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Return to Teaching Indigenous Languages Home Page....Return to American Indian Education Home Page Index of Indigenous Education and Indigenous Language Web Sites You can use the "Find" option on your browser's pull down menu to search this index (Look under "Edit" for "Find") Go to Tribe/Language Index Activists Panel Summary from Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Adult Education Deborah House & Jon Reyhner Teaching & Learning with [Adult] Native Americans Handbook Affirmative Action NABE News Column The Affirmative Action and Diversity Project UC Santa Barbara Alaska Native Knowledge Network Alaska Native Language Center American Indian Education: American Indian Education Links American Indian Bilingual Education: Some History NABE News Column Changes in American Indian Education: A Historical Retrospective for Educators in the United States Selected Resources on American Indian Education American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) School-Community-University Collaborations Archiving Linguistic Resources Assessment Assessment Crisis: The Absence Of Assessment FOR Learning Phi Delta Kappan Article Assessment for American Indian and Alaska Native Learners ERIC Digest by Roger Bordeaux FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing Fighting the Tests: A Practical Guide to Rescuing Our Schools 2001 Phi Delta Kappa article by Alfie Kohn The Human Face of the High-Stakes Testing Story Phi Delta Kappan article Making Assessment Work for Everyone: How to Build on Student Strengths SEDL Monograph The New Mandarin Society? Testing on the Fast Track Joel Spring's commentary on national testing News From the Test Resistance Trail PDK article by Susan Ohanian Why are Stanford 9 test scores on Navajo and Hopi so low Navajo Hopi Oberserver article 9/1/99 Australia: Aboriginal Languages Web Site Australian Indigenous Language Efforts NABE News Column Bilingual Education: Bilingual Education Links Ameri

"> TIME Logo JULY 7, 1997 VOL. 150 NO. 1 LANGUAGE SPEAKING IN TONGUES AS TELECOMMUNICATIONS, TOURISM AND TRADE MAKE THE WORLD A SMALLER PLACE, LANGUAGES ARE DYING AT AN ALARMING RATE BY JAMES GEARY Sitting in a circle with a dozen other members of the native American Tlingit (pronounced klink-it) tribe, Jon Rowan, a 33-year-old schoolteacher, mutters in frustration: "We're babies. All we speak is baby gibberish." The group is gathered at the community center in Klawock, a town of some 800 people on the eastern fringe of Prince of Wales Island. In the Gulf of Alaska, some 40 km off the Alaskan coast, Prince of Wales Island still survives in a state of pristine natural beauty. But this idyllic stretch of land is home to at least one endangered species: the Tlingit language. Rowan and his fellow tribesmen meet every other week in sessions like this to learn their native tongue before the last fluent tribal elder dies. But as Rowan's frustration indicates, the task is made more difficult because Tlingit is becoming extinct. Forty years ago, the entire tribe was fluent in the language, a guttural tongue that relies heavily on accompanying gesture for its meaning. Now it is spoken by only a handful of people throughout southern Alaska and portions of Canada, nearly all of whom are over the age of 60. Since Tlingit was not originally a written language, Rowan and company are trying to record as much of it as possible by translating just about anything they can get their hands on into Tlingit, from Christmas carols like Jingle Bells to nursery rhymes such as Hickory Dickory Dock. The plight of Tlingit is a small page in the modern version of the Tower of Babel story--with the plot reversed. The Old Testament describes the first, mythical humans as "of one language and of one speech." They built a city on a plain with a tower whose peak reached unto heaven. God, offended by their impudence in building something to rival His own creation, punished them by shatterin

Teaching Indigenous Languages Saturday, April 5, 2008 Teaching Indigenous Languages books | conference | articles | columns | contact | links | index | home Selected Resources on Native American Language Renewal Jon Reyhner The annual Stabilizing Indigenous Languages conferences have sought since 1994 to bring together tribal educators and experts on linguistics, language renewal, and language teaching to lay out a blueprint of policy changes, educational reforms, and community initiatives to stabilize and revitalize American Indian and Alaska Native languages. Much of the relevant previous literature on the subject is cited in the various papers included in Stabilizing Indigenous Languages, especially in Dr. Burnaby's paper in Section I, which emphasizes the Canadian experience. Since the publication of Stabilizing Indigenous Languages in 1996, Northern Arizona University has published five related books: * Reyhner, J.; Trujillo, O.; Carrasco, R.L.; & Lockard, L. (Eds.). (2003). Nurturing Native Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/ * Burnaby, B., & Reyhner. J. (Eds.) (2002). Indigenous Languages Across the Community. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/ILAC/ * Reyhner, J.; Martin, J.; Lockard, L.; Gilbert, W.S. (Eds.). (2000). Learn in Beauty: Indigenous Education for a New Century. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/LIB/LIBconts.html * Reyhner, J.; Cantoni, G.; St. Clair, R.; & Parsons Yazzie, E. (Eds.). (1999). Revitalizing Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/RIL_Contents.html * Reyhner, J. (Ed.). (1997). Teaching Indigenous Languages. Flagstaff, AZ: Northern Arizona University. On-line at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/TIL_Contents.html The proceedings of the 1999 Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Conference

Technology helps tribe pass on native speech By Ann Marie Bush The Capital-Journal Published Wednesday, March 05, 2008 POTAWATOMI RESERVATION - Cecelia "Meeks" Jackson is helping revitalize an almost lost language. Jackson, 85, is one of six people nationwide who fluently speak the Potawatomi language, Sydney Van Zile, director of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Language Center, said Tuesday. Print E-mail Comment Anthony S. Bush / The Capital-Journal Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation elder Cecelia "Meeks" Jackson works with Laverne Haag on recording translations from English to Potawatomi for the Phraselator on Tuesday. The Phraselator is a one-way communication translator being used by the Prairie Band Pottawatomi Nation to record and teach its language, which is spoken fluently by only six people. PRAIRIE BAND POTAWATOMI NATION The Potawatomi are very protective of their language. However, they did share three greetings: Bosho: Hello Bosho Nikan: Hello, friend Nitte na kin: How are you? Source: Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Thanks to advanced technology, Jackson is sharing her knowledge with other members of the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation through the Phraselator Language Companion, a one-way translator. "We are in a highly critical state now," Van Zile said of the language. "Life happens. There are things that replace it." The Phraselator Language Companion was invented by the U.S. military to communicate with Iraqis in the war on terror, said Don Thornton, president of Thornton Media Inc., based in Banning, Calif. After Thornton read about the technology, he contacted the defense contractor, Voxtec, for the right to use the technology for native language revitalization. He was denied, but continued on his quest. Three years ago, he received approval, and today the company works with more than 75 tribes and tribal organizations in the United States and Canada. The Phraselator is a handheld tool that allows a user to instantly translate spoken Englis

resources Home On-line Research Dictionaries Bibliographies Indexes CD-ROMs On-Line Research DIGITAL DREAMING: A National Review of Indigenous Media and Communications Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission http://www.atsic.gov.au/Programs/broadcasting/Digital_Dreaming/default.asp Guidelines for Strengthening Indigenous Languages Adopted by Assembly of Alaska Native Educators. Anchorage, Alaska, February 6, 2001 Alaska Native Knowledge Network http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/standards/Language.html The Role of the Computer in Learning Ndjébbana Glenn Auld. Language Learning & Technology. Special Issue, Technology and Indigenous Languages. Volume 6, Number 2, May 2002. http://llt.msu.edu/vol6num2/default.html Internet Strategies for Empowering Indigenous Communities in Teaching and Learning Ron Aust, Brian Newberry, and Paul Resta. INET, 1996. http://www.isoc.org/isoc/whatis/conferences/inet/96/proceedings/h4/h4_4.htm Charter Schools Keep Native Language Alive by Rhoda Barton. Northwest Education Magazine, Vol. 9, No.3, Spring 2004. http://www.nwrel.org/nwedu/09-03/charter.php Saving a Language with Computers, Tape Recorders, and Radio Ruth Bennet. 2003. In Nuturing Native Languages. Reyner, J., Octaviana V. Trujillo, Roberto Luis Carrasco, and Louise Lockard. Northern Arizona University. http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~jar/NNL/NNL_5.pdf Reversing Russia's Indigenous Languages Shift in View of International Experience: A Policy Brief for the FSA Contemporary Issues Fellowship Program. Tamamara Borgoiakova. http://www.irex.org/programs/ci/spotlight/03-feb-jun/Borgoiakova.pdf CAN THE WEB HELP SAVE MY LANGUAGE? Laura Buszard-Welcher. Published in Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale, eds. (2001) The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. Pp. 331-48. San Diego: Academic Press. http://www.potawatomilang.org/Reference/endlgsweb4.htm In the Language of Our Ancestors Programs in Montana and Washington Give Voice to Disappearing Words by Mindy Cameron. Northwest Educat