Siouan language programs?

[Pamela Munro]

Dear Bob,

I am working with two sets of pedagogical materials on Assiniboine. One
of these is by Doug Parks (currently in the field, so he may not see
your note), but I know Ray DeMallie is involved with the project, so he
may tell you about these materials, which are being used in classes at
Fort Belknap College. I know Doug's goal is to offer a full year of
instruction, though currently I think his lessons only go through about
a semester.

The other set of materials have been developed by Ken Ryan and Bob
Fourstar (non-linguist native speakers) for use in classes at Fort Peck
College. I received these because one of the two students I'm working
through the materials with is the niece of these two gentlemen (who are
half-brothers). The material I've seen would probably be for a little
longer than a semester, so I imagine that it too might be stretched to a
year.

As I have learned from both sides, there is some animosity between these
two language programs, unfortunately (but as you and I know, probably
not surprisingly).

I can't provide you with enrollment figures but if you don't have
another source for these (from Fort Peck) I could probably ask someone.
Let me know if you want this much detail.

For your ears only (sensitive, and I assume evaluation is not the goal
of your report), it's interesting that there are plusses and minuses to
both of these sets of materials. Each of them has different orthographic
problems (in my opinion: when you have a language that is quite easy to
write in a fully keyboardable practical orthography, why not do this??)
-- they use totally incompatible orthographies -- and each has different
pedagogical strengths and weaknesses. My two students and I both wish
that we could wave a magic wand and develop a joint program with all the
good features of both programs.

Anyway, hope this is helpful. I have heard that there are also
(different) Assiniboine materials being used in Canada, but we haven't
seen them.

Pam