Native American Youth and Language: Shifting the Discourse

Native American Youth Discourses on Language Shift and Retention

Introduction

  • Navajo elder and youth reflections highlight challenges in maintaining heritage languages and cultures.
  • In Navajo, 'language' and 'word' are identical: saad.
  • The Native Language Shift and Retention Study, funded in response to President Clinton's 1998 executive order, examines the role of native language and culture in education.
  • Executive Order 13096 called for research to evaluate the role of native language and culture in educational strategies.
  • Strang et al. (2003) emphasize the importance of structuring education around tribal language and culture.
  • The research agenda seeks to address what is and isn't successful in school reform, emphasizing collaboration with tribes.
  • Effective language education policies should be responsive to unique sociolinguistic conditions, including tribal languages, schooled English, and Nativized English.
  • The study elicits local understandings of language shift and examines language attitudes, ideologies, and youth identification with heritage language and culture.
  • Research questions:
    • What role does Native/heritage language play in the lives of American Indian youth?
    • How do language loss and revitalization affect school performance?
    • How can findings inform tribal language planning and education initiatives?
    • What are the lessons for state and national education policies and minority language rights?
  • The study is action-oriented with a social justice component, viewing language as a resource and heritage language acquisition as a fundamental human right.
  • Linguistic rights support tribal sovereignty and self-determination.
  • The paper examines Native American linguistic ecologies, research methodology, contexts, and ethnographic interviews with Navajo youth.
  • Discourses are defined as stretches of language that hang together and are inherently ideological.
  • These discourses expose the relations between language and identity and tie language allegiance to power and privilege.
  • The paper concludes with implications for future research and Native American language planning efforts.

The Status of Native American Languages and Language Proficiencies

  • Native American linguistic ecologies are complex and varied.
  • Of 175 Indigenous languages in the USA, only 20 are naturally acquired by children (Krauss, 1998).
  • Colonial schooling aimed to assimilate Native children has been a primary instrument of language eradication (Benally & Viri, 2005; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006).
  • Skutnabb-Kangas (2000) notes that the disuse of minoritized languages is not due to natural causes but has been 'helped' along.
  • Native American languages exist on a continuum from intergenerational transmission to a few elderly speakers.
  • Language shift is underway in all cases.
  • This continuum corresponds to Fishman’s (1991) eight-point Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (GIDS).
  • Krauss (1998) classifies Native North American languages:
    • Class A: speakers of all generations
    • Class B: spoken by the parent generation and up
    • Class C: spoken by the grandparent generation and up
    • Class D: spoken only by a few elderly persons
  • Classifications may vary across a single speech community.
  • Language vitality is influenced by rural vs. urban lifestyles, language education programs, Native-speaking teachers, and opportunity structures.
  • Children's language proficiencies, attitudes, and their relationship to school performance are not well documented.
  • Adley-SantaMaria (1999) notes that the (mis)education of Native American youth is one cause of language shift.
  • Bielenberg (2002) and Nicholas (2005) examine familial, communal, and school-based dynamics impacting Hopi youth’s language choices.
  • Lee’s (1999) study of Navajo adolescents suggests increased awareness of language endangerment may lead to more Navajo use with family (see also Lee & McLaughlin, 2001).
  • Romero’s (2003) study in Cochiti Pueblo documents young people’s interest in learning Keres, even though parents may not be fluent.
  • Native American children are often stigmatized as 'limited English proficient' (LEP) and fare poorly in school even when English is their primary language.
  • More than 10% of Native pupils in US public schools are identified as LEP.
  • Nearly 60% of Native pupils in BIA schools are identified as LEP (Tippeconnic & Faircloth, 2002).
  • Hill (2002) calls for interrogation of the human specifics of endangered-language communities.

Research Contexts and Methodology

  • Schools serve as entry points to tribal school-community sites.

  • Sites are in Arizona, where 25% of the land is reservation land and over 5% of the population is Native.

  • Arizona represents a wide range of Native American communities, schools, and language situations.

  • Sites vary across a continuum, from Navajo communities with speakers of all ages to communities with few or no child speakers.

  • Table 1 outlines the characteristics of participating project sites.

  • Navajo Nation has the second largest tribal population and largest reservation in the USA.

  • Navajo is spoken in every state, with 178,014 speakers according to the 2000 US Census (Benally & Viri, 2005).

  • The Navajo language is at a crossroads with fewer children learning it as a primary language.

  • The Navajo site includes a federally funded community school serving approximately 600 students in pre-kindergarten through Grade 12.

  • In central Arizona, the study includes Akimel O’odham (Pima) and Pii Paash (Maricopa) languages, both considered moribund.

  • Pii Paash is seriously endangered, with only a few elderly speakers.

  • The fourth project site is a Native American charter school serving primarily Tohono O’odham students.

  • Table 1: Characteristics of participating sites

    • Tribal Group: Navajo; Tribal Population: 250,000; Heritage/community languages: Navajo; Language vitality: Class A; Setting: 1 reservation-interior community; School type: Pre-K-12, federally funded community school; No. schools: 3; No. students: 600.
    • Tribal Group: Akimel O’odham/ Pii Paash; Tribal Population: 15,000; Heritage/community languages: Akimel O’odham (Pima); Pii Paash (Maricopa); Language vitality: Akimel O’odham: Class B-C; Pii Paash: Class D; Setting: 2 reservation communities, both near large metropolitan area; School type: Pre-K-8, federally funded community school; No. schools: 2; No. students: 500.
    • Tribal Group: Tohono O’odham; Tribal Population: 20,000; Heritage/community languages: Tohono O’odham; Language vitality: Class A-B; Setting: Reservation and urban; School type: 9-12 public charter school; No. schools: 1; No. students: 150.
    • Summary: 4 tribal groups; 4 Native languages; Class A-D; Reservation and urban; Pre-K-12, federally funded and public/charter schools; 6; 1250.

  • Research protocols are negotiated according to school, tribal, university, and federal norms.

  • Key component: involvement of Native co-researchers (Community Research Collaborators or CRCs).

  • CRCs facilitate entrée, design research protocols, conduct interviews, administer questionnaires, and participate in training.

  • Ethnographic methodology: prolonged participant observation and in-depth interviews.

  • Data collection includes questionnaires, language use observations, school achievement data, and in-depth interviews.

  • Seidman’s (1998) interview format is adapted into single 60-90 minute interviews.

    • Focused life history on language learning.
    • Details and observations of language use at home, school, and community.
    • Normative assessments of family, community, tribal government, and school role in language planning.

  • Research participants are identified with guidance from CRCs, seeking a balance of speakers, genders, ages, and backgrounds.

  • Interviews are audiotaped, and many are conducted with CRCs.

  • Native-speaking CRCs translate and transcribe data.

  • The study examines discourse pairings from interviews with Navajo youth, teachers, and parents from Beautiful Mountain.

Discourses of Language Identity and Endangerment: ‘The Language Needs More Takers’

  • The study found widespread concern rather than denial or apathy about the fragile state of heritage languages.
  • Discourses of endangerment intertwine with discourses of Indigenous identity.
  • A young father and teacher assistant asserted the need to keep speaking Navajo.
  • A Navajo school administrator reflected that language makes you Navajo.
  • Another Navajo educator projected a future where children will not know their language or community.
  • A parent and school staff member valued the language as identity and culture.
  • These themes are prevalent reasons for language revitalization (Hinton, 2002; Fishman, 1991, 2001; Hornberger, 1996; May, 1999).
  • Young people are remarkably articulate and passionate.
  • Knowing Navajo language and culture provides a foundation for better things in life.
  • Samuel, a 17-year-old high school senior, learned Navajo and Apache early and was a strong Navajo speaker.
  • Samuel wanted to become a medical doctor and treat diabetes in the Navajo reservation.
  • Knowing and keeping Navajo was very important to Samuel to communicate with patients and because the language is dying out.
  • Samuel stated that you are Navajo whether you speak it or not, but traditionally, speaking Navajo is nessessary.
  • Samuel commented on parents not transmitting the language to their children.
  • Jonathan, a 16-year-old ninth grader, revealed that his first language was Navajo.
  • Jonathan's first elementary teacher had belittled him for his accented and ungrammatical English.
  • Jonathan then viewed Navajo as integral to his identity and ability to bring about change in his Navajo nation.
  • Jonathan linked knowledge of Navajo to Navajoness and stewardship of the land.
  • Jonathan, when asked what would happen if there is no Navajo language anymore, responded: 'It’s like taking away the spirit; it’s like taking away a real big part of who you are'.
  • Jonathan has some hope, that someday we can go about living with the sacredness a little longer.
  • Sentimental and even sacred attachments to the Navajo language are recurring themes.
  • Akimel O’odham teachers stressed children's connection to their culture and identity.
  • A CRC called language as the number-one source of our soul, our pride, our being, our strength, and our identity.
  • Navajo educator described the ability to speak Navajo as a ‘gift’, equating it with getting back down to roots.
  • The language needs more takers, somebody to hold it up high.

Contradictory Discourses of Language Pride and Shame: ‘You Forsake Who You Are to Accommodate the Mainstream Life’

  • Young people and adults attach ethnolinguistic pride to knowing and speaking the heritage language.
  • ‘I’m proud that I can read and write Navajo’, one young woman in our study stated. ‘That’s how we were created.’
  • Many youth at Beautiful Mountain viewed their bilingualism as having instrumental value.
  • To become a medical doctor, Samuel said, ‘I have to know how to communicate with patients in Navajo and how to do it in English.’
  • Knowing Navajo helped Samuel in school by comparing the differences between Navajo and English.
  • A female senior reported that Navajo helped her in school ‘because you can compare the two different languages’.
  • Knowing Navajo would be helpful in her career, said another student, by pronouncing something in English, you just say it first in Navajo.
  • Jamie said that Navajo language and culture were just the past, and his primary language was English.
  • Jamie insisted that it is important because it’s their [Navajos’] culture, distancing himself from his Navajoness.
  • At the same time, Jamie was trying to learn Navajo in school.
  • These discourses reveal contradictory ideological currents throughout our interviews with Navajo youth and adults.
  • A teacher aide reported that a few of her students insisted, ‘I’m not going to learn [Navajo]. Navajo’s nothing. I hate it.’
  • During one phase of our fieldwork, school personnel were assessing students’ Navajo language proficiencies.
  • When we were talking [to students] in Navajo they were … making fun of us … and it really frustrated me.
  • Every single one of them, they are Navajo.
  • After administering the assessment, the teacher found, to her surprise, that students ‘knew the language but were just ashamed of it’.
  • Adults uniformly placed estimate the proportion of Beautiful Mountain students who were proficient Navajo speakers as 30-50%.
  • Adolescents, on the other hand, expressed a very different view, estimating 75-80%.
  • There was wide divergence in how youth and adults responded to questions about language proficiencies among the young.
  • Responses of youth and adults nonetheless signify local perceptions of language vitality.
  • A bilingual adult who believes the child to whom she or he is speaking has little knowledge of or interest in using Navajo is likely to address the child in English.
  • For their part, youth may possess greater Native language proficiency than they show, ‘hiding’ it out of shame or embarrassment.
  • The net effect is to curtail opportunities for rich, natural adult-child interaction in the heritage language.
  • Youth conceal their Native language ability.
  • They try to make teachers believe that they speak primarily [English] and weren’t exposed to Navajo.
  • For some of his peers, Samuel claimed, speaking Navajo stigmatises one as ‘uneducated, and they haven’t experienced anything in the world’.
  • Many of the kids around here do speak Navajo, states a Navajo school administrator.
  • They’re ashamed, faking not wanting to speak Navajo. Caught a few students who claim they only speak English.
  • They pretend that their parents are all educated.
  • She had been surprised to hear parents report that their child- who claimed not to know Navajo- had been raised in a Navajo language environment.
  • They’ll say, ‘Why do I have to speak Navajo? … We’re more into technology, we’re into the bilaga´ana [White, English-speaking] world. I don’t have to speak my language … We want to go forward, not backward.’
  • Jonathan referred to this postcolonial analysis as the Long Walk Syndrome’.
  • Afraid to be punished, therefore you give up having to learn Navajo, in order to accommodate the mainstream life.
  • Many times they might be ashamed, or got that kind of self-hate.
  • It’s not something natural. It’s being told Navajo is stupid.
  • The psychosocial and linguistic consequences of genocide, colonisation and language repression have been documented for speech communities around the world.
  • The cause is not language per se, but rather the marginalisation of Garifuna and the association of Garifuna ethnic identity with poverty and low social status (Bonner, 2001: 86).
  • Reese and Goldenberg (2006: 25) describe similar processes for Spanish speakers in southern California.
  • You shame people away from their language, from a Cree artist and writer.
  • You hide behind the language of the dominant society for a while…thinking you’re cool because you speak English, you’re cool because you don’t speak [the Native language] anymore.

Conclusions and Implications for Language Revitalisation and Maintenance

  • Youth and adult discourses implicate a complex array of ideological forces that underpin heritage-language shift and retention among the young.
  • Many youth express pride in their heritage language and fuse it solidly to their senses of self.
  • They recognise the language is declining very vigorously now.
  • Other youth conveyed that speaking Navajo is an emblem of shame that must be renounced.
  • These (marginalised) Navajo is linked with ‘backwardness’ and (privileged) English is associated with modernity and opportunity.
  • The sociolinguistic dynamics at Beautiful Mountain are in many ways unique among our project sites.
  • These challenges are compounded by the global spread of English and the growing standards movement in US schools.
  • These pressures are forcing schools to abandon heritage-language instruction.
  • Despite the challenges, youth are deeply concerned about the future of their heritage language.
  • The case demonstrates that youth may possess greater heritage-language proficiency than they demonstrate or than adults credit.
  • Youth interests in retaining their heritage language and their (often intentionally hidden) heritage-language proficiencies constitute critical resources.
  • All participants in our study stated that those efforts must begin with parents and families in the home.
  • Parents and families need support if their efforts are to have the desired effects.
  • Reinvigorate the community ethic of putting our hearts together for a common purpose (Nicholas, 2005: 36).
  • Educate community members on the priority of the values and knowledge embodied in our culture (Watahomigie, 1995: 191).
  • Community language surveys can open new possibilities for dialogue and change (Romero & McCarty, 2006: 11).
  • Stemming and reversing language shift could be achieved through revitalizaiton efforts.
  • Much more ‘on the ground’ research is needed on these processes and their impacts.
  • There are many promising precedents that already have shown positive correlations between heritage-language learning and student achievement.
  • Native-language immersion programmes lead to herritage language learning and student achievement.
  • Native youth discourses problematise a monolingual English status quo.
  • Create opportunities to learn in and through the heritage language.
  • Youth discourses constitute potent testimony capable of informing language education planning and policy.
  • Language policies and practices are human-built and thus malleable to change.
  • Youth have much to teach us about the strategies we might employ in creating policies and practices that support heritage-language retention.
  • Our role, then, is to listen and to act.