language immersion

Teaching the Whole Child: Language Immersion and Student Achievement

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

As Congress considers two bills to support Native American language immersion, including the Native Language Immersion Student Achievement Act, it is time to take stock. What does research say about the impact of Native-language immersion on Native students’ academic achievement? We now have 30 years–more than a generation–of data on Native-language immersion in the U.S. and beyond...

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Citation

McCarty, Teresa L. "Teaching the Whole Child: Language Immersion and Student Achievement." Indian Country Today Media Network. September 1, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/teaching-the-whole-child-language-immersion-and-student-achievement, accessed February 12, 2024)

Preserving Culture: 6 Early Childhood Language Immersion Programs

Author
Year

Language immersion schools have proved to be enormously beneficial for young learners’ academics. To quote Dr. Janine Pease-Pretty on Top, Crow, founding president of Little Big Horn College, “Solid data from the Navajo, Blackfeet and Assiniboine immersion schools experience indicates that the language immersion students experience greater success in school, measured by consistent improvement on local and national measures of achievement.” Early childhood language immersion programs must be adapted to the cultural and financial resources available. Here are some examples of how educators have done that...

Sleeping Language Waking Up Thanks to Wampanoag Reclamation Project

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

It’s been more than 300 years since Wampanoag was the primary spoken language in Cape Cod. But, if Wampanoag tribal members keep their current pace, that may not be true for much longer.

Tribal members have been signing up for classes with the Wampanoag Language Reclamation Project while families and students have been attending summer language camps. Now plans are underway for the Wampanoag Language Public Charter School, expected to open in August 2015 to serve kindergarten through third grade...

Native Nations
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Citation

Rose, Christina. "Sleeping Language Waking Up Thanks to Wampanoag Reclamation Project." Indian Country Today Media Network. February 25, 2014. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/sleeping-language-waking-up-thanks-to-wampanoag-reclamation-project, accessed November 13, 2023)

Indigenous languages crucial to cultural flourishing

Author
Producer
Rabble.ca
Year

I believe our languages to be so central to who we are as Indigenous peoples, that I cannot discuss our present or our future without reference to languages. The oppression we have faced, and continue to face, does not define us in the way our languages do. Our resilience, and the fact that we have not disappeared all the times it was predicted that our end was just around the corner, is very much rooted in our languages. The ability to transmit our languages to our children has been actively interfered with for generations, and remains greatly threatened. The fact that anyone remains at all to speak our languages is a cause for celebration, and such tenacity in the face of unimaginable adversity warrants admiration. Think about that for a moment....

Native Nations
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Citation

Âpihtawikosisân (Chelsea Vowel). "Indigenous languages crucial to cultural flourishing." Rabble.ca. December 4, 2013. Blog. (http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apihtawikosisan/2013/12/indigenous-langu..., accessed July 25, 2023)

Keeping Language Alive: Cherokee Letters Being Translated for Yale

Producer
Indian Country Today
Year

Century-old journals, political messages and medicinal formulas handwritten in Cherokee and archived at Yale University are being translated for the first time.

The Cherokee Nation is among a small few, if not the only tribe, that has a language translation department who contracts with Apple, Microsoft, Google and Ivy League universities for Cherokee translation projects...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Cherokee Nation. "Keeping Language Alive: Cherokee Letters Being Translated for Yale." Indian Country Today. September 27, 2013. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/keeping-language-alive-cherokee-letters-being-translated-for-yale, accessed August 1, 2023)

Tribe fights to keep language alive

Year

Tribal members living in the Pendleton Round-Up’s teepee village stopped, listened and peeked their heads west when Carina Vasquez-Minthorn sang the national anthem at last week’s Happy Canyon Night Show.

Vasquez-Minthorn, 20, a Happy Canyon princess, sang in the Umatilla language for the first time at the show. Some cried, others clapped and cheered.

“She hadn’t told me she was going to sing in Umatilla," Vasquez-Minthorn’s grandmother Marjorie Waheneka said. “I was telling everyone, ‘That’s Carina, that’s Carina!’"

Like many native languages, the Nez Perce language and Sahaptin language group – including Umatilla and Walla Walla – are no longer the mother tongues of most tribal members...

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Citation

Wheeler, Natalie. "Tribe fights to keep language alive." The East Oregonian. September 17. 2013. Article. (http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20130917/NEWS0107/309170370/, accessed September 18, 2013)

Comanche Nation College Tries to Rescue a Lost Tribal Language

Producer
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Year

A two-year tribal college in Lawton, Okla., is using technology to reinvigorate the Comanche language before it dies out. Two faculty members from Comanche Nation College and Texas Tech University worked with tribal elders to create a digital archive of what's left of the language. Only about 25 people nationwide speak Comanche, down from about 15,000 in the late 1800s, they estimate.

Native Nations
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Citation

Mangan, Katherine. "Comanche Nation College Tries to Rescue a Lost Tribal Language." The Chronicle of Higher Education. June 9, 2013. Article. (http://www.chronicle.com/article/Comanche-Nation-College-Tries/139631/, accessed March 29, 2023)

Speaking a culture: How efforts to revitalize a language can have a ripple effect

Author
Producer
News-Review
Year

Carla Osawamick stands in front of a class of students with a wide range of life experiences, from one still in high school to a great-grandmother.

The students all have one thing in common: they are dedicated to learning and speaking Anishinaabemowin, the language spoken by many Native Americans in the Great Lakes region, including the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians.

Osawamick is teaching an intermediate language class at North Central Michigan College in Petoskey, where two sections of beginning and two sections of intermediate courses in the language are offered.

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Citation

Coe, Aebra. "Speaking a culture: How efforts to revitalize a language can have a ripple effect." Petoskey News. June 12, 2013. Article. (https://www.petoskeynews.com/speaking-a-culture-how-efforts-to-revitalize-a-language, accessed November 30, 2023)

Addressing the crisis in the Lakota language

Year

With only 2 to 5 percent of children currently speaking Lakota, Thomas Short Bull, president of the Oglala Lakota College, said the time has come to raise the alarm.

As the day begins at the Lakota Language Immersion School, a young boy passes an abalone bowl of sage to each child sitting on the floor in a circle. Children from kindergarten through third grade gather for the morning ceremony with prayers, songs, and a short discussion of things to know and remember...

Native Nations
Resource Type
Citation

Rose, Christina. "Addressing the crisis in the Lakota language." Native Sun News. April 26, 2013. Article. (http://www.indianz.com/News/2013/009473.asp, accessed February 28, 2023)

Immersion School is Saving a Native American Language

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The White Clay Immersion School on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation in Harlem, Montana is trying to save the A’ani language. Thanks to the school’s efforts 26 students, a record for the school, are currently studying the Native American language...

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Citation

Indian Country Today Staff. "Immersion School is Saving a Native American Language." Indian Country Today, February 12, 2012. Article. (https://ictnews.org/archive/immersion-school-is-saving-a-native-american-language, accessed July 21, 2023)