Thread by @rebeccanagle

Happy #NativeAmericanHeritageMonth. Everyday this month I am sharing a history lesson. #WeAreStillHere #NativeIn2019

Today’s lesson is LANGUAGE.

Language is a core part of our identity as Indigenous people. When I talk to our Cherokee speakers they always say that if we lose our language we will lose what it means to be Cherokee.

Today, of the 115 Indigenous languages spoken in the US, two are healthy, 34 are in danger, and 79 will go extinct within a generation without serious intervention according to Ethnologue. In other words, 99% of the Native American languages spoken today are in danger.

The crisis of language loss is a direct result of U.S. policy. Starting in the late 1800’s the United States created policies designed to assimilate Native Americans to White society and culture.

These policies including things like sending Native kids to boarding schools, urban relocation programs, dividing up communally owned tribal land, banning Native religions, targeting Native kids for adoption and more.

In boarding schools, Native kids were punished for speaking their languages. At the height of the Indian boarding school era, between 1877 and 1918, the United States allocated $2.81 billion (adjusted for inflation) to support the nation’s boarding school infrastructure.

Since 2005, the US has only appropriated approximately $180 million for language revitalization. In other words, for every dollar the U.S. government spent on eradicating Native languages in previous centuries, it spent less than 7 cents on revitalizing them in this one.

Given the deliberate role the U.S. government played in pushing Native languages to the brink of extinction, one could argue it owes tribes the cost of repairing that harm, that once a language is lost is irreversible.

Instead, today, tribes are competing with each other for funding that is a mere fraction of what the U.S. was willing to pay for their possible eradication.

This thread was adapted from this article:
hcn.org/articles/indig…