"Native American Institute", 24th Annual InternationalBilingual/Multicultural Education Conference, February 14-18,1995; Phoenix, Arizona.
One school in California with a Spanish immersion program hasa pull out for Native American languages. Joshua Fishman saysthat schools cannot do it alone. The family and community arekey to the process, however, the schools have a supportive role.We need to give curricular support for materials production.
Dr. Gina Cantoni, NAU, spoke of the Slovenian people in Italyof her home village who were persecuted by Mussolini's decree.It was illegal to speak anything besides Italian. The persecutionmotivated them to work very hard at home and the community tomaintain their language.
Richard Littlebear spoke of a great gap. We consider ourselvesIndians, but what do we know abut our language and culture andhistory? this whole discussion seems like a revolving door. Everyoneadvocates language maintenance, but who is ding it? It is timeto move on to the next step. We need a rationale for languagedevelopment based on how languages are learned. The academic environmentis not what makes sense. Languages should be spoken at homes andin the community. It hurts to see the people speaking only Englishin every situation. We must put it on a more practical basis.If we suddenly had a vacancy in the English department, then wewent to a corner and grabbed the first white person we saw andput them in the classroom because they are native English speakers,they will fail. Teachers hired for naive American languages havecontributed to the demise of the language programs by being poorlyprepared for the job. The issue of maintaining languages is notan external matter, it can only be a dicision of the people. Outsiderscan only share information, technical and qualitative, including"success stories", such as the Maori "nest"which works.
At the General session there was a moment of silence to honorthose who have suffered from racism.
Martin Anton, president, Inter-tribal council of Arizona. Ourdistinct identity is based on language maintenance. We want bilingualeducation to contribute to the existence of our people. The bilingualprograms need to continue to improve with local resources, partnershipswith agencies and communities, early childhood education thatis culturally and linguistically appropriate, academic performanceimprovement, parental responsibility in the progress of the children,and of themselves, and to be a positive role model for the children.

Peña family of musicians from Phoenix. We play togetheras a family as a way of increasing our family ties and identity.My children see me playing in a Mariachi and playing the violinat home. They see my wife and I teaching in the schools. I ama music teacher an my wife is a 2nd grade bilingual teacher. Mychildren are playing the marimba, the traditional instrument ofmy native Honduras.
Para planear por un año, plantar maíz, para planearpor una década, plantar un árbol, para planer porun siglo, educar un niño.

Scholastic is launching a new balanced bilingual early childhoodprogram this week.

In some schools, the bilingual educational assistance are theonly ones in the school who can communicate with the studentsand parents, and give training to the teachers. The NABE bilingualassistant of the year award was given to Tou Lee Vang Yang. Theaward was given to an aide from Missoula Montana who serves thedistrict in Hmong, Thai, Lao, and English. he was honored witha standing ovation. He is working on his bachelor's degree. Hespoke in the Hmong language and in English. When he received theFAX while working with a student, he spread the word to the teachers,that he was going to Phonics. They finally looked at the wordand told him it was feniks. His community believes that the bilingualprogram helps the parents maintain contact with the parents andallow parents to contribute to the child's education as they converse.Before the program, the children were beginning to speak to theirparents in English and argue with them about Hmong. They are playingthe harmonica instead of the traditional Hmong flute. They arebecoming Americanized very quickly, too quickly for the parentsto maintain an influence in the development of the children. Tomake the point he played the traditional flute and the harmonica.The audience seemed to appreciate the traditional flute. He wasclearly proficient at both.
Lorena Zah Bahe. President of NAIE, and the Navajo School BoardAssociation, and active representative in numerous official capacitiesnation wide.
She introduced herself by stating her clans. Now the audienceknows her relationship to them. Now she can go on to the topic.NABE has made great efforts to serve Indians, Asians, and allpeople, though it has been perceived as serving Spanish mostly."My presence here is evidence that NABE is concerned aboutall people.
In the past, bilingual education was the classroom for the kidswho spoke only Navajo to hear lessons in only English. Now itis often a place where Indians who speak only English have lessonsin only English. It needs to be something else.
There are 22 tribes in Arizona. The concept of Indian is a Europeanconcept. We saw many nations. They thought they had arrived inIndia. When they realized the mistake, they kept the name, becausethey did not know how else to classify us. There were far morelanguage differences here than in all of Europe. The first Europeanshere were Spanish speaking, and translators were other tribesfrom farther south. The Tewa people might have told the Spanishthat we were "Naveijó" in their language. Weare diné, the people. We still do not grow up thinkingof ourselves as Indians, but as diné. Later we find thatwe are also "Indians" with some things in common withother groups: We have been here long, we share dispossession,we are perceived by others as the same, we share poverty, limitedpolitical power at city, state, national levels. We have muchin common with Eskimos and Pacific Islanders. Bitsí yizhclizhii- bruised skin people - is our common term.
Now that our lands are becoming appreciated, the governments andpeople are wanting to renege on the meager treaties of the pastto continue to take possession of them and their richness. Wehave some residual sovereignty, a small measure of our originalsovereignty at the time of the treaties. The treaties allow sovereigntyexcept as changed by treaty or act of Congress. Many schools continueto resist the need to give respect to Indians as sovereign groups.For a long time, only tribal controlled schools gave respect tothe language and culture on the land based controlled by the people.We desire that all of the children are learning in both languagesand cultures. If the outsiders do not like it, they should usetheir freedom to go elsewhere. We are a native American islandin a great sea of English. Some groups do not even have a landbase or recognition by the government. Many children have grownup with only English, and move far from their land base. The grandchildrenare divorced from their roots, and therefore from their language.Even those who remain at home are shifting to English, particularlythose with small populations. Many groups have no native languagespeakers among them. There were, at time of contact, hundredsof languages, with only about 150 left active now. Only 50 havechild speakers. Twenty years ago, Spolsky found that 90% of childrenin school were Navajo speakers. In 1993, only half speak Navajo,and 1/3 are fluent. The isolation is not sufficient anymore. Navajois in trouble, and all native languages are in trouble. The childrenare being brought up with only English. How can we help them speakmore than one language?
I travel across the country and find that there is a cry fromthe tribal leaders to preserve and maintain native languages.There are federal funds for Indian education, but the focus ismissing the need: to preserve and maintain language and culture.My children and grandchildren do not speak Navajo.
The Goals 2000 legislation promises to be the most sweeping changein American Education every, with an influence of at least thenext 10 years. The legislation says that teachers must adjustthe teaching to the needs of the students. The standards are tobe accessible and assessable, and accountable. States and schoolsmust change their standards, and teach the people to train towardthose standards. Some tribes have passed resolutions against Goals2000, others are supportive, seeing significant opportunities.All minority language educators should be aware of the legislation.Although the standards are to be set at the district level theconcern is that it will be imposed from the highest levels. Weare afraid that the omission of Native languages and culturesfrom the legislation may portend a lack of attention to them inthe schools. We know that the standardized achievement tests donot accurately assess the needs and skills of LEP students. NativeAmerican students often exhibit characteristics of LEP studentseven though they may have English as their only language. Schoolsneed to take all this into consideration as they work on schoolimprovement plans. I had the opportunity to contribute to thedevelopment of Goals 2000, and encourage the tribes to use theflexibility to devise appropriate local goals.