Post by blackcrowheart on Jun 10, 2008 12:13:25 GMT -5
A Campaign To Save American Languages
By Flaye Flam
June 02, 2008
In the Lakota language, a single word expresses the awe and connectedness
with nature that some feel looking at the Northern Lights. In Euchee, the
language makes no distinction between humans and other animals, though it does
differentiate between Euchee people and non-Euchee.
And the Koasati language of Louisiana provides no word for good-bye, since
time is seen as more cyclical than linear. To end a conversation, you would say
something like, "This was good."
More than 300 American Indian languages flourished in North America at the
time of Columbus, each carrying a unique way of understanding the world.
And despite an often-brutal campaign to stamp them out, more than half of
those languages have survived, including the Delaware Valley's Lenape, though
the pool of speakers has dwindled.
Can they be saved? Last month, representatives from Indian groups around the
country met with linguists and other academics in Philadelphia to see what
they could accomplish together.
"We're talking about an emergency situation," said Richard Grounds, a speaker
of the Euchee language and co-organizer of the meeting, held at the
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology.
The youngest person to grow up speaking Euchee as a first language is now 78,
said Grounds, a professor at the University of Tulsa. The rest are in their
80s.
Grounds learned from his own family how Indian languages were systematically
squelched. His grandmother, he said, grew up speaking Euchee, but, as a
teenager, was forced into an English-only boarding school where teachers would
wash her mouth out with soap when she uttered a word of her native tongue.
In the last few years, he has been racing to coax all the words and wisdom he
can from tribal elders.
And yet, at the meeting, a number of young people spoke and even sang in
Euchee, Lenape, Miccosukke, Lakota, Miami, and other endangered languages -
something that Grounds said gave him hope.
The situation in North America is part of a worldwide erosion of language
diversity. At stake are not just words. For native communities, language embeds
traditions, religion, medicine and geography, as well as a more general way
of seeing the world.
"It's not only about the use of [medicinal] plants, et cetera, carried in a
language," said Grounds, "but literally ways people have of knowing
themselves."
Some languages, for example, have no way to give directions using left and
right, because their speakers navigate with a less self-centered view of the
world than we do, said Leanne Hinton, a linguist at the University of
California, Los Angeles. They think more in terms of local geography.
Ryan Wilson, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, said the quality his people
value most in a man is something like courage, but includes a degree of
independence and perseverance. It has no direct English translation, and with the
word may go the idea and the reason it once mattered.
Wilson, who is president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages,
said there was also a word that describes the feeling that you cannot live
without someone. It is similar to love, but something is lost in that
translation.
Languages seem to be going extinct just like species of plants and animals.
That comparison holds up pretty well, except that languages can occasionally
be brought back to life.
Growing up in Ohio, Daryl Baldwin said he was told that the language of his
Miami tribe was already extinct, but he did not accept that. As an adult, he
set about digging up all available records and teaching himself.
"It changed the way I thought," he said about learning the language after 29
years of speaking nothing but English.
The Miami language contains wisdom about which foods are healthful -
something that today might have helped Indians avoid being disproportionately
affected by Type 2 diabetes, Baldwin said. Today, he's working to perpetuate the
language as director of a program called the Myaamia Project at Ohio's Miami
University.
In the Maskoke language, time and space are seen very differently from
Western perception, said Marcus Briggs-Cloud, who is a member of the Maskoke
Nation of Florida and a theology graduate student at Harvard. In English, time is
more linear, whereas it's more cyclical in Maskoke. There's a cyclical nature
to space as well, and some ceremonies focus on the renewal of space.
While the academics see these languages as windows into the human mind, the
American Indians see them as a way to reconnect to their heritage and to the
ancestors who used them.
"In the next few years, my tribal community will either see our language
restored to a new generation, or we will bury it forever in the grave of our
last few elderly speakers," said Jacob Manatowa-Bailey, of the Oklahoma-based
Sauk language.
Although they seem to have common needs, Grounds said, the academic linguists
interested in American Indian language have not always worked in the best
interests of the people they study. The academics use funds to catalogue and
dissect languages that might have been used to revive them, he said, and
linguists sometimes compete for access to the few remaining elders, whose time
might be better-spent teaching the language to young people who would use it.
As a member of the Euchee tribe and a historian of religion with a doctorate
from the Princeton Theological Seminary, Grounds straddles both worlds. Some
of the problem, he said, is a defeatist attitude, in which academics think
the best they can do is catalogue languages that are destined to die. "For the
community point of view," he said, "this doesn't have much value."
One of the most endangered languages is Lenape - once the dominant language
of what's now eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and parts of New York and New
Jersey. While a few Lenape people remained in this area, most were forced to
scatter in various directions - westward to Oklahoma and north into Ontario -
and only a tiny fraction of those identifying themselves as Lenape continued
to speak the language.
The conference brought Lenape from diverse places. Some of those coming from
Canada said they didn't know until relatively recently that there were other
Lenape still living in the Delaware Valley.
Shelly DePaul, a teacher and musician in Kunkletown, said she was one of just
three fluent Lenape speakers left in Pennsylvania. But now, she said, they
are joining forces with Lenape from elsewhere to teach the language to
children.
"There didn't seem to be a lot of hope a few decades ago, but now things are
reviving," she said. "It's very exciting."
By Flaye Flam
June 02, 2008
In the Lakota language, a single word expresses the awe and connectedness
with nature that some feel looking at the Northern Lights. In Euchee, the
language makes no distinction between humans and other animals, though it does
differentiate between Euchee people and non-Euchee.
And the Koasati language of Louisiana provides no word for good-bye, since
time is seen as more cyclical than linear. To end a conversation, you would say
something like, "This was good."
More than 300 American Indian languages flourished in North America at the
time of Columbus, each carrying a unique way of understanding the world.
And despite an often-brutal campaign to stamp them out, more than half of
those languages have survived, including the Delaware Valley's Lenape, though
the pool of speakers has dwindled.
Can they be saved? Last month, representatives from Indian groups around the
country met with linguists and other academics in Philadelphia to see what
they could accomplish together.
"We're talking about an emergency situation," said Richard Grounds, a speaker
of the Euchee language and co-organizer of the meeting, held at the
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology.
The youngest person to grow up speaking Euchee as a first language is now 78,
said Grounds, a professor at the University of Tulsa. The rest are in their
80s.
Grounds learned from his own family how Indian languages were systematically
squelched. His grandmother, he said, grew up speaking Euchee, but, as a
teenager, was forced into an English-only boarding school where teachers would
wash her mouth out with soap when she uttered a word of her native tongue.
In the last few years, he has been racing to coax all the words and wisdom he
can from tribal elders.
And yet, at the meeting, a number of young people spoke and even sang in
Euchee, Lenape, Miccosukke, Lakota, Miami, and other endangered languages -
something that Grounds said gave him hope.
The situation in North America is part of a worldwide erosion of language
diversity. At stake are not just words. For native communities, language embeds
traditions, religion, medicine and geography, as well as a more general way
of seeing the world.
"It's not only about the use of [medicinal] plants, et cetera, carried in a
language," said Grounds, "but literally ways people have of knowing
themselves."
Some languages, for example, have no way to give directions using left and
right, because their speakers navigate with a less self-centered view of the
world than we do, said Leanne Hinton, a linguist at the University of
California, Los Angeles. They think more in terms of local geography.
Ryan Wilson, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, said the quality his people
value most in a man is something like courage, but includes a degree of
independence and perseverance. It has no direct English translation, and with the
word may go the idea and the reason it once mattered.
Wilson, who is president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages,
said there was also a word that describes the feeling that you cannot live
without someone. It is similar to love, but something is lost in that
translation.
Languages seem to be going extinct just like species of plants and animals.
That comparison holds up pretty well, except that languages can occasionally
be brought back to life.
Growing up in Ohio, Daryl Baldwin said he was told that the language of his
Miami tribe was already extinct, but he did not accept that. As an adult, he
set about digging up all available records and teaching himself.
"It changed the way I thought," he said about learning the language after 29
years of speaking nothing but English.
The Miami language contains wisdom about which foods are healthful -
something that today might have helped Indians avoid being disproportionately
affected by Type 2 diabetes, Baldwin said. Today, he's working to perpetuate the
language as director of a program called the Myaamia Project at Ohio's Miami
University.
In the Maskoke language, time and space are seen very differently from
Western perception, said Marcus Briggs-Cloud, who is a member of the Maskoke
Nation of Florida and a theology graduate student at Harvard. In English, time is
more linear, whereas it's more cyclical in Maskoke. There's a cyclical nature
to space as well, and some ceremonies focus on the renewal of space.
While the academics see these languages as windows into the human mind, the
American Indians see them as a way to reconnect to their heritage and to the
ancestors who used them.
"In the next few years, my tribal community will either see our language
restored to a new generation, or we will bury it forever in the grave of our
last few elderly speakers," said Jacob Manatowa-Bailey, of the Oklahoma-based
Sauk language.
Although they seem to have common needs, Grounds said, the academic linguists
interested in American Indian language have not always worked in the best
interests of the people they study. The academics use funds to catalogue and
dissect languages that might have been used to revive them, he said, and
linguists sometimes compete for access to the few remaining elders, whose time
might be better-spent teaching the language to young people who would use it.
As a member of the Euchee tribe and a historian of religion with a doctorate
from the Princeton Theological Seminary, Grounds straddles both worlds. Some
of the problem, he said, is a defeatist attitude, in which academics think
the best they can do is catalogue languages that are destined to die. "For the
community point of view," he said, "this doesn't have much value."
One of the most endangered languages is Lenape - once the dominant language
of what's now eastern Pennsylvania, Delaware, and parts of New York and New
Jersey. While a few Lenape people remained in this area, most were forced to
scatter in various directions - westward to Oklahoma and north into Ontario -
and only a tiny fraction of those identifying themselves as Lenape continued
to speak the language.
The conference brought Lenape from diverse places. Some of those coming from
Canada said they didn't know until relatively recently that there were other
Lenape still living in the Delaware Valley.
Shelly DePaul, a teacher and musician in Kunkletown, said she was one of just
three fluent Lenape speakers left in Pennsylvania. But now, she said, they
are joining forces with Lenape from elsewhere to teach the language to
children.
"There didn't seem to be a lot of hope a few decades ago, but now things are
reviving," she said. "It's very exciting."