Yesterday in the car, I listened to a woman who had gotten a PhD in the Klamath language. Clearly, she is now the leading — possibly the only — expert in this Native American language. Apparently, a large grant was granted to study, teach, and preserve hundreds of these obscure and almost obsolete languages. I can’t think why.
When I was in college, I became interested in linguistics, particularly in the relationship between languages. My native tribe, Choctaw, has been placed in the Muscogean language group. Our closest similar language was spoken by our very close cousins the Chickasaws. Most of the hundreds of indigenous languages are unique and bear no similarities or connections to each other
I enjoyed learning a few Choctaw words from a crude dictionary I found. I never remember that my closest Choctaw ancestor, my maternal grandfather, knew or spoke a single word. Today, I remember that “ishtaboli” is the transliteration of “stick ball.” Everyone just says stick ball.
It was fun and pretty much useless.
I suppose it is interesting to preserve obscure, unused languages, for anthropological records. Beyond that, if is probably fun to teach today’s Indian kindergartners to say things in their ancestors’ language. Kids learn languages so fast.
Beyond that, what is the point?
Choctaw was never a written language until the missionaries came, forbade native spirituality, and transliterated the bible and country southern hymns into Choctaw. No literature was ever written by the ancient Chostaws. Most of us can recite “The Lord’s Prayer” in Choctaw, and tribal “princesses” do an odd dance to it while signing in what I guess is American Sign Language. Of course, neither Christianity or American Sign Language has any connection to authentic tribal practice.
Why is a tremendous amount of money being spent on insisting that little children learn languages which have extremely limited use? It just sounds so very politically correct. Like somehow this can make up in some way for Manifest Destiny.
When I taught at an Indian boarding high school in the late ’90’s, I had students from over sixty tribes. They all spoke English just like teenagers all over the United States. Alaskans from very isolated villages knew a bit of their varied languages. The only group I ever heard speaking their native language were the Navajos, and they only did it when they didn’t want me to know what they were talking about.
My issue is not that I don’t think it’s significant to preserve ethnic remnants of our indigenous peoples, rather that we need to question how we spend money in their behalf. I’m just not sure why, when a great percentage of American Indians live below the poverty level — and don’t talk to me about how casinos have made them rich — we are spending money on teaching teachers how to teach kindergartners how to say a few things in the dead language of their forebears.
