Losing languages,
losing worlds

Native children were abducted from their homes to attend the schools, where they were forced to worship as Christians and speak English. Thousands of them died, whether by beatings, medical neglect or malnutrition.

Some survivors reported they never spoke their native language again after attending the boarding schools, which persisted through the mid-1900s.

And while the boarding school system in the US was notoriously brutal, it was not the only one.

Boarding schools all over the world, both government- and missionary-run, varied in practice and intention. But most sought to dominate native cultures through language.

In the Peruvian Amazon in the 1950s, “pacification” attempts by missionaries forced native Arakmbut peoples to attend faraway mission schools and learn Spanish.

In Sápmi, northern parts of what are now known as Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Kola Peninsula of Russia, native Sami peoples were sent to boarding schools from the 19th century through the mid 20th century. Norway and Sweden both passed laws prohibiting the use of Sami language in schools and at home.

Schools and other forced assimilation efforts had a similar effect on the Maori people of Aotearoa, now known as New Zealand. In 1900, 90% of Maori children could speak Maori; by 1960, only 26% could.

While there are more than 56,000 Potawatomi people living today, Neely says less than 10 people in the world speak the language natively.

Only around 30, he says, have achieved conversational fluency. He is one of them.

“We’re in a crisis moment for language and for our way of life,” he said. “Language is the key to understanding our culture … Our history, our dance, our ceremonies, our food -- that makes us Potawatomi -- but the language is what ties it all together.”

And the language is more irreplicable than some may think.

When Robin Wall Kimmerer, a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, began learning her language 20 years ago, she thought she would just be learning vocabulary. But she discovered the language held a way of viewing the world that directly contradicted the world constructed by English.

“Our language is verb-based instead of noun-based -- and every verb is either animate or inanimate,” said Kimmerer, a plant ecologist, writer and professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. “The example that I use a lot, because it was so revealing to me, is that our verb for ‘hearing’ is a different verb if you hear a birdsong than if you hear an airplane go by.”

As Kimmerer learned, Potawatomi contains a structure that differs from English in its denial of human exceptionalism. While English separates humans and things by pronouns – he/she/they or “it” – Potawatomi is more concerned with what is living and what is not. And all living things, human or not, are offered equal grammatical value.

“In English, you and I would never refer to each other as ‘it’ -- but we feel free to call trees ‘it,’ and flowers and insects ‘it,’ Kimmerer said. “The ‘it-ing’ of the world that English does … is a kind of permission for an exploitative economy. When we call them it, we set them outside our circle of responsibility.”

The Potawatomi language, in its most foundational grammar, offers a worldview that brushes up against most modern values. Kimmerer says the lessons embedded in this worldview, especially in a time of pandemic and climate crisis, are the “medicine we need right now.”

“Inherent in the language is this respect for the living world and one another,” she said. “Therein, I think, lies so much of its power. It’s a language that helps us cultivate compassion.”

The Language Conservancy recruits indigenous elders to document endangered languages by writing dictionaries. Using accelerated methods, Meya said the organization has pared down the dictionary writing process from 20 years to under a year.

But even a year is hard to afford when a pandemic has ravaged the communities these dictionaries depend on.

“Before the pandemic we thought maybe we had five or 10 years to work on a language,” said Meya, who also is chairman of the Lakota Language Consortium. “Now, some languages where we've lost the majority of the speakers, we might only have one or two years left.”

In 2014, the Lakota Language Consortium partnered with native speakers to produce a cartoon series of the “Berenstain Bears” in the Lakota language, giving the tribe’s children a new opportunity for exposure to their language.

Meya said that one third of the cast members involved in the project have passed away due to Covid-19.

“Some of the communities we work with, we've lost 30 or 40 of the speakers,” he said. “It’s been devastating to these communities and has accelerated the demise of these languages.”

To reach young people, the Citizen Potawatomi Nation Cultural Heritage Center has created Potawatomi language courses, a Potawatomi dictionary and two YouTube channels. A member of the Nation even started a TikTok account.

Meya and the Language Conservancy also have worked with 32 languages across the US, Canada and Australia to create dictionaries, children’s books and language apps.

Still, Neely said much more is needed to help endangered languages thrive again.

Two initiatives that could really swing the pendulum, he said, are native language immersion schools and the translation of more relevant media into native languages.

“Our kids look and say, ‘How is Potawatomi beneficial to me?’ They flip on the TV and hear English,” he said. “I want video games in my language. I want to be able to hit Google Translate and translate the entire page into Potawatomi.”

Initiatives like these might turn the tides for endangered languages, but they require something important: the willingness of non-indigenous people to heed native voices and worldviews.

There is a prophecy among indigenous tribes called the Seven Fires, or the Seventh Generation, that calls for this. It recounts, in seven installments, native history and what indigenous people have had to endure under European colonization.

The seventh fire, or generation, speaks of a time when indigenous peoples, culture and language experience revival and healing.

Today, many believe the seventh generation is now.

But it’s not only a time of hope – it’s a time of choice.

“The dominant culture will be shown the way, but still has to choose to walk that path,” Neely said. “If the dominant culture chooses correctly … this fire will light an eighth fire of generosity and compassion. If not, this may in fact signal the beginning of the end. For we as Potawatomi people are told that if our language dies, then the world dies.”