Teaching Indigenous Languages

This September/October 2007 NABE News article argues that efforts to make English the Official Language of the United States and ban bilingual education are misguided and go against traditional American beliefs in freedom, including the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech.

This July/August 2006 Language Learner article criticizes the assimilationist rhetoric of Arizona congressman J.D. Hayworth and emphasizes the importance of American Indian traditional values for the health of American Indian students and communities.

This November/December 2005 Language Learner article describes the negative effects of colonial assimilationist schooling on American Indians and the healing effects of efforts to revitalize Native languages and cultures.

This summer 2001 Cultural Survival Quarterly article examines the "English Only" Movement in the United States as exemplified by the passage of Proposition 203 in 2000 in Arizona and Proposition 227 in 1998 in California and its efforts to suppress minority languages and cultures. It gives an argument for language freedom and what is being lost through efforts to suppress indigenous languages and cultures. The whole summer 2001 issue of Cultural Survival Quarterly is devoted to endangered languages.

Drawing from papers presented at the five Stabilizing Indigenous Languages symposiums held since 1994 and other sources, activities are recommended for language revitalization at each of Joshua Fishman's eight stages of language loss. The role of writing in indigenous language revitalization is discussed, and two types of language use, primary and secondary discourse, are described. The conclusion stresses the importance of motivating language learners and using teaching methods and materials that have proven effective in indigenous communities. This article is the introduction to Revitalizing Indigenous Languages (1999). This paper is also available from ERIC: ED428923

Reviews research on maintaining and renewing American Indian languages and gives a rationale for the importance of maintaining them in terms of Native students' cross-cultural understanding. Joshua Fishman's theoretical paradigm for reversing language shift is summarized and tribal and national language policies are reviewed. Early childhood, elementary, secondary, and tribal college native language efforts are described along with Navajo and Yup'ik examples of school-based native-language maintenance/renewal efforts. Based on the research of tribal native-language renewal efforts and current research on second language teaching, specific suggestions are given for maintaining and renewing native languages. 1995 Bilingual Research Journal article. A PDF version is at http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/pubs/nabe/brj/v19/19_2_reyhner.pdf.

Summarizes the history of government policy towards American Indian languages from colonial times to the passage of the Native American Languages Act of 1990 and links language policy to the academic success of American Indian students in terms of a subtractive English-Only curriculum that is designed to assimilate Indian children into the dominant culture of the United States versus an additive English-Plus curriculum that recognizes and values American Indian traditional cultures. 1993 Journal of Educational Issues of Language Minority Students article.

This 1990 paper describes a model K-12 Navajo/English maintenance bilingual program at Rock Point Community School in the Navajo Nation. This article is also available from ERIC: ED354772.