Arizona: Indian tribes hope teaching will save native languages

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Indian tribes hope teaching will save native languages

By LOURDES MEDRANO, Arizona Daily Star July 05, 2006

UA tribal members discuss how to best preserve dialect

TUCSON (AP) - As time treks through Indian country, the words of ancient
songs and sacred rituals crumble under the weight of the dominant
language. "I hear more and more English on the reservation," said Danny
Lopez, who teaches Tohono O'odham at the community college in Sells, the
capital of the Tohono O'odham Nation. "A lot of children don't know our
language anymore." But a language revival of sorts has gripped many
American Indian tribes working to keep their mother tongues vibrant. Just
southwest of Tucson, in the San Xavier District of the Tohono O'odham
Nation, children and their parents learn the language of their ancestors
in special classes. In Nebraska, Ho-Chunk youths absorb an elder's words
preserved in 1,500 audiotapes about life on the reservation. In Montana,
mothers immerse their newborns and toddlers in a new language program.

They are some of the initiatives that were discussed in June at the
University of Arizona, where 20 tribal members hoped to learn how to
preserve declining indigenous languages. "Gathering Talk: Documenting,
Describing and Revitalizing Our Languages" is the theme of the American
Indian Language Development Institute this summer. The residential program
has offered training since 1979 to teachers of indigenous languages. But
institute director Ofelia Zepeda said it is the first time tribal members
have received a fellowship from the National Science Foundation to focus
on language preservation. The fellows represent languages from a number of
American Indian tribes, including Oneida, Ho-Chunk, Blackfeet, Coushatta,
Sahaptin, Southern Ute, Cheyenne, Laguna-Keres, Okanagan, Tohono O'odham
and Akimel O'odham.

The decline of indigenous languages has been well documented, but "of late
we're having more tribes acknowledge it," Zepeda said. She and other
linguists say the reasons for language loss are complex. But they note
that American Indian languages historically were suppressed in government
attempts to assimilate tribes into mainstream society. In 1995, the Alaska
Native Language Center found that of 175 indigenous languages still spoken
in the United States, 155 were moribund because children no longer learned
them. "It's a huge loss," noted Zepeda, who is Tohono O'odham. "Young
people are not learning their language, but that's because the adults are
not using it."

Growing up, that was certainly the case for Don Preston, an artist who
grew up away from the Tohono O'odham Reservation. He returned as an adult
and, since March, has attended a weekly language class in the evening at
the San Xavier District Education Center. "My parents never taught me, and
I always wanted to learn to speak my own language," said Preston, 52.
"It's like going back to my own roots." Jodi Burshia, one of the fellows
at the university, said she also wants to learn the language of her
ancestors. Her ancestry includes Pueblo, Navajo, Sioux, Chippewa and
French Canadian, but she speaks none of the languages.

"I want to know about all of them," said Burshia, who grew up with the
Laguna Pueblo people in New Mexico and now lives in Tucson. Burshia, like
the other fellows, is learning how to write effective grant proposals to
secure outside funding for language documentation when tribal money falls
short. She said she hopes to help collect and preserve letters, tapes and
other documents in her Laguna community. Marvin Weatherwax, a member of
the Blackfeet tribe in northwestern Montana, said the death of elders in
the past two years has meant a drop in the number of fluent native
speakers from 500 to 350. Eighteen new speakers were gained in the past
five years, said Weatherwax, who teaches language at his reservation's
community college. Last summer, the UA fellow said, he determined by
knocking on doors that 1,500 tribal members understand Blackfeet but
rarely speak it. He calls them "sleepers," and his goal is to reawaken
their knowledge about the language so they can share it with youngsters.

"We can't lose our language," said Weatherwax, 59. "Without it, you lose
pretty much your identity, you lose pretty much everything." In the
Ho-Chunk Nation of Nebraska, Caroline Frenchman, another fellow, said
tribal members teach the language to students from preschool to college
two to three times a week. "But that is not enough," she said. Five fluent
speakers remain among the roughly 2,600 enrolled members in the state, she
said. To stir interest in the language, tribal members are digitizing the
1,500 audiotapes that a late elder, Stanford Whitewater, left behind.
Frenchman said Whitewater's recordings contain a wealth of language
lessons and tribal history.

Frenchman, 42, said she studied her native language under Whitewater for
five years before he died at age 90 recently. The language apprentice said
she never learned Ho-Chunk from her grandparents, who raised her. Now, she
herself is learning the language as she tries to save it from extinction.
"There's an old legend that says if the language ever dies, the world will
cease to exist," she said. "I don't want it to die." Marie Sanchez, a
Northern Cheyenne who teaches the tribal language to elementary school
students, characterized as severe the language loss among youngsters in
her northeastern Montana reservation. "Our youngest fluent speaker is 30,"
said Sanchez, 67. To counter the downward trend, tribal members plan to
expand an immersion program for mothers and infants, Sanchez said. "We
want to get them back into learning the language and traditions before
childbirth," she said of expectant mothers.

Seeing so many youths no longer speak Cheyenne saddens Sanchez, but at the
same time, "it makes me want to try harder." Delphine Saraficio, who
teaches O'odham to children and adults in San Xavier, said she sometimes
feels discouraged to see her native language disintegrating. But then she
hears new students such as Preston painstakingly emit the soft, lilting
sounds of O'odham in class. It is the affirmation she needs to keep
working to save her mother tongue.


http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16881886&BRD=1817&PAG=461&dept_id=222087&rfi=6