“This is our language. It is the sound of the waves crashing on the shore, the sound of the wind in the pines, the rustle of the leaves in autumn. It is the sound of the birds singing in the forest and the wolves howling in the distance. This is our language, from which we obtain life, our means of knowing who we are, this sacred gift, bestowed upon us by our creator.”
GORDON JOURDAIN, Lac La Croix (Ontario)1
How many tribal languages are spoken in North America?
There may have been as many as five hundred distinct tribal languages in North America prior to sustained contact with Europeans. There are now around 180, but the number is shrinking quickly. All world languages are members of families, such as the Germanic or Romance language families. And languages in the same families (like English and German) have some similarities, although they are not always mutually intelligible. There are fifty-six language families in North America and over three times that number in South America. Sometimes Native American languages spoken by groups that are geographically adjacent (like Ojibwe and Dakota) are as different as Chinese and English.
Which ones have a chance to be here a hundred years from now?
There are currently about twenty tribal languages in the United States and Canada spoken by significant numbers of children. They include Ojibwe, Cree, Ottawa, Diné (Navajo), Hawaiian, Tiwa and Tewa (Pueblo), Hopi, Apsáalooke (Crow), Mohawk, and Lakota. But even most of these tribes do not have any monolingual speakers of the tribal language. Usually, English is used for some aspects of daily life (school, job, or social). Even in remote parts of the Navajo Reservation (Arizona), Ni’ihau (Hawaii), or Lac La Croix First Nation (Ontario), where there are enclaves that have 100 percent fluency in the tribal language, mainstream media is coming in via satellite dish and English is starting to become the peer language for some of the youngest age groups. People are worried about the future vitality of tribal languages everywhere in the United States and Canada. In Mexico, some of the thirty Mayan languages have large numbers of speakers (six million total), including significant groups of monolingual speakers, and their future seems certain in some places.
Why are fluency rates higher in Canada?
They aren’t that much higher. Like indigenous communities throughout the Americas, most Canadian First Nations are in language crisis. The missionary activity started early in the colonial experience there, although the residential boarding school system started (and ended) later than in the United States. That timeline, coupled with the geographic isolation of some communities (accessed primarily by floatplane or boat), has helped to keep rates higher in a few areas.
Some communities also have unique circumstances. Manitoulin Island (in the Georgian Bay of Lake Huron) has a large tract of unceded Indian land that provided a higher degree of geographic isolation and thus mitigated some of the language pressure seen in other parts of Ontario. Another example is a large group of Dakota who escaped military attack and persecution in southern Minnesota in 1862 by settling in Canada. Their descendents have been especially tenacious about language revitalization in recent years, creating a living resource for today’s Minnesota Dakota communities in their own language revitalization work.
It seems like tribal languages won’t give native people a leg up in the modern world. Why are tribal languages important to Indians?
In fact, tribal languages do give Indians a leg up in the modern world. The Waadookodaading Ojibwe Immersion Charter School in Reserve, Wisconsin, has for ten years garnered a 100 percent pass rate on state-mandated tests administered in English, and the teachers do not speak to the kids in English until the higher grades. Even wealthy, predominantly white suburban school districts don’t usually score so consistently high. Tribal language education is a powerful tool for the development of everything from cognitive function to basic self-esteem.
Indian people value their languages for many other reasons as well. They are cornerstones of identity, and their use keeps us recognizable to our ancestors. They are defining features of nationhood. The retention of tribal languages tells the world that we have not been assimilated, in spite of five hundred years of concerted effort to achieve that. They are the only customary languages for many ceremonies, a gateway to spiritual understanding. And tribal languages encapsulate unique tribal world views. They define us as distinct peoples.
Why should tribal languages be important to everyone else?
I always tell the deans and president at Bemidji State University, where I work, that when people call for the “Department of Foreign Languages” to be sure to direct them to the English Department. Tribal languages are modern, domestic languages. They are the first languages of this land and the first languages of the first Americans. These facts alone should make their retention especially important. The proven links between academic achievement and cultural and linguistic competency for native youth also indicate that everyone should want the most successful strategies employed to bridge the educational and economic achievement gaps for Indians so that natives can be the best possible neighbors and need fewer entitlements to alleviate poverty, reducing the tax burden for all. But even more important, the survival of tribal languages and cultures is a litmus test for the morality of our nation and its ability to provide for the needs of all of its citizens. If the United States can enable and support the retention of cultural and linguistic diversity, its strength and moral position is obvious, rather than tainted.
What are the challenges to successfully revitalizing tribal languages?
Some tribal languages have no speakers left and very few written resources. The Hebrew language was revived almost two thousand years after it became moribund, but in a form highly altered from its original use and with the help of lots of written material and a large population of people committed to seeing that result. The deck is stacked against many tribes accomplishing something similar. The places that have a good chance of making a successful intervention have a critical mass of fluent speakers and a growing body of resources (books, audio recordings, and computer materials for instruction). The challenges are finding adequate language resources, certified teachers fluent in the target language, and financial support. Often tribal government support is limited, as resources are diverted to entitlements or because tribal leaders do not see the value of preserving their own languages. Lighting the fire for a major revitalization is challenging in many places, even where the potential for intervention is great.
When were tribal languages first written down?
Some tribes did write before European contact. The Mayans had a unique system of writing. The Ojibwe used mnemonic devices written on birch bark to preserve critical information. But the formal writing systems developed for most tribal languages were introduced after European contact. Missionaries wanted the Bible and other religious texts to enter the minds and hearts of Indians as quickly as possible, and some did a lot of work with tribal languages to achieve their goal. Most systems used roman letters. Some, like syllabics (employed for Cree and Ojibwe), used unique symbols. Sequoyah, a Cherokee silversmith, developed a syllabary for Cherokee. His syllabary—the first to be independently created by a member of a nonliterate people—was formally adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1825 and is still employed today, recently being incorporated as a language on the Macintosh and iPhone operating systems.
Sequoyah developed the Cherokee syllabary even though he was not literate in other languages.
Many tribal languages were never written. Why do they write them now?
At one point in time, white people never used cars, so why do they use them now? Because it makes life easier and more efficient. Indians also at one point did not have cars, or electricity, or writing systems for most of their languages. But those things can improve quality of life or ease of communication. Still, there is not universal agreement about the writing of tribal language. The Pueblos are among the strictest in their insistence that the language remain oral and not written. Most tribes accept the writing of tribal languages but may not agree on specific writing systems. In most places, there is an increasing awareness that writing can be a critical part of developing needed resources, preserving critical information, and stabilizing languages.
Why is it funnier in Indian?
All languages have their words comprised of smaller parts of words called morphemes. In English, those morphemes come from the language’s Germanic roots, from Latin, Greek, and many other languages, so everyday speakers of English do not commonly know the roots of words. But the opposite is often true for many tribal languages, whose speakers know the deeper meanings behind their words and can then communicate on two levels—using words and the deeper meaning behind them. That makes it easier to have plays on words, puns, descriptions, and names converge in ways that give greater meaning and humor to many situations.
In Ojibwe, for example, the word giboodiyegwaazonag means “pants” or, literally, “leggings that sew up the hind end.” Ojibwe people must have thought pants were hilariously impractical in a cold-weather climate where one had to take the entire works down to relieve oneself, when someone with a skirt or breech-clout and leggings had quick and easy access. Even today, when Ojibwe people regularly wear pants instead of breechclouts, the word still elicits a chuckle.
How do tribal languages encapsulate a different world view?
Just as morphemes carry possibilities for humor, they also carry deeper and more resonant meanings that shape attitudes. In Ojibwe, for example, the word for an old woman, mindimooye, literally means “one who holds things together,” describing the role of the family matriarch. In English, old woman, elderly woman, and aged woman all speak to age rather than to a more exalted function for elder women in society. Many women dye their hair, get Botox injections or face lifts, and rarely admit to their true age in order to combat the appearance of growing older, because the world view of many English language speakers devalues the role and appearance of older women. But in the Ojibwe language, there is a revered place for elder women, one reflected in core values, actions, and the language itself. You don’t have to tell Ojibwe speakers to respect their elders. The respect is built right in with every word one would use to refer to them. Even the gender-neutral term for elder in Ojibwe, gichiaya’aa, literally means “great being.”