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Fantastic resource for the study of linguistics and symbolism

Preface Richard E. Littlebear Our Native American languages have been oral since time immemorial. Some of them have been written only in the last three centuries. We must remember this oral tradition when we teach our languages. We sometimes negate this oral tradition by blindly following the only model for language teaching we know: the way we were taught the English language with its heavy emphasis on grammar. Teaching our languages as if they had no oral tradition is one factor which contributes to the failures of our Native American language teaching programs so that we now have what amounts to a tradition of failure. Probably because of this tradition of failure, we latch onto anything that looks as though it will preserve our languages. As a result, we now have a litany of what we have viewed as the one item that will save our languages. This one item is usually quickly replaced by another. For instance, some of us said, "Let's get our languages into written form" and we did and still our Native American languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's make dictionaries for our languages" and we did and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's get linguists trained in our own languages" and we did, and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's train our own people who speak our languages to become linguists" and we did and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's apply for a federal bilingual education grant" and we did and got a grant and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's let the schools teach the languages" and we did, and still the languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's develop culturally-relevant materials" and we did and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's use language masters to teach our languages" and we did, and still our languages kept on dying. Then we said, "Let's tape-record the elders speaking our languages" and we did and still our languages ke