In recent years, several Andean nations have implemented reforms addressing the educational and social marginalization of Indigenous populations. Bilingual-intercultural education plays a prominent role in these reforms, and national bureaucracies have arisen around the goals of linguistic standardization and development of Indigenous language…

Analyzes the American Indian Movement (AIM) with respect to (1) the role of tradition in AIM demands; (2) militant Indian rhetoric as a form of ritual self-address; (3) how Indian religious/cultural beliefs restrict the ability of language to persuade Whites; and (4) how militant Indian rhetoric fulfills its function. (PD)

A phonemic orthography poses serious problems for students from oral cultures, in part due to the very structure of such orthographies and in part due to negative transference from English spelling habits. A syllabic orthography minimizes the structural problems at the level of decoding, but is an obstacle to morpheme recognition and grammatical…

Presents an overview of the contemporary struggle of American Indians to relearn their native languages. Examines the loss of native languages resulting from assimilationist policies at federal boarding schools; bilingual programs of the 1970s that emphasized writing, reading, and "survival" vocabulary; and recent tribal language programs…

Pueblo author Simon Ortiz discusses Indigenous authors' use of their native language as a form of self-assertion, pointing out how African literature drives the decolonizing impulse in literature today. Use of the dominant language would reach a larger audience but would also make transmission of colonizers' cultural assumptions unavoidable while…

This paper discusses bilingual education model types in South America with a special focus on the Andean region, and examines the recent language planning decisions by one Ecuadorian indigenous group to formally instruct Quichua as a second language in community schools. Specifically I argue that this type of localised planning--which promotes an…

Tracing the history of the term "squaw" offers insights into the positionings and politics of indigenous femininity in colonial America. Today, as throughout the colonization of Native America, imperial projects and projections have based themselves upon and imagined themselves through the lives, bodies, and images of indigenous women,…

American Indian children are not succeeding in school. A major reason is language. American Indians speak their own indigenous language as well as an indigenous English. Linguistic pressures by teachers are viewed by an Indian child as an attack on his/her identity. Teacher education concerning the relationship between language and identity is…

Traces the history of institutionalized violence--both physical and symbolic--within American Indian education; the legacy of shame and guilt from the boarding school era, when oppression was internalized; and the relationship of such "mis-education" to the decline of Tlingit language and culture in southwestern Alaska. Discusses…

In an open letter, 19 educators in Navajo schools make recommendations for regulations to implement the Native American Languages Act. Recommendations are concerned with development of culturally sensitive curriculum and materials, teacher education, teacher certification, availability of immersion programs, school environment encouraging Native…

Indigenous languages are being displaced at an alarming rate. The ramifications of language loss to the speakers' culture and to the wider culture, and its connection to issues of repression and acculturation are discussed. Reversing language shift is the practice of social justice and requires collaboration between indigenous communities and…

Personal life experiences and metaphors illustrate how the Sto:lo people's world view is reflected in their Halq'emeylem language, in which identity, language, and place are inextricably interconnected. A brief comparison of Native and Western world views demonstrates how world views encompass people's understanding of time, history, self, and…

Provides an overview of the articles in this issue of the Tribal College Journal, which demonstrate how tribal colleges are gradually creating places where Native languages are safe. Asserts that a place where the language is honored is a place that education, too, becomes honored, and that recognizing Native languages leads to self-esteem and…

White and Hopi antiracist scholars and activists from working-class backgrounds, the authors write from a common heritage of claiming social origins the academy deems suspect. Refusing to abandon their social origins at the gate of the ivory tower, they name the colonial foundations of the academy and seek a new naming through their…

An ethnomathematics approach to the curriculum is advocated as a means of addressing the problems faced by limited English proficient (LEP) students who experience difficulties in learning mathematics. It is noted that the problems may have little to do with difficulties in processing mathematical ideas. When LEP students are from different…