Bipartisan bill hopes to preserve Native language

WASHINGTON .— Recognizing the preservation of language as essential in maintaining and strengthening Native American tribes, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (SCIA) introduced a bipartisan bill to support Native American languages this week.

“Congress made a commitment to promote and protect the rights of Native Americans to use their languages over three decades ago when it enacted the Native American Languages Act of 1990,” said SCIA Chairman Brian Schatz. (D-Hawaii) “The Durbin Feeling Native American Languages Act will ensure we are living up to that commitment. Our bill will make the federal government more accountable by setting clear goals and asking for direct input from Native communities about how federal resources can be more effectively used to support and revitalize Native languages.”

Co-sponsoring the bill with Schatz was SCIA Vice-Chairman Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) ensuring a bipartisan status the bill may require to pass both Houses. Many bills are reported by the press, but this does not mean they will ever become law. Introducing bills they know have no hope of passage is a way many legislators accomplish one of two things: an announced bill is perceived by the public as a passed law, so the legislator gets credit for not actually changing anything, or less cynically, a bill is introduced to draw attention to a much needed law, even if it fails this go round, perhaps a subsequent (and suitably amended bill), will pass.

The bill is named after the late Cherokee linguist, Durbin Feeling, a tireless and iconic pioneer for the preservation of tribal language. Born in Oklahoma in 1946, Feeling did not learn English until he entered the First Grade. After he returned from a combat tour in Vietnam, he began the hard work of compiling the first Cherokee-English dictionary, which was completed in 1975. Feeling then went on to earn a journalism degree from Northeastern State University in 1979, and a master’s degree in social sciences from the University of California-Irvine in 1992. He taught Cherokee at several major universities and worked for the Cherokee Tribe in its language and technology department for a quarter century. The Cherokee Nation named him a National Treasure. Feeling made his journey to the spirit world in August, 2020. Cherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin touted Feeling as “a modern-day Sequoyah,” adding that “everything we are doing for language revitalization is because of Durbin.”

Commenting on the Durbin Feeling Native American Languages bill, Hoskin said: “Today only about 2,000 people can speak Cherokee fluently. Preserving and revitalizing the Cherokee language rank among my highest responsibilities.”

This highlights an easily overlooked problem when it comes to bills and operational reality. Schatz said in an April 29 press release that, “Our bill will make the federal government more accountable by setting clear goals and asking for direct input from Native communities about how federal resources can be more effectively used to support and revitalize Native languages.”

And yet a lifetime of hard work by Feeling left the tribe with only 2,000 speakers. Preserving language is one thing, but revitalization requires the language to be put to everyday, productive use. At this, the tribe failed. Cherokee is spoken by less people than those who speak Lakota, despite the Cherokee tribe being many magnitudes larger.

If there is a path from the previous efforts which have failed to create tribal-wide fluency in respective Native languages, there is nothing in the wording of this bill that critically defines it. Federal monies thrown at programs and strategies which are not directly committed to elevating language use to an everyday utility may create a deeper academic knowledge and core understanding of a language, but will it get people routinely communicating in their native language while at work, or out shopping? Will it preserve the language as the primary conduit for tribal discourse, ideals, visions and identity?

In countries where language has been preserved, we see a far different approach than any practiced by tribes in the USA to this point. One of thirteen Canadian provinces and territories, Quebec has a population of over eight million. Once controlled by France, England seized control after a war, and the French speaking people of Quebec could have been at the 18^th Century mercy of a hostile empire. Perhaps they were in other regards, but when it came to their language, it survived, and thrived, and presently over eighty percent of Quebec residents speak Quebecois French as their first language. Language is preserved in every facet of life, in schools, at work, in TV and radio broadcasts, in print, and especially in utility communication, road signs, public announcements, product instructions. Canada will disappear, Quebec will disappear, before the people of Quebec stop speaking French for English.

But even English is better preserved in foreign countries than tribes have preserved their Native languages. In Denmark they obviously speak Danish, but due to the impressive effectiveness of their education system, a whopping 86 percent of the population speaks English as a second language. Even a foreign language can be routinely and fluently spoken if the correct system of teaching and applying it is established and performed over time.

At Winnebago High School in Nebraska, the Ho-Chunk language can be seen everywhere, and a concerted effort is underway to render it to utility status, but even this does not meet the comprehensive standards of teaching English in Denmark. In Lakota Country, most high schools make only a perfunctory effort, and children are not learning the language. There are immersive programs, but they tend to be cloistered and esoteric, not understanding language is best preserved by graciously and generously sharing it with anyone everywhere. One of the problems any Congressional language act will face is the mentality of tribal members who see their language as something sacred and exclusive, instead of as something universal and inclusive.

Vice-Chairman Murkowski was quoted in the April 29 press release: “With these efforts, Native communities across the country can continue revitalizing and protecting their identity through language. For Indigenous peoples, Native languages are foundational to identity and culture and I will continue supporting policies that help maintain and revitalize Native languages.”

This is the right idea, but what matters in the end is a bill that lays the foundation for a revamped system that incorporates whatever long term successful procedures used by the French in Quebec or the Danes in Denmark to effectively and ubiquitously establish the use of a language.

Many prominent voices in Indian Country were quoted expressing their enthusiastic support in the April 29 press release but only one touched upon the actual nature of the Native language preservation problem. Leslie Harper, President, National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs: “Native American Language revitalization efforts are a complex weaving of strategies to build living, thriving languages. Data collection is a critical strategy to map changes as we move toward healthy language futures. Just as there are hundreds of unique Native American Languages across the country, there are many unique stages of action across the wide field of Native American Language revitalization.”

The battle for Native language preservation in the future will be between those who see Native language as an indispensable everyday communication conduit, and those who want to preserve it as something sacred, immutable and tucked away from outside molestation. Unless a healthy middle ground can be found and nurtured, many Native languages will one day be lost to history.

 

(Contact James Giago Davies at skindiesel@msn.com)

 

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