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hammcock · 4 months ago

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check out this essay i wrote

Native Americans have endured a great amount of hardships for the past several centuries. They have been the target of genocides of multiple types, from outright extermination campaigns in the early days of settler-colonialism, to the culturally genocidal assimilation campaigns of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They have been forced from their lands several times throughout our shared history into increasingly small plots that the United States government has called reservations, though there is no guarantee that these places will always be reserved for them. Even while living within the reservations, they were not granted any sort of sovereignty. During the period of attempted assimilation, Native American children were taken from their homes and placed in the care of various residency schools. The exterminations, the displacements, and the assimilation attempts have left a highly damaging impact on Native communities. As early as the 1700s, displacements led to the loss of languages, and as many Native traditions are passed down orally, histories of entire nations have been lost to time.

Languages are vital parts of a cultural or ethnic group’s identity. Each language carries with it its own concepts, ideas, and stories. Being around people who speak the same language builds on a sense of community and belonging. If a language is lost, then the people who spoke that language have lost what was once a central part of themselves. Sometimes, as is the case in the United States, the loss of a language is the actual goal of the state. It can be used as a means of oppressing, or assimilating a group of people that the state may deem dangerous or unwanted. In the first section of this paper, I am going to discuss the role that federally operated Indian Residency schools had and continue to have in the loss of Native American languages, then I will discuss how loss is continuing today, and finally revitalization and prevention efforts.

Part One: Residency Schools and Forced Assimilation

Native American languages began to die out and disappear during the early days of colonization in the American continent. Trade, dependence, and the increased presence of European language speakers forced many Indigenous people simply to switch over to those languages. After the Americans won their independence and began to spread out across the continent, the process began to happen much more quickly. During a period of American history known as the Indian Wars, which spans from the 17th into the early 20th century, colonial expansion westward across America saw the displacement and genocide of several Native American nations and tribes.

Those who survived the Indian wars were herded onto reservations, ever-shrinking plots of land that were set aside for the tribes that were unfortunate enough to lose their conflicts against the US government. Within these reservations, the federal government allowed Christian missionaries to set up schools with the intention of assimilating Native American children into American culture, meaning that they were intending to teach children that they were lesser than white Americans and that they needed to learn English.

Attendance of these schools were voluntary at first, with them mostly being located in sparsely populated western territories. However, in 1898, attendance became compulsory and federal officials were empowered to remove students from their homes, with resistance to these attempts being met with the withholding of supplies that were essential to the survival of these often impoverished peoples (Booth 2010). This compulsory attendance policy separated a large part of the young generation of Native Americans away from their elders, and they were forced to miss out on crucial aspects of their own cultural education. Students were frequently punished for speaking in their own languages, often mixing children of different tribal backgrounds together to make communication in their own language more difficult, and upon learning English, most forgot their native language entirely (Booth 2010).

Children who performed well in these residency schools would go on to become “show Indians” for the government and were used in various programs to show the progress that was being made in their assimilation (Gram 2016). These were the children who would, usually out of necessity, play along with the government’s education programs, switch to English, and more or less adopt the Anglo-American cultural norms. For their efforts, they would be rewarded with the privilege to perform in various pageants, parades, and other shows that were advertised by saying that these Indians were able “talk, sing, and learn,” and that they were “docile and obedient” (Moses 1999).

Residency schools continued to operate on the basis of assimilation well into the 20th century, and their impacts are still felt by Indigenous elders today. The post traumatic experience of the people who attended these schools is perpetuated through the generations to the point that, even though the boarding schools are no longer operated as they used to be, the effects of them continue to affect the younger generations today (Duran and Duran 1995). From personal testimonies, we can see that, indeed, the effects of living in these schools and experiencing forced assimilation was incredibly damaging to Indigenous people. The students in these schools literally had their languages beaten out of them, or had their mouths washed out with soap whenever they were caught speaking anything other than English, and that these events had caused so much mental damage to people that they refused to teach their languages to their own children. (Colmant et al. 2004)

The beating out of their own languages was a clear attempt at the broader cultural genocide of Indigenous people. The majority of Native American culture had been passed down through the telling of oral histories and mythologies. By separating the young from their parents and other elders, the Bureau of Indian Affairs was, even if it was out of ignorance, separating the young generation from their histories and stories. Without these things, the young Native Americans would become depressed while in school, and that depression would continue even after returning home. It continued into adulthood, when these children became the elders, and the effects would prevent these important traditions from being passed on.

Part 2: Loss in the Modern Day

Language loss continues today all across the world, and it is projected that 90% of the world’s languages will go extinct within the next 100 years. (The Language Conservancy 2020). The languages of the world are an important aspect of the world’s diversity, and each language carries its own unique ideas, concepts, phrases, and stories. Most Indigenous languages in the United States are spoken by only a few thousand people. Most Native Americans speak English as a first language, and there are a lack of meaningful ways for people to learn their heritage language. Ideally it would be done in an environment of immersion, but in most places these are unlikely to be available, and learning a language in adulthood often presents frustrations that outweigh the motivation to learn. (Abbott and Metoxen 2012)

The majority of these languages only have a few thousand speakers, primarily the elders, and lack permanent speaking communities. As discussed in the previous section, many of the elders in the nations don’t want to pass on their languages to the younger generation. They had internalized the trauma to the point where they saw their own language as a liability for their children and grandchildren. The younger generations who can speak the languages do so with the knowledge that English is the dominant language in the world of education in America. It is their own dominant language. Most Native Americans only know their language in so much as they are aware of the ritual usages, but the meaning of these words can be lost over time if they do not have a full understanding of their language (White 2006).

Another important factor that many Native American communities lack is the funding. The federal government offers grants to these communities so that they can set up language learning programs, but the terms of these grants are very limiting. An article by Rebecca Nagle (2019) explains that these communities are struggling to keep their languages alive, but lose funding within a few years of receiving it. Most of the people who are interested in operating these language preservation programs are not lawyers and do not know how to appeal for grants. With the vast majority of Indigenous languages falling out of use and edging close to extinction, and the United States’ very expensive part in that process, many people feel that there should be more money dedicated to these programs. Another matter entirely is getting people to attend these programs. Ardina Moore, a speaker of the Quapaw language, teaches lessons to children at her tribe’s museum, but only one family is mentioned as attending regularly, a grandmother, mother, and a daughter (Nagel 2019).

Indigenous continues well into the modern day, often as a result of practices that date back to the late 20th century. The impact of residency schools, displacement, and genocide have left a scar on Indigenous communities that will take a lot of time and effort to mend, if they can be mended at all. Attempts at slowing down the crawl toward disuse and extinction for these languages are arduous and are unlikely to be fruitful unless the federal government is willing to provide stable funding for them. However, it’s not all hopeless. There are several programs that have seen great success, and even instances where the language continues to thrive.

Part 3: Revitalization and Preservation against Language Shift

There are ongoing attempts within Indigenous communities to revitalize and preserve their heritage languages, though as discussed in the last section, these attempts often face high difficulties. In some places in America, though, there are still some communities in which there are viable language speaking communities, such as Pueblo that have begun to organize events that encourage the learning and use of their language among the younger generation of the Pueblo people (Sims 2005). There are also modern schools that teach Indigenous children their language in an immersive environment, like those for the Cherokee in Oklahoma and North Carolina. Navajo, the most widely spoken Indigenous language in America, currently has immersion programs and schools within their reservation, but still has seen a large amount of language shift among its youth (Spolsky 2002). The efforts continue anyway, and revitalization efforts have begun to spring up across the country as people become interested in preserving or reviving their culture.

For most Indigenous communities, it is unlikely that there will ever be a situation in which their heritage language becomes the primary language in daily use. The expanded infrastructure, prevalence of media, and American education systems that Indigenous people have come to rely on have made it nearly impossible for them to escape the language shift to English. Most revitalization efforts accept that learning a heritage language will be a second language education, which is unique in that second language education is primarily targeted toward foreign people, while these are people who should be native speakers under ideal circumstances (F. White 2006).

Some revitalization efforts begin in early childhood, like those efforts to encourage learning the Cherokee language. Some begin in the pre-school years, which has shown to be beneficial in helping children understand the language well before they’re able to speak it (Peter 2007). The Cherokee immersion programs are seen as a great starting point, but as both the immersion schools in Oklahoma and North Carolina have a very limited capacity, and the language in both places is endangered, it is unlikely that these will be sustainable efforts to preserve the language. A common problem is that the schools lack the funding necessary to reach out to all of the people who would be interested in the programs and catering to all of them.

Regardless of the difficulties, these programs continue to struggle on. It has become almost essential for local bands to try to take the education of their youth into their own hands because the government’s education system doesn’t work very well for them. There are some Indigenous leaders who believe that being immersed in their heritage languages are the best means for children to become educated, and that it shows that the Indigenous people of America have potential outside of the American way. (Johansen 2004) Most Indigenous languages today only have a few thousand speakers, but because of these immersion programs, a decent handful are below the age of 35. This is, at least, a small improvement from what the situation was for many of them a few decades ago.

Conclusion:

The loss of Native American languages has a history that goes back even to the earliest days of colonization. The introduction of certain diseases, conflicts, and displacement were just the beginning for a lot of these people and their cultures. Things only continued to get worse as the United States became more and more powerful, gaining the upper hand against the Indigenous and placing them under a form of stewardship that assumed responsibility to control their rights.

With this authority they created schools and made them compulsory, forcing people to send their children. At these schools the children were abused and mistreated. They were told that their languages were savage, beat them if they used them, and forced English upon them. As we can see, this process was effective at removing entire generations of people away from their Native cultures. The attitude of savageness was then internalized and continued the cycle onto the next generation, even those who did not attend the residency schools. This almost ensured that the languages would be lost.

Language loss continues today as the Elders pass on and many people do not have the resources to attempt to preserve their languages. Those who do get it from federal funding find it very difficult for them to keep it. Others still find it difficult to even get the federal funding in the first place. Chief among the reasons for language loss in the modern day is that English has become so dominant, even within the boundaries of reservations, that the younger generations have made the shift over to that as their dominant language.

The situation for Indigenous languages seems hopeless, and it still continues to trend downwards. Even the Navajo language, which is the most spoken Indigenous language in America, is in steady decline. However, over the past several decades there has been a resurgence in programs that are dedicated to the revitalization of these languages. Some are more successful than others, but these efforts have prevented languages that were in steep decline from disappearing completely. The Cherokee language is considered endangered, but it is now the focus of several programs to be taught as a second, and even first, language.

It’s unclear what the future holds for Indigenous languages. Even with the revitalization programs, they seem to still be declining. Language shift is a large factor in this. The role that the government has to play in the work done to preserve languages is also a contested issue. Some people would like to see the government pay more money into these programs, as they spent a lot more money trying to destroy them (Nagle 2019). Others feel that reliance on Western institutions has failed them and isn’t the way to move forward (Johansen 2004). From what I can see, the best solution would be to provide enough money to be able to educate as many young children in these languages as possible. Even if the education is as a second language and incomplete, the knowledge that you belong to a culture that sounded a certain way can still be very powerful, and may even lead to that language’s adaptation, further development, and continued survival in the 21st century.

Bibliography

Abbott, Clifford, and Loretta Metoxen. 2012. “Oneida Language Preservation.” The Wisconsin Magazine of History 96 (1): 2–15. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24398962.

Booth, Tabatha Toney. 2010. “Cheaper than Bullets: American Indian Boarding Schools and Assimilation Policy, 1890-1930.” Native American Symposium 8 (1). https://www.se.edu/native-american/wp-content/uploads/sites/49/2019/09/NAS-2009-Proceedings-Booth.pdf.

Colmant, Stephan, Lahoma Schultz, Rocky Robbins, Peter Ciali, Julie Dorton, and Yvette Rivera-Comant. 2004. “Constructing Meaning to the Indian Boarding School Experience.” The Journal of American Indian Education 43 (3): 22–40.

Duran, Eduardo, and Bonnie Duran. 1995. Native American Postcolonial Psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Gram, John R. 2016. “Acting out Assimilation.” American Indian Quarterly 40 (3): 251. https://doi.org/10.5250/amerindiquar.40.3.0251.

Johansen, Bruce E. 2004. “Back from the (Nearly) Dead: Reviving Indigenous Languages across North America.” The American Indian Quarterly 28 (3): 566–82. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2004.0099.

Moses, L.G. 1999. Wild West Shows and the Images of American Indians, 1883-1933. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Nagle, Rebecca. 2019. “The U.S. Has Spent More Money Erasing Native Languages than Saving Them.” Www.hcn.org. November 5, 2019. https://www.hcn.org/issues/51.21-22/indigenous-affairs-the-u-s-has-spent-more-money-erasing-native-languages-than-saving-them.

Peter, Lizette. 2007. “‘Our Beloved Cherokee’: A Naturalistic Study of Cherokee Preschool Language Immersion.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 38 (4): 323–42. https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2007.38.4.323.

Sims, Christine P. 2005. “Tribal Languages and the Challenges of Revitalization.” Anthropology & Education Quarterly 36 (1): 104–6. https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2005.36.1.104.

Spolsky, Bernard. 2002. “Prospects for the Survival of the Navajo Language: A Reconsideration.” Anthropology Education Quarterly 33 (2): 139–62. https://doi.org/10.1525/aeq.2002.33.2.139.

The Language Conservancy. 2020. “Language Loss.” The Language Conservancy. 2020. https://languageconservancy.org/language-loss/.

White, Frederick. 2006. “Rethinking Native American Language Revitalization.” The American Indian Quarterly 30 (1): 91–109. https://doi.org/10.1353/aiq.2006.0013.

White, Frederick H. 2006. “Language Reflection and Lamentation in Native American Literature.” Studies in American Indian Literatures 18 (1): 83–98. https://doi.org/10.1353/ail.2006.0020.

#fuck you #i'll publish it myself

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