Literature Spring 2006: Speaking about the Spokanes
Here is the official web site of the Spokane Indian Tribe.Their official language is Salish.
But you'd need more than a picture dictionary to speak it fluently. Try this word for dog, for example.
There are, as with all languages, amazing coincidences. Take the word for cat, for example. Click on the written word at this link to hear the pronunciation, which is nearly the same as our 'puss'.
Why would Sherman Alexie describe English as he does in the short story "Imagining the Reservation"?
A partial answer lies in this paper by James Crawford, "Seven Hypotheses on Language Loss":
"Following the advice of the Indian Peace Commission of 1868, the United States Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) embarked on a conscious attempt at cultural genocide. There are numerous statements on record from Commissioners of Indian Affairs who speak explicitly about the need to "blot out barbarous dialects" and substitute English in their place, so as to "civilize the Indians" and contain them on reservations (Atkins, 1887). Coercive assimilation was seen as a less expensive and more humane alternative to military action. Boarding schools were set up for this purpose beginning in 1879.
"The BIA's policy was not simply an outgrowth of racism, although clearly racism played a significant role. It grew out of a school of thought known as social evolutionism: simply put, the idea that human cultures evolve through predetermined stages, from "savagery" to "barbarism" to "civilization." According to this theory, it was both natural and desirable for "lower" cultures to die out and be replaced by "higher" cultures -- and for "lower" languages to be replaced by "higher" languages. This was the orthodox view among late 19th century anthropologists and linguists, as exemplified by John Wesley Powell, who explored the Colorado River, learned to speak several Native American languages, and founded the Bureau of American Ethnology. Powell believed that humanity was evolving toward a single world language. As an amateur linguist, he wanted to study Native American languages before they died out, although he viewed them as primitive and had no other regrets about their impending extinction (Powell, 1881).
"At the same time, the BIA saw nothing wrong with helping this "natural" process along. It rationalized the policy of repressing indigenous languages by arguing that Native Americans' interests were best served by becoming "civilized," even through forcible means. By the late 1880s, the agency mandated English-only rules for all Indian students, including those in religious schools. This policy was bitterly opposed by certain missionaries, who had long ago discovered the effectiveness of using native languages for both educational and religious purposes. But the missionary schools, which received substantial funding from the federal government, ultimately lost this battle (Indian Office, 1888).
"In words of Lt. Richard Henry Pratt, architect of the BIA boarding school system, the educational strategy was "Kill the Indian . . . and save the man" (Pratt, 1973[1892]). Killing the language was seen as a necessary means to this end. By insulating children from any kind of Indian influence, Pratt believed they could be indoctrinated with the same culture, values, and language as white Anglo children. But this proved far more difficult than he had anticipated. Sometimes the English-only policy worked with young children if they were removed from their communities, kept at a remote boarding school for several years, and punished for speaking anything but English; naturally they would tend to forget their tribal tongue. The BIA's plan was for these students to graduate, return to the reservation, and convert their tribes to "civilized" norms, eventually to include speaking English. This seldom occurred. Either the returning students were shunned for their alien ways, or they soon returned to the traditional culture of their tribe (Reyhner & Eder, 1989).
"Federal officials soon became impatient with the pace of change, and Pratt's optimism about remolding the Indian fell out of favor. It was replaced with theories of racial inferiority that pronounced Native peoples as incapable of full assimilation, an indictment that was directed at certain immigrant groups as well. Accordingly, after 1900 BIA education policy began to focus more heavily on manual arts and to lower expectations for academic achievement among Indian students (Hoxie, 1984). Still, it did not waver in its English-only policy until the 1930s, when John Collier became commissioner of Indian affairs.
"Collier was far more respectful of Indian cultures, religions, and languages than his predecessors, and in 1934 he ordered the BIA to stop interfering with them. The new commissioner even authorized some experiments with bilingual instruction among the Navajo and other tribes. But these faltered for a lack of teachers who were proficient in the native language (i.e., Indian teachers) and because of budget cuts brought on by World War II (Szasz, 1977).
"Collier also tried, without much success, to promote adult literacy in Navajo. This had seemed like an ideal plan to BIA officials, who were simultaneously promoting an unpopular program of stock reduction to conserve the soil. With a strong faith in the written word, the bureaucrats hoped that if government directives could be distributed in Navajo, they would somehow have more persuasive power and Navajos would acquiesce in the reduction of their herds. This did not prove to be the case; neither reading nor stock reduction caught on. Some people believe that the BIA's initiative actually soured Navajos on the idea of learning to read and write their language by associating Navajo literacy with an unpopular and dictatorial government program. Meanwhile, despite Collier's policy changes at the top, many BIA schools continued to maintain English-only rules and to punish students for violating them well into the 1950s, apparently without much interference from Washington."
posted by lisa schamess @ 8:01 AM
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