NPR’s Morning Edition is running a two-part piece on boarding schools.
For the government, it was a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of Indians who went to boarding schools, it’s largely remembered as a time of abuse and desecration of culture.
The government still operates a handful of off-reservation boarding [...]
From the South Bend Tribune:
Language is among the most important symbols of a culture. And while there may be as many as 50,000 Potawatomi Indians living today in North America, as few as 60 speak their native language. Just five to seven are able to teach it.
The urgency to keep the language from dying away [...]
From NPR:
Fresh Air from WHYY, April 23, 2008 · Brothers David and Anton Treuer are members of the Ojibwe nation from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. They are working to preserve the Ojibwe language, one of the few Native American languages in use.
Anton Treuer is a professor of Ojibwe language and oral [...]
From the LA Times (thanks to Patrick O’Donnell for pointing this out):
SANTA YNEZ — A generation ago, the ancient Chumash tongue of Samala was all but dead, its songs and sagas buried in a university basement beneath mountains of yellowing research notes.
But now Samala is the talk of the reservation.
Thanks largely to a non-American Indian [...]
From the NYTs:
SANTA FE, N.M. — On a cold Saturday morning last month, 16-year-old Chantel Hunt ran across a highway onto a gravel road where the snow under her shoes packed into washboard ripples. She ran around a towering red rock butte, past two old mattresses dumped on the roadside, and into the shadow of [...]
From the LA Times:
Native American languages are dying out with the elders.
By David Treuer, Special to the Los Angeles Times
February 3, 2008
Only three Native American languages now spoken in the United States and Canada are expected to survive into the middle of this century. Mine, Ojibwe, is one of them. Many languages have just [...]
By Christina Rohn News-Review Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 9:32 AM EST
A groundbreaking new course is being offered at Harbor Springs High School — Anishinaabemowin, the native language of Odawa Indians. The class, which is a collaboration between the Little Traverse Bay Bands (LTBB) of Odawa Indians and Harbor Springs Public Schools, began in September [...]
