“This class has done a marvelous job,” said King of her 12 students. “We've translated nursery rhymes, like Humpty Dumpty. And it's been fun. We've learned Cheyenne songs and I'm learning my own language.”
She's teaching 12 students in an elementary school in Colstrip by satellite from a tribal college classroom on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in southeastern Montana.
Language teachers like King are fervent in their need to preserve the language, and believe they can make a difference. But they face many obstacles - no K-12 curricula and a lack of state support - that effectively prevent them from teaching students their Native languages like Cree, Gros Ventre, Kootenai and Nakota.
Typically, the number of new language speakers remains stagnant.
The most proven method of teaching a language is through immersion schools, but the state Legislature recently nixed House Bill 750, which called for the state to provide funding for three existing tribe-based immersion schools, including the Gros Ventre, Salish and Blackfeet programs. The bill never made it out of committee to reach a full vote before the Legislature.
About 90 percent of Native students attend public schools.
It's been difficult for tribes to start their own immersion schools independent of the state because they can't afford it. The Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes were able to create an immersion school because the tribe pays for the majority of the private school's operating budget. But other tribes in the state don't have the same economic options to start their own.
In the past, federal grants typically precluded funding to go to immersion schools. But in 2006 Congress passed the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, which promises to revive language preservation efforts and the act makes immersion school funding a high priority. Fort Belknap is one of the first reservations in Montana to apply for the grant, which could infuse the community with $300,000 over a three-year period.
Meanwhile, tribal language teachers typically are left using myriad and unsystematic methods in language instruction since they don't have a standardized curriculum.
The Office of Public Instruction doesn't have a budget for language preservation.
“We're doing very little because we don't have any money dedicated to language programs,” said Lynn Hinch, the bilingual specialist for the state Office of Public Instruction. “We need a K-12 program. Teachers here talked about teaching three times a week for 15 minutes. You can't teach a language in 15 minutes. Spanish teachers wouldn't put up with that. English teachers wouldn't put up with that. Math teachers wouldn't put up with that.”
Tribal languages have “little support at the state level,” said Hinch.
Native people say they lack state support because they are still fighting historic assimilation practices, which stripped indigenous people of their language, said Henrietta Mann, a Montana State University professor emeritus.
“Those that came to live with us were steeped in their own cultural world views and wanted everyone else to be like them, to the way we were educated to the way we're supposed to think,” said Mann. “In order to accomplish that, they sought to destroy to Native languages.
“You still have this tendency to want to change us, to homogenize us. It hasn't changed,” said Mann.
“I think it's a threat to them,” said Minerva Allen, a tribal elder cultural coordinator for the communities of the Fort Belknap Reservation. “They feel they can't understand us and they want us all to be equal in their sense of equal, not in ours. They want us all to be in this melting pot of all races. They had a hard time getting us to learn English and now we want to turn around and learn our Native language.”
But many people fail to understand that a bilingual speaker more readily absorbs new knowledge and abstract concepts because they can view and participate in life from multiple vantage points, said Richard Little Bear, president of the Dull Knife Community College.
Rebuilding a language base isn't easy work. One of the first steps is to create a persistent awareness of the language, said Tachini Pete, executive director of Nkwusm, a Salish revitalization school on the Flathead Reservation.
Language preservation is at a critical level because most fluent language speakers are dying.
“We could lose 30 or 40 speakers in a matter of two or three years,” said Pete. Today, there are only 56 people who grew up speaking Salish as a first language. The tribe lost about 50 speakers in the last 15 years. Most living speakers are now over age 70.
“We got to teach the young adults and teachers to teach the language before the elders are gone,” said the 69-year-old Allen. “That's why I'm always telling everybody, ‘Hurry, I only have a few years to live.' ”
Reporter Jodi Rave can be reached at 800-366-7186 or at jodi.rave@lee.net.
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