More than 600 Native American youth from tribes across Oklahoma and beyond gathered this month at the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble Museum in Norman for their tenth annual two-day Youth Language Fair.
More than 600 Native American youth from tribes across Oklahoma and beyond gathered this month at the University of Oklahoma’s Sam Noble Museum in Norman for their tenth annual two-day Youth Language Fair.
“Our language is the number one source of our soul, our pride, our being, our strength and our identity.”-- Indigenous Language Instructor, Cultural Survival Quarterly, 2010
Languages are vanishing
Language experts believe that 90% of the world’s estimated 6,000 languages could disappear entirely by the end of this century. Indigenous Peoples face myriad socio-economic pressures and discriminatory policies forcing youth and adults alike to replace tribal languages with the dominant languages of the larger societies in which they live.
The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Professor James Anaya, will carry out an official visit to the United States of America from April 23 to May 4, 2012. He will examine the human rights situation of Native Americans, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians (estimated population of 2.7 million). His visit consists of meetings and consultations with federal and state government officials, as well as with Indigenous nations and their representatives in the Southwest, Midwest, Alaska, Pacific Northwest and Washington, D.C.
By Matt Gilbert
Most would agree Native suicide is the pressing issue of all in rural Alaska. In the Athabascan and Yupik regions, it has been a grave and growing concerning for decades. Native leaders raised it as an emergency during the 2010 Alaska Federation of Natives Convention. I spoke to Inupiaq, Yupik, and Athabascan youth and Elders across the state and they had much to say.
Inupiat tribal leader, Caroline Cannon, is one of this year's recipeints of the Goldman Environmental Prize for her exemplary work towards stopping oil exploration and drilling in the Alaskan Arctic.
The Goldman Environmental Prize is awarded annually since 1990 to six grassroots environmental activists, one from Africa, Asia, Europe, Islands and Island Nations, North America, and South and Central America. The prize includes a monetary award of US$150,000 per recipient.
By Pete Zrioka
Languages have a history of being lost in the United States. Through the process of cultural assimilation, many immigrants settle here and lose linguistic ties to their home countries in a few generations.
By Terri M. Baker
By Brandon M. Chapman, Ph.D. and John Goodwin
The following was blog entry was posted by Rocky Kistner of the National Resource Defense Council
April 3, 2012
In the Dakotas, members of the proud Lakota Nation rose in protest this week to join a 48-hour hunger strike in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline-and all tar sands pipelines-they say will destroy precious water resources and ancestral lands in the U.S and in Canada.
This past weekend Cultural Survival’s Endangered Languages Program Manager Jennifer Weston and Tracy Kelley, Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project apprentice hosted a day-long workshop on Indigenous language revitalization projects with more than seventy tribal youth at the Montagnyard Pinecroft Learning Center and Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. The high school students are part of an active refugee community numbering more than 4,000, and all speak one or more Indigenous languages originating in the central highlands of Vietnam, and are learning or already speak English.
Local authorities in Cushing, Oklahoma forced Native Americans protesters of President Obama’s pro-Keystone speech to hold their event within a cage constructed in Memorial Park, miles away from the president’s event.
The Indigenous Environmental Network had the following report:
Land Acknowledgement
We acknowledge that we are headquartered on Massachusett land, in Cambridge, MA, and we thank the past, current, and future Indigenous stewards of this territory.