SILETZ,
Ore. — Local native languages teeter on the brink of oblivion all over the world
as the big linguistic sweepstakes winners like English, Spanish or Mandarin ride
a surging wave of global communications.
But the forces that are helping to flatten the landscape are also creating new
ways to save its hidden, cloistered corners, as in the unlikely survival of
Siletz Dee-ni. An American Indian language with only about five speakers left —
once dominant in this part of the West, then relegated to near extinction — has,
since earlier this year, been shouting back to the world: Hey, we’re talking.
(In Siletz that would be naa-ch’aa-ghit-’a.)
“We don’t know where it’s going to go,” said Bud Lane, a tribe member who has
been working on the online Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary for nearly seven
years, and recorded almost all of its 10,000-odd audio entries himself. In its
first years the dictionary was password protected, intended for tribe members.
Since February, however, when organizers began to publicize its existence, Web
hits have spiked from places where languages related to Siletz are spoken, a
broad area of the West on through Canada and into Alaska. That is the heartland
of the Athabascan family of languages, which also includes Navajo. And there has
been a flurry of interest from Web users in Italy, Switzerland and Poland, where
the dark, rainy woods of the Pacific Northwest, at least in terms of language
connections, might as well be the moon.
“They told us our language was moribund and heading off a cliff,” said Mr. Lane,
54, sitting in a storage room full of tribal basketry and other artifacts here
on the reservation, about three hours southwest of Portland, Ore. He said he has
no fantasies that Siletz will conquer the world, or even the tribe.
Stabilization for now is the goal, he said, “creating a pool of speakers large
enough that it won’t go away.”
But in the hurly-burly of modern communications, keeping a language alive goes
far beyond a simple count of how many people can conjugate its verbs. Think Jen
Johnson’s keypad thumbs. A graduate student in linguistics at Georgetown
University, Ms. Johnson, 21, stumbled onto Siletz while studying linguistics at
Swarthmore College, which has helped the tribe build its dictionary. She fell in
love with its cadences, and now texts in Siletz, her fourth language of study,
with a tribe member in Oregon.
Language experts who helped create the dictionary say the distinctiveness of
Siletz Dee-ni (pronounced SiLETZ day-KNEE), or Coastal Athabascan as it is also
called, comes in part from the unique way the language managed to survive.
Most other language preservation projects have a base, however small, of people
who speak the language. The Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, for example, which went
online this year, focuses on one of the most widely spoken native languages in
Canada and the Upper Midwest.
The 12 other dictionaries financed in recent years by the Living Tongues
Institute, a nonprofit group, in partnership with the National Geographic
Society — which helped start the Siletz dictionary project in 2005 and now uses
it as a blueprint — are all centered on languages still in use, however small or
threatened their populations of speakers may be. Matukar Panau, for instance, an
Oceanic language of Papua New Guinea, has about 600 speakers remaining, in two
small villages.
Siletz, by contrast, had become, by the time of the dictionary, almost an
artifact — preserved in song for certain native dances, but without a single
person living who had grown up with it as a first language.
There were people who had listened to the elders, like Mr. Lane, and there were
old recordings, made by anthropologists who came through the West in the 1930s
and 1960s, but not much else. Mr. Lane wants to incorporate some of those
scratchy recordings into future versions of the dictionary.
What can also bridge an ancient language’s roots to younger tribe members, some
new Siletz learners said, is that it can sound pretty cool.
“There are a couple of sounds that are nowhere in the English language, like
you’re going to spit, almost — kids seem much more open to that,” said Sonya
Moody-Jurado, who grew up hearing a few words from her mother — like nose
(mish), and dog (lin-ch’e’) — and has been attending with a grandson Siletz
classes taught by Mr. Lane.
“They’re trailblazers, showing the way for small languages to cross the digital
divide,” said K. David Harrison, an associate professor of linguistics at
Swarthmore who worked with the Siletz tribe and the other partners to build the
dictionary. Professor Harrison said he went to Colombia recently, talking to
indigenous tribes about preserving their languages, but when the laptops opened
up, the Siletz dictionary, with its impressive size and search capabilities, was
the focus. “It’s become a model of how you do it,” he said.
When settlers were streaming west in the 1850s on the Oregon Trail and
displacing American Indians from desirable farmland, government Indian policy
created artificial conglomerates of tribes, jamming them into one place even
though the groups spoke different languages and in many instances had little in
common.
The Siletz people were among the largest bands that ended up here on this spit
of land jutting into the Pacific Ocean. By dint of their numbers, their language
prevailed over other tribes, and their dances, sung in Siletz, became adopted by
other tribes as their cultures faded.
“We’re the last standing,” Mr. Lane said.
But the threat of oblivion was constant. In the 1950s, the tiny tribe was
declared dead by the United States — a “termination” from the rolls, in the
jargon of the time. The Siletz clawed back — clinging to former reservation
lands and cultural anchors in songs and dances — and two decades later, in the
mid-1970s, became only the second tribe in the nation to go from nonexistence to
federally recognized status. The Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians now have
about 4,900 enrolled members and a profitable casino in the nearby resort town
of Lincoln City.
School was also once the enemy of tribal languages. Government boarding schools,
where generations of Indian children were sent, aimed to stamp out native ways
and tongues. Now, the language is taught through the sixth grade at the public
charter school in Siletz, and the tribe aims to have a teaching program in place
in the next few years to meet Oregon’s high school language requirements,
allowing Siletz, in a place it originated, to be taught as a foreign language.
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.
September 18, 2007
Filed at 2:44 p.m. ET
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When every known speaker of the language Amurdag gets
together, there's still no one to talk to.
Native Australian Charlie Mangulda is the only person alive known to speak that
language, one of thousands around the world on the brink of extinction.
From rural Australia to Siberia to Oklahoma, languages that embody the history
and traditions of people are dying, researchers said Tuesday.
While there are an estimated 7,000 languages spoken around the world today, one
of them dies out about every two weeks, according to linguistic experts
struggling to save at least some of them.
Five hotspots where languages are most endangered were listed Tuesday in a
briefing by the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and the
National Geographic Society.
In addition to northern Australia, eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and the U.S.
Southwest, many native languages are endangered in South America -- Ecuador,
Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia -- as well as the area including British
Columbia, and the states of Washington and Oregon.
Losing languages means losing knowledge, says K. David Harrison, an assistant
professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College.
''When we lose a language, we lose centuries of human thinking about time,
seasons, sea creatures, reindeer, edible flowers, mathematics, landscapes,
myths, music, the unknown and the everyday.''
As many as half of the current languages have never been written down, he
estimated.
That means, if the last speaker of many of these vanished tomorrow, the language
would be lost because there is no dictionary, no literature, no text of any
kind, he said.
Harrison is associate director of the Living Tongues Institute based in Salem,
Ore. He and institute director Gregory D.S. Anderson analyzed the top regions
for disappearing languages.
Anderson said languages become endangered when a community decides that its
language is an impediment. The children may be first to do this, he explained,
realizing that other more widely spoken languages are more useful.
The key to getting a language revitalized, he said, is getting a new generation
of speakers. He said the institute worked with local communities and tries to
help by developing teaching materials and by recording the endangered language.
Harrison said that the 83 most widely spoken languages account for about 80
percent of the world's population while the 3,500 smallest languages account for
just 0.2 percent of the world's people. Languages are more endangered than plant
and animal species, he said.
The hot spots listed at Tuesday's briefing:
-- Northern Australia, 153 languages. The researchers said aboriginal Australia
holds some of the world's most endangered languages, in part because aboriginal
groups splintered during conflicts with white settlers. Researchers have
documented such small language communities as the three known speakers of Magati
Ke, the three Yawuru speakers and the lone speaker of Amurdag.
-- Central South America including Ecuador, Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Bolivia
-- 113 languages. The area has extremely high diversity, very little
documentation and several immediate threats. Small and socially less-valued
indigenous languages are being knocked out by Spanish or more dominant
indigenous languages in most of the region, and by Portuguese in Brazil.
-- Northwest Pacific Plateau, including British Columbia in Canada and the
states of Washington and Oregon in the U.S., 54 languages. Every language in the
American part of this hotspot is endangered or moribund, meaning the youngest
speaker is over age 60. An extremely endangered language, with just one speaker,
is Siletz Dee-ni, the last of 27 languages once spoken on the Siletz reservation
in Oregon.
-- Eastern Siberian Russia, China, Japan -- 23 languages. Government policies in
the region have forced speakers of minority languages to use the national and
regional languages and, as a result, some have only a few elderly speakers.
-- Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico -- 40 languages. Oklahoma has one of the
highest densities of indigenous languages in the United States. A moribund
language of the area is Yuchi, which may be unrelated to any other language in
the world. As of 2005, only five elderly members of the Yuchi tribe were fluent.
The research is funded by the Australian government, U.S. National Science
Foundation, National Geographic Society and grants from foundations.
