2
Smoke Signals
Indians' Languages may be near Extinction
CAMP VERDE, AZ. (AP) - There
are only a dozen speakers of the lan
guage left and only one person
under 18 learning it but Lorraine
Sanchez isn't about to give up on the
local dialect of Yavapai, once the domi
nant language of the Verde Valley.
Sanchez leans forward in her
wheelchair, listening intently, as the
weekly Yavapai language class of the
Camp Verde Yavapai-Apache Nation
begins. The subject this night, in a
language no child has spoken in the
home since Harry Truman was presi
dent, is the Yavapai words for the
trees of the valley. Sanchez reflects
back to the long-ago words of her par
ents and grandparents.
Ahnahla mesquite, she says, as
14 other mainly elderly people write
what they hear phonetically.
Ah dtas sah sycamore. She re
peats the word forcefully three times
for a woman who has trouble pro
nouncing the 'dt' sound. Ah yohh
willow, she intones.
After class, Sanchez acknowledged
the hardships of trying to save a dy
ing language, one of several Native
American dialects in the state on the
verge of extinction. She had volun
teered to be an apprentice to the
young. Only two local teenagers had
been willing to learn. One dropped
out after a few weeks. The one who
remained wasn't even Yavapai.
That situation is hardly unusual in
a society increasingly dominated by
English and Spanish where, short of
an influx of money and language im
mersion for young Tribal members,
only about 20 of the 155 Native Ameri
can languages in the United States are
expected to survive this century.
Linguists say the situation is grim
in Arizona.
Consider:
Of the state's 21 federally recog
nized Tribes, nearly half have 50 or
fewer Tribal members who can speak
their Native language. The number
of Tribal Councils conducting meet
ings in English has increased dra
matically in recent years.
Even isolated, growing Tribes such
as the Navajos, who make up nearly
half of the Native American language
speakers in this country, face a lan
guage crisis. Bilingual educators on
the nation's largest reservation say
the number of fluent speakers of the
language is half what it was a decade
ago.
Meanwhile, the number of Navajo
children speaking only English
nearly tripled to almost 30 percent
from 1980 to 1990, and educators say
that trend has accelerated during the
past decade.
Although an anti-bilingual educa
tion measure being pushed for the No
vember ballot has targeted Spanish
speakers, Native American educators
say that if such a law passes, it could
end efforts to instruct Tribal lan
guages on the reservations.
Despite congressional measures in
the early 1990s that pay lip service to
preserving Native American lan
guages, funding has been limited and
the competition for the language-instruction
dollar has been intense.
The only hope for the trend to be
reversed is youngsters in preschool
programs being immersed in their
Tribal languages by Elders who speak
the ancient tongues, said Elizabeth
Brandt, an Arizona State University
anthropologist who has worked exten
sively with the Apache Tribes.
"It's going to take an extraordinary
grass-roots effort now to turn this
around," Brandt said, adding that
Tribes need to think seriously about
adopting the Hawaiian model of re
quired immersion programs for young
people to learn the language and cul
ture. Many Tribes have been in de
nial, Brandt said, hiding behind a
false sense of security based on such
reports as the U.S. Census Bureau's
1990 Native American study. The
study, among other things, reported
that there are nearly 150,000 Navajo
speakers in Arizona, Utah and New
Mexico, and almost 13,000 Apache
speakers and 12,000 speakers of the
Tohono O'odhamPima languages in
Arizona.
Those numbers were arrived at by
asking Native American census par
ticipants only if the person speaks a
language at home other than English.
The truth of the matter, Brandt and
other experts in the field say, is that
there's probably only about one-quarter
to one-third that number who ac
tually are fluent speakers. And an
overwhelming number of them are
old enough to qualify for Social Secu
rity benefits now.
"I had a colleague who did a lan
guage survey in the Gilson Wash dis
trict of the San Carlos Apache Reser
vation," Brandt said. "He didn't find
one speaker of the language under
age 18."
That tracks with what Irene
Silentman, a bilingual specialist for
the Navajo Department of Education
in Window Rock, has observed.
"There has been a shocking decline
in people speaking our language, es
pecially in the Arizona part of the res
ervation," Silentman said. "On top of
that, we only have one school district
in the entire Navajo Nation with im
mersion and that only involves about
200 students. I wonder how effective
even that is, though, because I've
walked through the aisles of those
classes and never heard any of the
students interact in Navajo."
The current malaise in Native
American languages is the result of
long-standing federal policy to elimi
nate them, something that has
worked all too well, said Jon Reyhner,
a bilingual specialist at Northern Ari
zona University in Flagstaff.
After the U.S. government herded
Indians onto reservations in the
1800s, the focus turned to eliminat
ing the Native languages. One of the
favored tactics in Bureau of Indian
Affairs boarding schools, even up to
the 1950s, was washing out students'
mouths with soap if they spoke their
languages at the schools.
That left deep psychological scars
. among generations of people that
carry over to this day. Coupled with
the accessibility of mass communica
tions to even the most remote corners
of all reservations, the indigenous lan
guages have declined.
"If nothing has happened with the
children on their native language front
by the time they are 10, you've lost
the battle because peer pressure kicks
in then and that's where English be
comes all pervasive," Reyhner said.
Republican apology on resolution doesn't
do much for some Tribal members
TOPPENISH, WA. (AP) - A sign
on display in the museum at the
Yakama Nation Cultural Center says:
"We are a sovereign nation within
the sovereign United States. Wash
ington state was created in 1889, 34
years after our treaty with the U.S.
government in 1855. Our treaty takes
precedence over the state."
Indians have a right to self-determination,
and Tribal sovereignty is a
means to achieve that, several
Yakama Indians said recently.
"It is very important for us," said
Norman Robinson Jr., 33, of
Toppenish, a first descendant of the
Yakamas, meaning his mother is an
enrolled member of the Tribe but he
is not. "It gives us a chance to run
our reservation as we see fit."
Recently, the state Republican
Party apologized for adopting a reso
lution against Tribal sovereignty at
the state Republican convention in
Spokane.
The national Republican Party has
also repudiated the Washington state
Republican resolution.
Faced with widespread condemna
tion inside and outside the state, the
state party also adopted a new reso
lution "clarifying" its position in sup
port of sovereignty.
The Republican's latest actions
didn't do much for Tracy Ough, 22, a
Yakama Nation member from
Toppenish.
"It shows how much trust they have
in us," he said. "We're just trying to
get respect, and let them know we can
do our own stuff our own way."
John Fleming, a non-Indian living
on the Swinomish Reservation in
LaConner, sponsored the
Republican's original resolution.
The resolution called for the federal
government to "take whatever steps
necessary to terminate all such non
republican forms of government on
Indian reservations." Fleming also
suggested he'd like to have the reso
lution introduced at the national Re
publican convention.
The Republican National Commit
tee (RNC) took its unusual action to
head off a threat to presidential can
didate George W. Bush's message of
racial inclusiveness.
"We are writing to assure you we
reject this resolution and everything
it stands for... the elimination of Tribal
governments is not an option," the
RNC said in a recent letter to Tribal
leaders.
Here in Toppenish, non-Indians liv
ing on the Yakama Nation reserva
tion have organized recently in oppo
sition to the Tribe's reservation-wide
ban on alcohol, scheduled to take ef
fect in September. The group, called
Stand-Up, also has spoken out against
the Tribe's plans to start its own util
ity. "The more sovereign we get, the
more jealousies... the whites feel,"
Robinson said.
"It's like this alcohol ban. They live
on our land. They have to realize they
have to live by our laws.
We are a nation within a nation."
Herman Dillon, chairman of the
Puyallup Tribe of Indians, said the
Republican's apology rang hollow
since the party continues to blame the
media, Tribes and other critics for mis-
representing the original resolution.
"A simple apology would have gone
further than this. Stop blaming the
media and just take responsibility for
what has passed in your convention,"
Dillon said through a spokeswoman'.
Begay Back Home
after Finishing 20th
in British Open
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) -Notah
Begay is taking a break after
his 20th-place finish in last month's
British Open.
"I'm ready for some rest - and a
green chile fix," he said after arriv
ing at the Albuquerque Interna
tional Sunport after a long flight
home.
Begay, the only American Indian
on the PGA tour, has been gone from
Albuquerque for six busy weeks.
During that time, he won back-to-back
PGA events and finished fourth
at the Loch Lamond Invitational in
Scotland.
"When I left here, there were a lot
of questions," Begay said. "Now
things have changed. I've always
been confident that they would
change, but it has been something
else."
Begay, 27, had missed five cuts in
his last 10 tournament appearances.
But his fortunes seemed to turn
around, starting with last month's
U.S. Open, where he ended up fin
ishing 22nd.
"That was big for me, moving up
the leaderboard like that," he said.
"It gave me a lot of confidence."