Anumpa Achukma/Good News

Language Loss Can Be Reversed

2006.03

This is a newsletter dedicated to reporting the successes in revitalizing endangered languages worldwide. Share your good news with us by sending us an article about your program or current activity in revitalizing an endangered language.

Please forward this newsletter to anyone who might be interested.

                                                                                                                                               

Putting ourselves first

 

 

Earlier this month, I had the joy of visiting the Cherokee Nation’s (of Oklahoma) children’s immersion school. (You can see photos from that trip at this blogspot--http://nmdreamin.blogspot.com)  Along with a select group from the 34th Annual Symposium of the American Indian, I observed two classrooms of three and four-year-olds and one kindergarten classroom.

 

In the three-and-four-year-old classroom, I saw a print-rich classroom, rich in examples of the Cherokee syllabary. Children were engaged in beginning reading, singing, and storytelling. Classrooms included elders and males—something that many pre-school programs lack. As expected, children did not respond to the English spoken to them, this indicating the inappropriateness of English in this classroom.

 

The kindergarten classroom was not as print enriched, and the focus seemed to be more on “school-type” of activities. Children read in unison from the board, sang songs, and practiced writing syllabary. As this class advances, so will the program. At the same time, one of the high schools is creating a program. It is hoped that within five years the two programs will meet so that these children can continue their education via Cherokee throughout their thirteen years of education.

 

Later, a Muskoke woman voiced her concern that children in immersion programs would lose out on English.

 

At my presentation, a young Cherokee man, who attends Arizona State University, told that many of his Navajo counterparts stated that they were glad they did not grow up speaking Navajo: They did not want the stigma, associated in areas close to the Navajo Nation, with English spoken with Navajo overlays. A Navajo woman in the audience said she understood that situation well, and that was part of why she had moved to Oklahoma—to avoid those attitudes.

 

In March, I visited a Head Start classroom at Santo Domingo Pueblo. For the most part, Pueblo languages are not written (An exception is Simon Ortiz’s book The Good Rainbow Road, which is dual language in English and Keres with a Spanish version at the end. Simon is from Acoma Pueblo.). The teacher told me that she always tried to give the children the Keres word after giving them the English word.

 

In an essay published in 1995, I begin this way “I grew up speaking English, but English is not my language. It is the language of my conquerors, and my speaking it serves to remind me and others that I am of a conquered people.” (For the complete reading, go to http://weberstudies.weber.edu/archive/archive%20B%20Vol.%2011-16.1/Vol.%2012.3/12.3Gregory.htm

 

I think we have to be like the salmon—we must know that we have to swim upstream to survive.

 

I teach a Cultural Studies class at a community college. The one thing that distinguishes the Native American students from the white students is their ability to speak their own language, their knowledge of their own culture. Their Hispanic counterparts who have no grounding in Spanish are envious. Most white people do not know their own roots, and they suffer accordingly. Why imitate this rootlessness? We know that it only leads to loss.

 

English is an international language. Our children will not lose anything by only gain. It is a little like crabs in a tub, waiting to be boiled—the other crabs, who only speak one language, try to pull any crab who reaches for something more back down into that tub.

 

As people, we have a right to our own languages. We need to put ourselves first. Let the English speakers fend for themselves.

                                                                                                                                               

Dr. Christine Sims

Dr. Sims from Acoma Pueblo has worked with the native languages of New Mexico for most of her adult life. For many years she held summer linguistic institutes for the native people of New Mexico to help them maintain their languages. In those days, the emphasis was on bilingual education. Today, the emphasis has shifted to language revitalization.

Now, she works with LINA, The Linguistic Institute for Native Americans (LINA). It is a New Mexico based organization committed to providing quality training services to Native American tribes and language communities on issues of language planning, language teaching, and issues of language maintenance and revitalization. LINA works with the American Indian Education Institute at the University of New Mexico to provide a forum for local and regional discussions covering a broad range of American Indian education topics and issues.

Dr. Sims works with community members and stresses that each community must generate its own solutions. For more information about her work, contact Dr. Christine Sims, UNM College of Education, Department of Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies. (505) 277-3175. Fax (505) 55206112. Email: simsacoma@aol.com

                                                                                                                                               

More Online Materials and Courses

http://www.nativeweb.org/resources/languages_linguistics/native_american_languages/

                                                                                                                                               

Nahuatl Language and Culture Workshops

Mapitzmitl offers these workshops. You can contact him at pazehecatl@hotmail.com. You can view video footage and photographs of Kalpulli Ehecatl (Community of the Wind) at http://kalpulliehecatl2.blogspot.com.

                                                                                                                                               

The Early Childhood Department of SIPI (Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute), coordinator—Harriet Marmon, is adding an emphasis on native language revitalization in all its courses. The purpose of the program is to graduate students who are completely bilingual and bicultural in both their own languages and cultures and the language and culture of Academia.

Send your success story to us at holabitubbe@gmail.com

                                                                                                                                               

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Ho Anumpoli! is a New Mexico non-profit organization. For more information about us, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli

                                                                                                                                               

For previous issues of Anumpa Achukma, go to http://www.oocities.org/hoanumpoli/anumpa.html

 

George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.

Choctaw/Cherokee

Fulbright Scholar