Blackfeet language preservation advocate Darrell Kipp dies
By The Associated Press
CREATED OCT. 26, 2013
Century-old Handwritten Letters Translated from Cherokee for Yale University
Native News Network Staff in Native Education
TAHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA – Over 2,000 Century-old journals, political messages and medicinal formulas handwritten in Cherokee and archived at Yale University are being translated for the first time.
Cherokee Their researchers and linguistic specialists have helped adapt 21st century technologies with their traditional culture.
The Cherokee Nation is among a small few, if not the only tribe, that has a language translation department who contracts with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Ivy League universities for Cherokee translation projects.
One of the tribe's 13 translators, Durbin Feeling, is transcribing some 2,000 documents at Yale's Beinecke Library, to catalogue and eventually make public.
The documents, spanning from the late 19th to mid-20th century, are from the collection of the late Jack and Anna Kilpatrick, Cherokee researchers.
“Native American communities have endured some of America's most sustained forms of cultural oppression, and contemporary Indian nations, tribal members and supporters work tirelessly to reverse generations of assimilation-orientated designs. The work of linguists and language speakers in such efforts is particularly essential, especially in keeping alive and vibrant the languages of the first Americans,” said Ned Blackhawk, Yale professor of history and American studies, and advisory member at Yale's Native American Cultural Center.
“The Cherokee Nation works at the leading edge of such linguistic activism. Their researchers and linguistic specialists have helped adapt 21st century technologies with their traditional culture and have developed among the most advanced pedagogical practices in the nation,” Blackhawk said.
The Cherokee Nation translation department is also currently working with museums in Oklahoma and finishing up its largest translation of 500,000 words for Microsoft.
“Our speakers are taking Cherokee history, in the form of our language, and preserving it for our future by incorporating our written alphabet into smart phones and computer language settings, making it possible for our youth to email entirely in Cherokee,” Principal Chief Bill John Baker said.
“They are one of our most valuable resources, not only passing on their wisdom to our Cherokee Immersion students learning to speak, but for our future who will know more about our lives and way of thinking, revealed in all these translated archived manuscripts.” Feeling's first language is Cherokee. He has a master's degree in linguistics from the University of California, Irvine, and honorary doctorate from Ohio State. He has traveled across the United States and Germany sharing how to speak, read and write the 85 character Cherokee syllabary. He's also taught Cherokee language and culture at the University of Oklahoma and Northeastern State University.
“Universities and museums often have all these documents and nobody to read them, to tell them what they say,” Feeling said.
“They'll choose the ones they're curious about and let me translate, which benefits us all.” The Cherokee Nation has a comprehensive language program that includes community language classes, online language courses, employee language classes, a language technology program, an office of translation and an immersion school for preschool through sixth grade and partners with Northeastern State University on a degree program for Cherokee language.
In addition to these initiatives, the Cherokee Nation also shows a strong dedication to language by including protection of language in the Chief's oath of office, council resolutions supporting language and a quantity of signs on Cherokee Nation property that are written in the Cherokee syllabary.
Century-old Handwritten Letters Translated from Cherokee for Yale University
Native News Network Staff in Native Education
TAHLEQUAH, OKLAHOMA – Over 2,000 Century-old journals, political messages and medicinal formulas handwritten in Cherokee and archived at Yale University are being translated for the first time.
Cherokee Their researchers and linguistic specialists have helped adapt 21st century technologies with their traditional culture.
The Cherokee Nation is among a small few, if not the only tribe, that has a language translation department who contracts with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Ivy League universities for Cherokee translation projects.
One of the tribe's 13 translators, Durbin Feeling, is transcribing some 2,000 documents at Yale's Beinecke Library, to catalogue and eventually make public.
The documents, spanning from the late 19th to mid-20th century, are from the collection of the late Jack and Anna Kilpatrick, Cherokee researchers.
“Native American communities have endured some of America's most sustained forms of cultural oppression, and contemporary Indian nations, tribal members and supporters work tirelessly to reverse generations of assimilation-orientated designs. The work of linguists and language speakers in such efforts is particularly essential, especially in keeping alive and vibrant the languages of the first Americans,” said Ned Blackhawk, Yale professor of history and American studies, and advisory member at Yale's Native American Cultural Center.
“The Cherokee Nation works at the leading edge of such linguistic activism. Their researchers and linguistic specialists have helped adapt 21st century technologies with their traditional culture and have developed among the most advanced pedagogical practices in the nation,” Blackhawk said.
The Cherokee Nation translation department is also currently working with museums in Oklahoma and finishing up its largest translation of 500,000 words for Microsoft.
“Our speakers are taking Cherokee history, in the form of our language, and preserving it for our future by incorporating our written alphabet into smart phones and computer language settings, making it possible for our youth to email entirely in Cherokee,” Principal Chief Bill John Baker said.
“They are one of our most valuable resources, not only passing on their wisdom to our Cherokee Immersion students learning to speak, but for our future who will know more about our lives and way of thinking, revealed in all these translated archived manuscripts.” Feeling's first language is Cherokee. He has a master's degree in linguistics from the University of California, Irvine, and honorary doctorate from Ohio State. He has traveled across the United States and Germany sharing how to speak, read and write the 85 character Cherokee syllabary. He's also taught Cherokee language and culture at the University of Oklahoma and Northeastern State University.
“Universities and museums often have all these documents and nobody to read them, to tell them what they say,” Feeling said.
“They'll choose the ones they're curious about and let me translate, which benefits us all.” The Cherokee Nation has a comprehensive language program that includes community language classes, online language courses, employee language classes, a language technology program, an office of translation and an immersion school for preschool through sixth grade and partners with Northeastern State University on a degree program for Cherokee language.
In addition to these initiatives, the Cherokee Nation also shows a strong dedication to language by including protection of language in the Chief's oath of office, council resolutions supporting language and a quantity of signs on Cherokee Nation property that are written in the Cherokee syllabary.
http://sils2014.hawaii-conference.com/
Save the Dates!
Wednesday, January 15th to Sunday, January 19th, 2014
Hilo Hawaiian Hotel & University of Hawai‘i at Hilo Campus
Hilo, Island of Hawai‘i
He waʻa ke kula; na ka ʻōlelo e uli (schools are canoes; language steers them)
SILS 2014 will be hosted Wednesday, January 15th to Sunday, January 19th, 2014, by the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in its newly completed Hawaiian language building, Hale ʻŌlelo.
Hawaiʻi State, and the district of Hilo in particular on Hawaiʻi island, has one of the highest concentrations of young Native American language speakers anywhere. Yet, fifty years ago no children spoke Hawaiian in Hilo. The change is the result of aligning school programming with an official language status.
Visits to language immersion programs from preschool to the doctorate will be central to SILS 2014, as will be post-visitation discussion groups.
Challenges such as government testing, developing curricula, and parent involvement will receive special attention.
Menominee Seventh Grader Suspended for Saying "I Love You" in her Native Language
HAWANO, WISCONSIN - What's love got to do with it? Not much, especially if you say the words "I love you" in the Menominee language in front of a certain Wisconsin teacher.
Miranda Washinawatok
Menominee
Seventh grader Miranda Washinawatok, Menominee, found this out.
Miranda speaks two languages: Menominee and English. She also plays on her basketball team. However, two Thursdays ago she was suspended for one basketball game because she spoke Menominee to a fellow classmate during class.
Miranda attends Sacred Heart Catholic Academy in Shawano, Wisconsin. The school body is over 60 percent American Indian. The school is approximately six miles from the south border of the Menominee Indian Tribe Reservation.
"On January 19 I was told by Miranda she was being benched from playing that night. I found out at 4:20 and we were back at school at 6:30 pm so I could get to the bottom of why she could not play,"
said Tanaes Washinawatok, Miranda's mother.
"Miranda kept saying she was only told by her assistant coach she was being benched because two teachers said she had a bad attitude. I wanted to know what she did to make them say she had a bad attitude."
At the school, the teachers and coaching staff seemed to want to cast blame on each other, according to Miranda's mother.
"I wanted to talk to the principal, but he was not there before the game started,"
stated Tanaes Washinawatok. Being a persistent concerned parent, Washinawatok was back at the school by 7:30 the next morning to speak to the principal.
The principal told Washinawatok that the assistant coach told him she was told by two teachers to bench Miranda for attitude problems.
The alleged 'attitude problem' turned out to be that Miranda said the Menominee word
“posoh” that means “hello”
and said
“Ketapanen”
in Menominee that means "I love you."
Miranda and a fellow classmate were talking to each other when Miranda told her how to say "Hello" and "I love you" in Menominee.
"The teacher went back to where the two were sitting and literally slammed her hand down on the desk and said, "How do I know you are not saying something bad?"
The story did not end there. In the next session, another teacher told Miranda she did not appreciate her getting the other teacher upset because "she is like a daughter to me."
By the time, Miranda was picked up by her mother she was upset for being suspended.
"Miranda knows quite a bit of the Menominee language. We speak it. My mother, Karen Washinawatok, is the director of the Language and Culture Commission of the Menominee Tribe. She has a degree in linguistics from the University of Arizona's College of Education-AILDI American Indian Language Development Institute. She is a former tribal chair and is strong into our culture,"
states Tanaes Washinawatok.
Washinawatok has had a total of three meetings with school officials and was promised Miranda would receive a public apology, as would the Menominee Tribe, and the apologies would be publically placed.
"On Wednesday, a letter was sent to parents and guardians. A real generic letter of apology, that really did not go into specifics as to why there was this apology,"
Washinawatok told the Native News Network Thursday evening.
"I still don't think it was enough,"
Sacred Heart Catholic Academy is operated by the Diocese of Green Bay, which ironically has an option on its answering machine for Spanish, but not Menominee. A call put in late Thursday afternoon by the Native News Network was not returned by press time.
updated 1:00 pm est; updated 11:25 am est; posted February 3, 2012 6:59 am est
LANGUAGE IS LIFE BIENNIAL CONFERENCE – COMING OF AGE
The Great Falls Tribune (Montana) recently did a series of articles on Native languages in Montana.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-23053593
California is home to the greatest diversity of Native American tribes in the US, and even today, 90 identifiable languages are still spoken there.
Many are dying out as the last fluent speakers pass away and English dominates. But one tribe is having success reviving the Yurok language, which was on the verge of extinction and now is being taught in schools.
Members of the tribe spoke to the BBC's Alastair Leithead about their efforts to save the language.
