Share your Native Language story, photo or video!
Hi everyone,
As part of PBS' new Native American history documentary series that begins airing 4/13(
www.pbs.org/weshallremain), they've launched a "Stories from Viewers" sharing tool that you can use to post notes, photos & videos.
The "Stories from Viewers" site is new and currently lives only on the Boston PBS station site but other local stations are now loading onto their sites as well.
Anything you (and others you contact) post can get put in very quickly (today or tomorrow) and then get syndicated to ALL the local station sites to serve as good examples for Native & non-Native viewers, teachers, students, etc.
The "Stories from Viewers" form is ready to use on the WGBH site here:
http://www.wgbh.org/generic/remain
It takes 5-10 minutes to type something up & just a few seconds to post. I posted a photo of my little brother Brandon dancing & this text:
Where Native Languages Live: In the Circle, and in our classrooms
Crow Nation, Montana, USA -- Pictured: Brandon Shoots the Enemy (Lakota / Standing Rock Sioux) at Crow Nation Days powwow, June 2007
While all of us in Indian Country fear the demise of our languages -- and many souls at the grassroots work tirelessly to create new speakers among younger generations of Native Americans -- our languages are always heard in the dance circles of the intertribal socials, wacipis, celebrations, pau waus, and powwows held throughout the U.S. Drum groups and announcers commonly sing and pray in Native languages, and provide shining examples to young participants of the ongoing vitality and relevance of the spoken (and sung) Native worldviews.
This event held at Crow Agency featured announcers who spoke almost exclusively in Absaroke, and while my family and I were visiting from the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in the Dakotas, we loved hearing the local language used so widely. My mom, a first-language Lakota speaker, wasn't able to pick out anything from the Crow conversations around us -- even though our languages belong to the Siouan language family -- but she deeply appreciated seeing babies and youngsters being spoken to in both English and Crow.
Increasingly, our languages are also heard in our Indian nations' pre-k and gradeschool classrooms, as well as in curriculums ranging from high school to the the tribal college, state college and university levels. In settings like the Native Hawaiian language immersion schools found throughout the islands, the Mohawk Nation's Akwesasne Freedom School in upstate New York, the Northern Arapaho's Language Lodge in Ethete, Wyoming, and in at least a dozen other Native communities, all subject areas are being taught to youngsters in tribal languages.
Those of us in the generations following those who endured the trauma of boarding schools and were shamed for speaking Native languages, still have much to learn and must put in our language-learning time now. We will. We are. We know what's at stake.