Wyoming: Arapahoe children walking in two worlds

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Walking in two worlds

By CHRIS MERRILL
Star-Tribune correspondent

ARAPAHOE -- Teacher aide Carolyn Bauer gathers about 15 squirming
kindergarten students onto the rug in front of the teachers chair. They
are a miniature gaggle of alert, bopping faces, many dressed in sweatpants
and sneakers. Bauer, in the manner of a grandmother, readies them for
their language lesson. Everything in the Arapahoe School classroom exists
on an almost Lilliputian scale: low hexagonal tables with tiny
multicolored chairs;  3-foot-high easels for drawing and painting.

The students daily chores are posted on a cork board beside them. Today,
Orlando is the line cleaner and Antonia must report on the weather. Cassie
is responsible for the daily news, and Nizhooni has the day off. Above the
white board are the kindergarten rules: 1. Look and Listen. 2. Be nice.
Maryann Duran strides into the classroom and says, in Arapaho, Hello, good
morning, is everything all right? Its been cold at night. The petite,
gray-haired woman holds a commanding presence. The children fall into
place and pay attention as best kindergartners can. She leads them through
the Arapaho pledge. They sing the Arapaho flag song, the Morning Song, and
then they fall into the days lesson.

Duran is a precious asset to the tribe. Arapaho is her first language. In
her house and with her family she spoke nothing but Arapaho. She is one of
a shrinking minority in the tribe who is still fluent. Our language is
almost dead, she says after the class. Even though English is their
primary language, Arapaho children on the Wind River Indian Reservation
score similarly on standardized tests of academic English as children who
come from the impoverished South, or the barrios of Los Angeles. At the
K-8 Arapahoe School, 100 percent of the children come from poverty, which
is the primary reason for such poor test scores. The secondary reason is
that the English spoken on the reservation is a nonstandard dialect,
specific to the Arapahos who live there. The local vernacular incorporates
occasional Arapaho words and mixes in Arapaho grammar, cadence and syntax.

Although the dialect is as rich and useful as so-called standard English
-- and more useful on the reservation than standard English -- limited
knowledge of academic English can hold a child back economically. It can
keep a child from going to college, and in adulthood it can hinder him or
her professionally. In order to find academic and economic success,
American Indians usually need to learn to walk in two worlds, as the
Mohegan matriarch, Gladys Tantaquidgeon, once explained. This is a process
of learning to navigate two very diverse landscapes, with different rules
and customs -- and, yes, even different ways of speaking English.

Children at a bilingual school, one that values both their indigenous
language and academic English, are beginning this process. With this in
mind, and with the help of a five-year federal discretionary grant through
the No Child Left Behind Act, Arapahoe School has launched a project to
revive the Arapaho language, with the hope of boosting the school's
academic performance. The federal government wanted to find the best way
to reach children with limited English proficiency, said Becky Dechert,
teacher and director of the five-year, $1 million grant for Arapahoe
School. For children on the reservation, research indicated that a
bilingual approach would be best.  The grant itself is geared toward
English-language learners and indigenous speakers.

In order to write the grant and implement the program, Dechert did
extensive investigation into bilingual curricula around the world,
discovering what tended to work and what didnt. She believes that the
bilingual approach should allow students significant improvement in the
coming years. The administration is confident, as well. This will do it,
said Burnett Whiteplume, federal programs director at the school. The
evidence is there. Arapahoe School wants nothing particularly unusual for
its children, Whiteplume said, and he hopes people understand that. Were
working to get our students to perform academically, just like everybody
else."

What were doing is not going to make everybody here fluent in Arapaho. It
will be a start," he said. More importantly, it will improve students
acquisition of, and receptivity to, academic English. During the lesson
with the kindergarten students, Duran holds up a white cup, and they say
"white cup" in Arapaho. She holds up a green plate, a bunch of grapes,
bananas, a red apple. She goes through commands including "hop," "turn
around" and "wave hands," and the children gleefully comply. She says in
Arapaho, Only the girls stand up. All of the girls and one boy stand up,
and the children laugh. One of the girls whispers to him in English, She
said only girls!

When the Arapaho lesson is over, Duran switches to English to give the
students a brief lesson in culture. She says, Remember what I told you
about February? They know that February is the time of year when our
people started moving. They did so for the purposes of hunting. What did
our Indan people hunt? she asks the children. Buffalo! shouts Ruban
Sinclair. Hes up on his knees, wearing a bright blue T-shirt. The rest of
the class repeats what he said, Buffalo! The Buffalo was like our super
Wal-Mart for our people long ago, the teacher says. But nothing was
wasted.

Duran tells the children about how they used the buffalo hide for warmth,
the tongue like a brush, the tail as a whip, the meat, bones, and how they
used the fat to slick down their hair. Modeled after successful programs
in that teach native languages in Wales, New Zealand and Hawaii, the
Arapaho language component of the project is not restricted to school
grounds or school hours. The intention is to foster communitywide
involvement and participation, in conjunction with immersion classes in
school, including weekend retreats and summer camps. According to Dechert,
the key is to encourage the parents and grandparents to learn and use
Arapaho if they dont already.

As of today, Arapaho is classified by linguists as a moribund language,
which means that it is only spoken by people 65 and older, for the most
part, and that if nothing is done to revive it, it will be dead in 20
years. Arapahoe School hopes to do its part to bring the language back
into common use. It comes down to community involvement, Dechert said. The
(revitalization)  programs that had community development worked. To teach
English, the school has adopted an approach similar to techniques and
practices employed by English as a Second Langauge programs. All of the
teachers at the school will receive ESL training and professional
development, and the school will adopt a standardized protocol and common
vocabulary. This helps to be organized and unified in their approach, said
Dechert, who has a master's in teaching English as a second language. ESL
training for the teachers is key.

They need to have a little knowledge about how the human brain acquires a
language, she said, so they can incorporate that into their already good
lesson plans. As for the grant money, it is all predicated on success. We
have to prove that were making a difference if we want to keep getting
funding, she said. The school will have to show quantifiable improvement
in a variety of state and national standardized tests on a yearly basis.
Arapahoe School sits along a barren swath in the center of the Wind River
Basin. It is almost alone out here. There is a white water tower casting a
cone-shaped shadow, a few houses and barns scattered about, the brick
school buildings built in a horseshoe around the parking lot, and rolling
wild grass meadow in all directions.

The valley is semi-surrounded by mountains. A treeless, rust-colored spine
is off to the north, an ashen rim to the east, and the pine-forested Wind
River Range off to the southwest. The school facilities are modern and
well-kept. The windows gleam, and the hallway floors reflect the sunlight.
The white walls are decorated with student-made poster board projects,
with details about Steven the Snakes week ("on Monday Steven ate ants");
students plans ("When I grow up I will be a Doctor"); and pictures of
buffalo-hide teepees and men and women in traditional buckskin dress
pasted under the handwritten heading, "Proud to be Arapaho."

Most striking are the elegant, wall-sized portraits painted with simple
black strokes, of famous leaders including Chief Black Coal of the
Northern Arapaho, Chief Little Shield, their last war chief, and Chief
Washakie of the Eastern Shoshone. The difficulties that students face on
the Wind River reservation are common to American Indian communities
throughout the United States. These kids, as a group, American Indians,
have not done well in school, said Jon Reyhner, professor of American
Indian education at Northern Arizona University. In terms of No Child Left
Behind -- they, as a group, have been left behind.

The reasons are historically based, and common around the world. After
being colonized, indigenous groups are forced to abandon their way of life
in order to get along in the world that is now controlled by the invading
group, Reyhner said. Education is an essential component of the dominant
groups control. You have to give up your language and culture to do well
in school, he said. And you have to do well in school to be economically
successful. When people are forced to give up their language and culture,
it causes the sorts of problems common today on reservations across the
United States, including depression and high suicide rates. The bilingual
approach, like the one being implemented at Arapahoe School, can make a
difference.

I see these kinds of revitalization projects as part of the healing
process, Reyhner said. Through learning their native language, the
children will also be learning the values embedded in the words. Theyll be
learning, in essence, about their traditional, pre-colonial culture --
values like humility, working hard, respecting elders, being responsible
for relatives, Reyhner said. Asked to comment on the Arapahoe School
bilingual project, Reyhner said, Research says that if theyre run well,
kids will learn English better than in the English-only school, especially
in the long run Children at these bilingual schools are better behaved,
healthier, and do better in English once theyve had a chance to learn.

"Unlike popular notions, you can learn two languages and learn them well."
And he hopes that people understand that these types of revitalization
projects are a way of moving forward with dignity -- a way for a tribe to
hold on to its values and culture, while improving the academic
performance of its children. When the children do better in school, the
tribe should do better economically. And in order for that to happen, the
children at Arapahoe School must learn to walk in two worlds.

http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2007/02/18/news/top_story/b8ddb13792bb42778725728500267739.txt

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