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History > 2008 > USA > American Indians (I)
Its Native Tongue Facing Extinction,
Arapaho Tribe Teaches the
Young
October 17, 2008
The New York Times
By DAN FROSCH
RIVERTON, Wyo. — At 69, her eyes soft and creased with age,
Alvena Oldman remembers how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school on the
Wind River Reservation would strike students with rulers if they dared to talk
in their native Arapaho language.
“We were afraid to speak it,” she said. “We knew we would be punished.”
More than a half-century later, only about 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive,
and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming’s only Indian reservation, fear their
language will not survive. As part of an intensifying effort to save that
language, this tribe of 8,791, known as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a
new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say
they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers.
“This is a race against the clock, and we’re in the 59th minute of the last
hour,” said a National Indian Education Association board member, Ryan Wilson,
whom the tribe hired as a consultant to help get the school off the ground. Like
other tribes, the Northern Arapaho have suffered from the legacy of Indian
boarding institutions, established by the federal government in the late 1800s
to “Americanize” Native American children. It was at such schools that teachers
instilled the “kill the Indian, save the man” philosophy, young boys had their
traditional braids shorn, and students were forbidden to speak tribal languages.
The discipline of those days was drummed into an entire generation of Northern
Arapaho, and most tribal members never passed down the language. Of all the
remaining fluent speakers, none are younger than 55.
That is what tribal leaders hope to change. About 22 children from
pre-kindergarten through first grade started classes at the school — a
rectangular one-story structure with a fresh coat of white paint and the words
Hinono’ Eitiino’ Oowu’ (translation: Arapaho Language Lodge) written across its
siding.
Here, set against an endless stretch of windswept plains and tufts of
cottonwoods, instructors are using a curriculum based on one used at the Wyoming
Indian Elementary School to teach students exclusively in Arapaho. All costs
related to the school, which has an operating budget of $340,000 a year, are
paid for by the tribe and private donors. Administrators plan to add a grade
each year until it comprises pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade classes.
“This environment is a complete reversal of what occurs too often in schools,
where a child is ridiculed or reprimanded for speaking one’s heritage language,”
said Inée Y. Slaughter, executive director of the Indigenous Language Institute,
a group in Santa Fe, N.M., that works with tribes on native languages.
“I want my son to talk nothing but Arapaho to me and my grandparents,” said
Kayla Howling Buffalo, who enrolled her 4-year-old son, RyLee, in the school.
Ms. Howling Buffalo, 25, said she, too, had been inspired to take Arapaho
classes because her grandmother no longer has anyone to speak with and fears she
is losing her first language.
Such sentiments are not uncommon on the reservation and have become more
pronounced in the five years since Helen Cedar Tree, at 96 the oldest living
Northern Arapaho, made an impassioned plea to the tribe’s council of elders.
“She said: ‘Look at all of you guys talking English, and you know your own
language. It’s like the white man has conquered us,’ ” said Gerald Redman Sr.,
the chairman of the council of elders. “It was a wake-up call.”
A group of Arapaho families had sent their children to a pre-kindergarten
language program for years, but it was not enough. Heeding Ms. Cedar Tree’s
words, the tribe began using Arapaho dictionaries, night classes, CDs made by
the tribe, and anything they could find to help resuscitate the language. In the
end, “we knew in our hearts that immersion was the only way we were going to
turn this around,” said Mr. Wilson, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe.
He was referring not just to the potential for the Arapaho language’s extinction
but to a host of other problems that have long plagued the vast reservation,
which the tribe shares with the Eastern Shoshone.
“Language-immersion schools offer an environment that goes beyond teaching the
language,” Ms. Slaughter said. “It provides a safe place where a child’s roots
are nurtured, its culture honored, and its being valued.”
According to tribal statistics and the United States Attorney’s Office in
Wyoming, 78 percent of household heads on the reservation are unemployed, the
student dropout rate is 52 percent and crime has been rising.
Most recently, in June, three teenage girls were found dead in a low-income
housing complex. The F.B.I. has not yet released autopsy results, but many
tribal members think drugs or alcohol were involved. The deaths left the
reservation reeling. Officials here hope that the school will herald a positive
change, just as programs elsewhere have helped native youth become
conversational in their tribal languages, enhancing cultural pride and
participation in the process. A groundswell of language revitalization efforts
has led to successful Indian immersion schools in Montana and New York.
Studies show that language fluency among young Indians is tied to overall
academic achievement, and experts say such learning can have other positive
effects.
“Language seems to be a healing force for Native American communities,” said
Ellen Lutz, executive director of Cultural Survival, a group based in Cambridge,
Mass., that is working with the Northern Arapaho. At a recent ceremony to
celebrate the school’s opening, held in an old tribal meeting hall, three young
girls sang shyly in Arapaho. Behind them, a row of elders sat quietly, their
faces wizened and stoic, legs shuffling rhythmically as familiar words carried
through the building.
“They are the ones who whispered it on the playground when nobody was looking,”
Mr. Wilson said, referring to the elders. “If we lose that language, we lose who
we are.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following
correction:
Correction: October 20, 2008
Because of an editing error, an article on Friday about a new school in Wyoming
that will teach students in Arapaho in hope of preserving the language described
similar schools in Hawaii incorrectly. They are native Hawaiian language
schools; they are not Indian immersion schools like ones in Wyoming, Montana and
New York.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 23, 2008
An article on Friday about a new school in Wyoming that will teach students in
Arapaho in hopes of preserving the language referred incorrectly to the school’s
curriculum. The curriculum, which will be taught in the Arapaho language, is
based on a curriculum used at the Wyoming Indian Elementary School, a public
school that teaches its students in English and adheres to Wyoming state
education standards. The state did not specifically approve an Arapaho
curriculum for the new school.
Its Native Tongue Facing Extinction, Arapaho Tribe Teaches the
Young,
NYT, 17.10.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/17/us/17arapaho.html
As U.S.
border fence rises,
a tribe tightens ties
Thu Mar 20,
2008
9:01am EDT
Reuters
By Tim Gaynor
CAMPO,
California (Reuters) - As U.S. authorities tighten security on the porous Mexico
border in this election year, some communities have been caught off guard by
government plans to build miles of fencing and barriers.
But members of one Native American tribe whose scattered settlements stud the
rocky highlands of southern California and northwest Mexico, saw the buildup
coming years ago and have turned something they dreaded to their advantage.
"There was a sense among a lot of people that something needed to be done to
prevent us from losing touch ... and so that's what we did," said Mike Connolly,
a councilman with the Campo Band of the Kumeyaay nation.
Expecting the wall to come crashing down on their community, the tribes have
deepened ties, from cultural exchanges to visa regimens that ensure families can
easily cross the U.S.-Mexico divide.
For centuries the Kumeyaay thrived as farmers and hunter gatherers in the
borderlands, where there are now 13 Kumeyaay reservations, or "bands," dispersed
across the rugged highland corner of San Diego County and four further
settlements in Baja California, Mexico.
Their dispersed traditional settlements gave names to many of the cities and
towns on both sides of the international line, including Tecuan, which became
Tijuana, now the largest city on the border, and Otay, an area of trade parks in
southern California.
Members of different settlements in Mexico and California used to cross
informally back and forth over the line to visit their kin for decades, often
bypassing checkpoints and simply hopping over a cattle fence in the oak-studded
highlands east of San Diego,
But as a crackdown on illegal immigration from Mexico placed more border police
and taller steel barriers along the line near San Diego in the 1990s, the
members of the fragmented tribe realized that they needed to take decisive
action if they were to stay together.
"The Kumeyaay were like a broken vase, and we needed the pieces back together
again," said Louie Guassac, executive director of the Kumeyaay Border Task
Force.
MENDING A
BROKEN VASE
Curbing illegal immigration and securing the nearly 2,000-mile (3,200-km) Mexico
border have become hot button topics in the United States, ranking high with
both Republican and Democratic hopefuls seeking to be their party's pick to
replace President George W. Bush in the November election.
Amid demand for action, Washington is seeking to complete 670 miles of new
fencing by the end of the year, but faces resistance from more than a hundred
border landowners in south Texas and opposition from environmentalists who say
the barriers may sever wildlife corridors.
Starting in 1998, members of a newly convened Kumeyaay Border Task Force, sought
to turn a threat to their tribal way of life into a catalyst to ensure their
survival in a fast changing world.
"We thought, let's get these people over here who can help rebuild our nation as
a whole nation, instead of having pieces on both sides of the border," said
Guassac.
Task force movers began by carrying out a formal census of Kumeyaay members
dotted across the north of Baja California, many of whom lived in remote
villages and on large communal farms, called "ejidos," and who lacked formal
tribal rolls.
The census process was carried out under the watchful eye of the Mexican
authorities, and registered 1,300 tribal members, for whom the task force then
obtained Mexican passports to give them mobility.
Following negotiations with U.S. immigration authorities in San Diego, the task
force obtained U.S. laser visas for the new passport holders, which allowed
members to cross to and from California legally through the Tecate port of
entry, and stay for a period of up to six months.
"We wanted to get the artisans and the knowledge keepers to go back forth, and
that's how we got this ball rolling," said Guassac.
SHARING
KNOWLEDGE
As security has tightened along the line in recent years, visits between
settlements on either side of the border have become frequent events, and the
process of knowledge sharing between communities has gathered pace, tribal
authorities say.
"We don't know our relatives there as well as we should ... I think it helped
reconnecting with our people down there" in Mexico, said Paul Cuero Jr., the
chairman of the Campo Band of the Kumeyaay, east of San Diego.
Members on the north side have taught their Mexican kin a traditional gambling
game called "peon," played with dice-like pieces of white and black bone, and
are also passing on an intricate cycle of bird songs celebrating the natural
world, much of which had been lost in Mexico.
Tribal members from the south side, meanwhile, have been able to teach their
Californian neighbors a range of traditional handicrafts including pottery,
basket weaving and agricultural techniques, and have also helped coach their
neighbors in the complexities of the Kumeyaay language.
"People in Mexico are much more fluent speakers," said Conolly. "They grew up
speaking Kumeyaay at home and didn't learn Spanish until they went to school, so
they are really fluent, so that's a good resource."
Now, the tribal authorities would like to explore the possibility of obtaining
working visas for some members on the south side, so that they can come and work
in the tribe's four casinos in California which provide revenue and jobs for
their bands.
They believe that their patient, determined efforts to overcome the obstacles
that tightened border security placed in their path may have lessons for the
U.S. government in its dealings with other tribal communities and landowners on
the border.
"What we have shown is that people who live along the borders are not the
enemies of the government, but can be their valued allies," said Guassac. "They
need to understand that."
(Reporting by Tim Gaynor; Editing by Eddie Evans)
As U.S. border fence rises, a tribe tightens ties, R,
20.3.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1821455020080320
Obama
eyes American Indians
in presidential bid
Fri Feb 1,
2008
7:47pm EST
Reuters
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (Reuters) - Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama
said on Friday the United States has a "special obligation" to help American
Indians and pledged to hold annual summits with tribal leaders if he is elected
in November.
Obama, an Illinois senator who would be the first black U.S. president, told an
audience in New Mexico that American Indians were doing worse than the rest of
the country in areas including health, education, mortality rates, substance
abuse and unemployment.
"There is no doubt that we have a special obligation to try to work with the
tribal leadership and Native American communities to solve some of these
problems," he said.
He said more money needed to be invested in schools and substance abuse
programs, and said he would appoint an official in his White House to work with
tribal leaders across the country.
"As president of the United States I'm not just going to have a Bureau of Indian
Affairs that is off on the sidelines somewhere," he said. "I'm going to have an
annual summit with Native American leaders, tribal leaders. They're going to
meet directly with me."
New Mexico, one of the roughly two dozen states that holds presidential
nominating contests next Tuesday, is home to a large population of American
Indians.
American Indians and Alaska Natives numbered some 4.5 million nationwide as of
July 1, 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Xavier Briand)
Obama eyes American Indians in presidential bid, R,
1.2.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSN0146578620080202
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