Oklahoman, Monday November 8,  2004

Last words: American Indian languages are losing speakers fast

By Judy Gibbs Robinson The Oklahomať

NORMAN - An elderly woman with shaking hands dropped a candle representing the Chiricahua Apache language during a recent ceremony to celebrate Oklahoma's Indian languages.

The candle fell to the floor and went out. Although it quickly was relighted, the moment during the seventh annual Celebration of Indian Language and Culture was symbolic of the status of native languages in Oklahoma at the end of 2004.

Twenty-five native languages still are spoken here, but 10 are just one generation from extinction. And that generation is growing old.
"We are at the greatest period of American Indian language extinction in history," said Dennis W. Zotigh, American Indian research historian at the Oklahoma Historical Society. In September, two or three native speakers of Caddo died, said Alice Anderton, a linguist who directs the Intertribal Wordpath Society, sponsor of the Oct. 22 celebration.
"Time is really running out for some languages," she said.

Although Oklahoma has 21,359 native speakers, 10 tribes have 10 or fewer fluent speakers left, and 15 have fewer than 100, according to Anderton's 2004 count, released in October. "Every time we revise it, the numbers go down and not up," Anderton said.

The decline is not for want of effort, but the effort may be too little, too late for most tribes, experts say. It's been 14 years since Congress passed the Native American Languages Act, which made it federal policy to preserve, protect and promote native languages -- reversing the decades-old policy of trying to stamp them out. In that time, many tribes have initiated language classes. For example, Choctaw is offered in public high schools throughout the Choctaw Nation, at community centers or via the Internet. Comanche is taught at the Comanche Nation College in Lawton. University of Oklahoma students can study Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek and Kiowa. At Oklahoma State University, students can learn Muskogee.

"That's all progress," Anderton said. "But if you look at it in a real hard-nosed way, if you ask how many new speakers of native languages there are, as far as I know, that number is zero." The problem is that high school and college classes will not produce fluent speakers, Zotigh said. The only hope for languages to survive is to get young children speaking them, Zotigh and Anderton said. With that in mind, some tribes, including the Choctaws, have language instruction in their Head Start programs. But Anderton said the 15 minutes a day they can devote to the subject is nearly worthless. "They can teach how to count or to name animals. That's important culturally, but it doesn't save a language, unfortunately," Anderton said.

In Oklahoma, only the Cherokee language, with 9,000 native speakers, has much real chance of surviving because of its language immersion preschool for 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds, Zotigh said. Thirty-four children are enrolled in the program, which gives them eight hours of instruction a day in Cherokee. Are they fluent? "Yes, ma'am," said Gloria Sly, director of the Cherokee Nation's Cultural Resources Center. "They fuss back and forth in Cherokee. They tell and tattle in Cherokee. They do all the little things 3- and 4-year-olds do."

Cherokee language teachers developed an assessment tool to measure the children's annual progress. It worked well for the first two years, Sly said. "This past year, they blew the top off of it. We had to do a revision" because the children already knew far more Cherokee than the test was designed to measure, she said. Until now, the Cherokees had no fluent speakers under age 45, Zotigh said. "This is a very good success story," he said. Other tribes may have trouble following the Cherokee Nation's model, Anderton said.

"The logistics can be daunting. And in many tribes, the elders are so old and feeble, they don't really belong in a preschool because they can't get down on the floor with the children," Anderton said.

Center celebrates heritage

For them, native languages may become a cultural relic -- preserved and studied from writings and recordings. Some of those artifacts will be displayed in the new Oklahoma Historical Center, set to open in November 2005.

Oklahoma's 39 tribes were asked what should be included in the museum's Indian gallery, said Mary Jane Ward, Indian historian at the historical society. They named three topics -- origins, spirituality and language, she said. "That's because language is so important to them," Ward said. Preserving native languages is really about saving Indian cultures, Zotigh said. "Language is the nucleus of Indian culture. We speak to our God in our language. Some tribes even believe that without a name in your tribe, you won't be able to enter the next spiritual world," Zotigh said. LeRoy Sealy, who grew up speaking Choctaw and teaches it at OU, said people without their language are like people with half a heart. "They can't feel that sense of fullness because a part of them is missing," Sealy said.

http://www.newsok.com/print.php?article=1357774            11/8/2004