Linguist K. David Harrison discusses the importance of language diversity and language revitalization in the face of globalization. He warns against the false choice of globalization that says people must give up their languages.

You can watch it below; The video was orignally posted  at DotSub.com – w website where you can create subtitles for any video in your own language.

There are two language conferences coming up in October, both held in Minneapolis. The CARLA (Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition) Immersion conference will be held Oct. 16-18 with school tours and workshops on the 15th. This year the CARLA conference will have a conference stream specifically for indigenous languages, and will feature speakers from Maori, Hawai’ian and Ojibwe communities.

CARLA Immersion Conference website

The 40th Algonquian conference will be held at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities campus on Oct. 24-26. This is an international meeting for researchers working in the area of Algonquian studies — which includes the Ojibwe language. While the conference website doesn’t yet have the schedule posted, organizer John Nichols showed me a preliminary line up of topics, and they will include:

• Problems and strategies in the analysis, redaction and presentation of native texts,
• Currents in contemporary Ojibwe art, and
• Ojibwe language teaching, curriculum development and research

among others.

This last theme on Ojibwe language teaching, curriculum development and research will be of interest to those working in the language revitalization field. Presenters in this theme include: Keller Paap (Waadookodaading Immersion School), Henry Flocken (Bemidji State U), Adrian Liberty (Niigaane Immersion School), Margaret Noori (University of Michigan), and J. Randolph Valentine (U of WI - Madison).

40th Algonquian Conference website

The Wisconsin State Journal reported yesterday that legislators are considering a move to revive funding for American Indian language development, which ended in 2003. The proposal by Libby Burmaster, state school superintendent, would set aside a yearly amount of $260,000 to be given out in grants of $10,000-$50,000 for language materials development or hiring teachers. The funds would come from the revenue paid to the state by tribes through tribal gaming revenues.

Materials development continues to be an issue for immersion schools and classroom native language programs throughout Indian Country. In Minnesota, a task-force of educators are meeting with the state to dicuss material development needs, and the possibility of a textbook.

Brush up your language skills. There’s a 7-Day Ojibwe Language Immersion Camp at Lac Seul First Nation, 30 kms north of Sioux Lookout, Ontario, August 1st – August 8th, 2008.  Held in an outdoor setting at Lac Seul by the lake.  The teachers will be Lola Goodwin and Pat Ningewance Nadeau (author of Talking Gookom’s Language). Three Lac Seul Elders will also be on site every day.

The purpose of the course is to have students hold simple Ojibwe dialogues with each other and with elders, and to follow ordinary conversations amongst fluent speakers. Fluent fishing guides will take students out for fishing excursions for pickerel and northern pike  as well as boat trips to the main community and beautiful surrounding area.

SCHEDULE FOR THE WEEK

• Aug. 1st  Friday  Day of Arrival and Orientation Period. Survival phrases introduced.
• Aug. 2nd  Saturday  Reviiew of phrases. Weather, Getting to know each other. Kinship.
• Aug. 3rd   Sunday  Getting to know others. Excursion. Commands. At Home. Animals.
• Aug. 4th   Monday  In the Workplace. Occupations, Feelings. Senses. Appearances.
• Aug. 5th   Tuesday  Going to town, store, office, restaurant.  Food. Table talk. Cooking.
• Aug. 6th   Wednesday  Visiting in a hospital. Being at a Conference. Placenames.
• Aug. 7th  Thursday  Camping, Geography. Preparing fish and other natural food.
• Aug. 8th    Friday  Packing up, saying goodbye. Self-assessment. Debriefing in English.

Tuition fee: $350.00 per person covers meals, and materials for 7days. Travel and camping gear are your responsibiility. Please advise us on dietary restrictions and whether you will need a ride from Sioux Lookout and the Kejick Bay landing.

For information, email books@patningewance.ca or p_nadeau@canada.com. Call (204) 774-8007. Fax (204) 489-3869. Also inquire at Frenchman’s Head (Lac Seul First Nation): (807) 582-3499.

Miigwech Teresa Reed for passing this information on to us.

I wanted to add to Monique’s post about Brendan Fairbanks blog and myspace page. Brendan teaches the third-year Ojibwe language classes at the University of MN, Twin Cities campus, and also runs a weekly language table in Minneapolis. He’s an incredibly observant person when listening to elders, often picking up on subtle differences in speech that many people miss.

His blog posts contain many of his insightful observations of the nuances of Ojibwe speech. I also enjoy the pragmatic aspect of his posts which lend themselves to use in language practice drills. He’s very good at breaking the various parts of speech down into digestible chunks and gives good examples of everyday usage.

We encourage you to check the posts out and use them in your everyday practice of Ojibwemowin.

Minnesota is celebrating 150 years of statehood. Some Minnesotans that is; for many American Indians, the sesquicentennial is a painful reminder of language loss in the last 150 years due to European immigration and federal policies of assimilation, alottment and relocation.

In an MPR article today, Red Laker Roger DesJarlait speaks about how learning the Ojibwe language is helping in the healing process: “First the individual heals, and then you heal the family and then you heal the community.”

***

Interestingly enough, a different proposal for Minnesota statehood was advocated for just 16 years before Minnesota statehood in 1858. This proposal by Wisconsin Governor Doty would have made Minnesota an all-Indian state where white settlement was forbidden. The treaty wasn’t altruistic, but promoted as way to assimilate American Indians and provide a place for other states to send their unwanted Indians. Listen to the MPR interview with a state historian on the Doty Treaty.

Ojibwe culture, language and identity are all tied up together in a complicated knot. It is difficult as you follow the thread of one, to disentangle it from the other two; perhaps impossible, as they are all part of the same thread that runs through one’s life. What left of Ojibwe culture without the language, Ojibwemowin?

“Our cultures and our languages — as unique, identifiable and
particular entities — are linked to our sovereignty. If we allow our
own wishful thinking and complacency to finish what George Armstrong
Custer began, we will lose what we’ve managed to retain: our languages,
land, laws, institutions, ceremonies and, finally, ourselves. And to
claim that Indian cultures can continue without Indian languages only
hastens our end, even if it makes us feel better about ourselves.” writes Ojibwe author David Treuer in a recent Washington Post article (If They’re Lost, Who Are We?).

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines culture as “the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.” Dictionary.com calls it “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.”

If Ojibwemowin ceases to become a feature of everyday existence, if the knowledge, world view and beliefs of generations which are contained within the very words of the language are lost, what then is left to distinguish Ojibwe culture from Ojibwe heritage or ethnicity? It’s a complicated and sobering question.

His brother Anton Treuer read a portion of a story from the book Living our Language during an NPR interview in April (Letter Men: Brothers Fight for Ojibwe Language). The story entitled, “Gaawiin gii-wanitoosiimin gidinwewewinaan” by Joe Auginaush speaks of how it is not the people who are losing the language, but rather the language that is losing the people.

In listening to him read that story, I saw in my mind a thread running through the twisted tangle of life, and the challenge to grab that thread and follow it back to the language, lest we become lost.

The Canadian government officially apoligized to First Nations, Inuit and Metis peoples this week for a century of abuse endured at boarding schools. From the 1870s through the 1990s, an estimated 150,000 Native children were forcibly removed from their homes and communities, and taken to government funded residential schools whos purpose was to eradicate Native culture and language.

The apology is being accompanied with a Truth and Reconciliation council and compensation for the approximately 80,000 survivors still living.

• Harper ’sorry’ for native residential schools, Tronoto Star
• Natives welcome PM’s apology: Government sorry for abuses at country’s residential schools, Barrie Examiner
• Saying sorry: PM’s apology heals old wounds, Windsor Star

The sad tale of abuse and neglect suffered in Canada parallels what happened to Native children in the United States during the same time frame. In fact, the Canadian boarding schools were modeled on the U.S. system of residential schools for American Indians. The abusive treatment of children in residential schools has been responsible for the loss of indigenous languages, particularly in the U.S. where they were compounded by federal allotment and relocation policies. Sadly, an apology from the United States government seems unlikely.

Many were taught to feel shame for speaking their language, and refused to teach their children the language as a way to protect them from the same pain.

As the indigenous language revitalization movement gains momentum, one of the challenges for many in learning their language is healing the internal pain left from internalizing the oppression of generations. There are many varied strategies for language acquisition, and perhaps this healing can be thought of as an emotional strategy. Healing the past and learning language anew together can become a way to reclaim idenitity as Indian people and to take back the power and strength of Indian people that was once denied.

The LaCrosse Tribune in Wis. just published a series about indigenous language revitalization.

• Tribes work to reverse corrosive effects of boarding schools
• Tribes on their own when it comes to saving languages
• Nearly lost, Indian languages struggling to make comeback
• ‘Through love, we lost the language’
• Languages offer window into human mind

One of the challenges is funding for immersion schools. Most schools are funded through a combination of federal and private grants, tribal funding and sometimes state funding. In the second article, “Tribes on their own…”, Justin Stein writes:

“Several federal agencies together provided roughly $850,000 in
grant money this year to native groups in the state to help fund a
tribal immersion school, train tribal language teachers and digitally
record their languages. That sum, though significant, is much less than
the money the government once spent on Indian boarding schools that
sought to kill off those languages.

The state received
$168.5 million in payments from tribal gambling casinos over the two
most recent years, but spends none of that on tribal language programs.
In contrast, not counting federal money, the state is expected to spend
$2.6 million this year to protect threatened wildlife such as the
trumpeter swan and the Karner blue butterfly.”

The third article in the series, “Nearly lost, Indian languages struggling to make a comeback,” our fellow cohort member Lisa Clemens was quoted as a teacher at Waadookodaading Ojibwe immersion school. Kudos to you Lisa for all the hard work you do.

Or why we are so concerned about revitalizating for the Ojibwe language.

Language loss world-wide has reached staggering proportions as half of the estimated 6000 world languages are no longer transmitted to new generations of speakers. For indigenous languages in North America, the situation is especially critical. Krauss reported that only 13 percent of the 135 indigenous languages still spoken in North America are being learned by new generations of speakers (as cited in Crawford 1995, p. 18). (For more language loss stats, see the MIT Indigenous Language Initiative page.)

According to Fishman:
“In our day and age, it is definitely the globalisation of pan-Western culture ( and popular consumer culture) that is the motor of language shift. And since American-dominated globalism has become the major economic, technological and cultural thrust of worldwide modernization and Westernisation, efforts to safeguard threatened languages… must oppose the very strongest processes and powers that the world knows today.” (p. 6)

As global commerce draws the world closer, the language of commerce becomes the language of power – literally the language used by governments, media, employers and educators. Threatened languages are relegated to the roles of non-power positions of family, friends and community. (Fishman 2001) According to Hinton (2001), many people shift to the dominant language because, “A group that does not speak the language of government and commerce is disenfranchised, marginalized with respect to the economic and political mainstream.” (p. 3)

While globalization is increasingly pressuring languages worldwide, indigenous languages in the North American have endured more than 500 years of targeted eradication. European colonizers seized upon the eradication of indigenous languages as a primary method of empire building as early as 1492 (Crawford 1995). Systematic efforts at indigenous cultural and language eradication continued under United States federal policies and Christian missionary efforts.

The legacy of brutality endured by American Indian children from the 1800s through the 1960s boarding school period, and the removal of children to schools far distant from their homes (McCarty & Watahomigie 1998) continues to affect the vitality of indigenous languages. The assault on indigenous languages has left many American Indian people convinced that their language is second-best (McCarty & Watahomigie 1998; Crawford 1995), resulting in a situation in many communities where elders refuse to speak the language.

The movement to revitalize American Indian languages faces unique challenges political, emotional and geographic challenges. Due to past U.S. federal policies of termination, relocation and land appropriation, tribal people are scattered and tribal nations are fragmented onto reservations separated not only by distance, but also by each having an independent, sovereign tribal government. According to Hermes (2004), the boundaries make working collaboratively on language issues difficult. Remaining fluent speakers are rapidly aging, and often separated from each other by hundreds of miles.

Because American Indian languages have no national status and no cohesive geographic land base, there is nowhere else in the world to go to learn these languages (Hinton 2001). This stands in contrast to immigrant speakers to the United States, who have a homeland to return to – a place to go to learn their ancestral language. The strong push in the United States for “English only” initiatives fails to recognize the differences between immigrant and indigenous languages. And despite the passing of the Native American Languages Act in 1990, funding for language programs has been meager (McCarty & Watahomigie 1998). Scare resources force language programs to compete with health care, housing and economic development for tribal funding (Crawford 1995).

Perhaps the greatest challenge for American Indian language revitalization is combating the loss of culture and identity that accompany language loss, and the emotional stumbling blocks created by internalized racism and colonization. According to Hinton (2001), language loss is part of the oppression and disenfranchisement of indigenous people, so closely is it tied to usurpation of indigenous lands and the loss of whole cultures. Fishman (2001) writes that specific languages are related to specific cultures and their attendant cultural identities at the level of doing, being and knowing. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis supports this, stating that thought is governed by language. Language then is tied not only to its specific vocabulary and grammatical structure, but intrinsically to a world view and way of thinking.

Stephan Graymorning (1999) puts this into personal terms when he says:
“I am really worried if we lose our language we won’t be able to think in the Arapaho way. If we lose our language we will lose our ceremonies and ourselves because our life is our language, and it is our language that makes us strong.” (p. 2)

The survivors of attempted cultural genocide often strive to put pieces of their identity or culture back together, with language being key to that. However, being punished for speaking their language, many American Indians internalized the devaluation of the language in their own minds (Crawford 1995), leading to a present situation where many languages have “closet speakers” who choose not to speak because of the pain associated with it. Many saw their language as the reason for their suffering at school (Hinton 2001). “Language acquisition has become the strongest antidote I know of to fight internalized oppression,” writes Hermes (p. 59).

The state of Ojibwemowin

The Ojibwe language has approximately 10,000 speakers, mainly around in the Great Lakes area of Canada and the United States. There are fewer fluent speakers in the U.S., and most are elders in their 60s, 70s and 80s. While the situation for Ojibwemowin is better than for some other indigenous languages, such as the Dakota, who have only 10 speakers left in Minnesota, it is still critical.

Many dialects of Ojibwe are in danger of completely dying out. And the death of each fluent speaker is felt keenly. The knowledge, perspective and lifeways that are lost with the language are irreplaceable. But more than that, the identity of Ojibwe people is at stake. (For another perspective on this, see David Treuer’s essay: A language too beautiful to lose.)

What we are about here is standing against that rushing current of language loss. We know it’s a hard, upstream paddle. But we also know that it’s possible to succeed. It begins and ends with each one of us speaking Ojibwemowin each day. Ahaw, anishinaabemotaadidaa!

This week, we will be featuring some guest who are doing the work of Ojibwe language revitalization. We caught up with a number of them at the Minnesota Indigenous Language Symposium held May 12-13 in Duluth, MN. The work that they’re doing is exciting and inspiring, and we can’t wait to share it with you.