individual families.
>
> One of the perennial problems in Native language maintenance is that
> 'higher-level' academic competence is non-existent, and community members
> and students perceive that there is 'no use' in learning the language since
> it has no further 'marketplace' value. Attitudes thus play an enormous role
> both in the perspective of the community and of students. Developing
> literacy in the Native language is empowering, and even at advanced (high
> school and college) levels, if academically advanced materials are
> developed, parallel literacy is possible. This is what the Rock Point
> program spectacularly demonstrated, and is showing some effect in Cherokee
> in Oklahoma as well.
>
> The use of Native languages in schools has, as the new Colorado law has
> shown, given institutional recognition to these languages and brought
> Native language speakers into the school setting for the first time.
> So it is not just an either/or situation -- meaningful school instruction
> can provide a mooring-post for communities and families to rally around.
>
> Communities, families, and individuals must ultimately take primary
> responsibility for language maintenance and preservation. It can't, as
> James says, just be pushed off to schools to somehow magically accomplish
> alone. Without motivation, buy-in, and active participation, endangered
> languages cannot survive on their own.
>
>   Rudy Troike
>
>
> -----
> No virus found in this message.
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>
>


-- 
*

"Think not forever of yourselves... nor of your own generation.

Think of continuing generations of our families,

think of our grandchildren and of those yet unborn,

whose faces are coming from beneath the ground."             The Peacemaker,


 richardzanesmith.wordpress.com

**

**

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