Wyoming: Shoshone tribe also looks to preserve language

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Shoshone tribe also looks to preserve language

By DAVID MIRHADI
Star-Tribune staff writer

FORT WASHAKIE -- Wilfred Ferris is proud of his heritage as a member of
the Eastern Shoshone Tribe. He was born in Lander and is old enough, he
says, to remember a time when the language of his elders was spoken far
more frequently than it is by those of his generation. "There was a time
when you always heard our own language spoken in the community," he said.
There was also a time, older members of the Eastern Shoshone said, when
their language, culture and heritage were all but banned from the
classrooms they learned in, to the point that the language their parents
were born with nearly vanished.

"It saddened me," said Pansy St. Clair, a member of the Eastern Shoshone
who was educated in those classrooms. "I didn't ask questions because I
was always afraid to ask." She spoke the language at home, St. Clair said,
but never at her mission school on the Wind River Indian Reservation. "It
kind of mixes you up,"  she said. Like the Northern Arapaho are attempting
to do with the help of a five-year federal grant, members of the Eastern
Shoshone are looking for ways to expand the language to children as young
as three years old, in hopes that the little ones will grow up with the
language and culture their elders might have forgotten.

The Eastern Shoshone Certification Committee is just beginning to recruit
Eastern Shoshone language instructors who would teach children in
preschool programs their native language and culture, and expand it later
to elementary-aged children and their parents. They're also looking to
access money from a federal law passed in December that preserves
languages once frequently spoken by Indians to pay for some of the
instruction. Though the idea is still in its infancy, Ferris said
reinvigorating the Eastern Shoshone language is critical.

"If you have kids who have kids who don't know the language, it's lost,"
he said. Ferris and the committee are exploring all avenues at this point,
he said, including asking Wyoming's congressional delegation and the
Eastern Shoshone Business Council for assistance. One of the avenues for
the program could be the Esther Martinez Native American Languages
Preservation Act of 2006, which, according to the text of the law,
provides three-year grants for the preservation of American Indian
languages and cultures. Ferris said he'd like students in the program to
take classes for five years, from as early as preschool up to the fifth
grade.

The committee is looking to issue a survey of Eastern Shoshone tribal
members to recruit instructors, as well as gauge how well the language is
spoken on the reservation to see if such an undertaking is feasible. Much
like the program at Arapahoe School, the goal is to track how students'
test scores improve once they've been in the immersion school for five
years. "If they learn the language, they'll be better students overall,"
Ferris said.

Native language instruction is given on a limited basis at Fort Washakie
and Wyoming Indian schools, as well as Arapahoe and St. Stephens. The
proposed immersion school would enroll students five days a week, four
hours a day. The program would be free, Ferris said. That meets the
requirements of the Esther Martinez Act, which requires that any such
program operate at least one program in the community it serves, while
teaching instructors in their native language. The program, Ferris said,
is vital to keeping the culture and heritage of the Eastern Shoshone
alive.

"It's being threatened now, and it's close to extinction," said Ferris,
who is learning the language himself, returning to the reservation after
being gone for several years. "What I notice is, this is a language and a
culture that takes a whole lifetime to learn."

http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2007/02/18/news/wyoming/1f585c055a41b6888725728500268294.txt

forwarded from edling-list,

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