Speakers: Using native languages in prayer, song helps preserve culture (fwd link)

[Phil Cash Cash]

*Speakers: Using native languages in prayer, song helps preserve culture*
By Nancy Wiechec
Catholic News Service

FARGO, N.D. (CNS) -- Native American Catholics are being urged to become
language "warriors" and to help preserve their culture in liturgy and song.

Native language was a key topic at the Tekakwitha Conference held in Fargo
July 23-26, and its diversity was evident in 750 attendees representing
some 135 different tribes.

Beating a native drum, Sister Mary Shiose, a Sister of the Blessed
Sacrament, treated a workshop to a Mass song in Keresan, a language of her
people, the Pueblo Indians of New Mexico.

Lawrence Martin of the Gichitwaa Kateri Circle of Minneapolis and the
former director of American Indian Studies at the University of Wisconsin
in Eau Claire, led a prayer service that included a responsorial psalm in
the Ojibwe language. The response was sung: "Manidoo Aki" -- pronounced "ma
knee do ah key" -- or "The Earth Is the Lord's."

At the conference's closing Mass, the Our Father was sung in a Yupik
language by members of the Aurora Lights Kateri Circle of Anchorage, Alaska.

Native Americans have good reason to be concerned about losing their
languages.

There are 191 native languages in the U.S. and 87 in Canada that are
endangered or already extinct, according to a UNESCO online atlas.

​Access full article below:
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1403126.htm​
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