This paper discusses the contribution of school-based mother-tongue literacy to the maintenance and renewal of endangered languages, with Navajo as the case in point. Although Navajo claims the most speakers among U.S. indigenous languages, the absolute number and relative proportion of Navajo speakers have declined drastically in the last 30…

The Bilingual Bicultural Act of 1968, which mandates teaching in the native language of children with limited ability in English, is not obeyed in the Navajo Reservation where the schools' teaching to normal and special education students is in English. This violates the rights of peoples with a foreign language and culture to be educated…

Bilingual education in the United States has been directed by various language education policies to which there are three dimensions: (1) the language or dialect the child speaks on entering school; (2) the type of language policy in the school, which may be monolingual or one of three types of bilingual policies; (3) the divisions of language…

This paper describes a federally funded language preservation program at Leupp Public School, part of Flagstaff (Arizona) Unified School District but located on the Navajo Reservation. Funded in 1997 for 5 years, this schoolwide project is designed to help elementary students become proficient speakers, readers, and writers of Navajo while…

An examination of 13 selected samples of the English compositions written by Navajo college students revealed much of interest for the developing concern over widespread classification of native Americans as failure-bound in college courses involving written English skills. Four culturally motivated text strategies were found to be typical and…

This paper presents some preliminary findings from an opinion survey on the nature and depth of language and cultural studies to be included in school curricula as required by the Navajo Tribe's Language and Culture Mandate (1984). A 10-question survey was sent to 20 elementary and secondary schools in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico and Arizona.…

In the past 25 years, American Indian education has undergone tremendous changes in both content (curriculum and pedagogy) and context (institutional framework). Centered on the issue of control, changes at both levels have resulted from a dynamic interplay between federal language policy and local initiatives. The federal Bilingual Education Act…

The relationship between teaching English to speakers of other languages and bilingual education is explored through three dimensions in language education: participants, channels, and codes. Language barriers to education can be found in each of these. As student participants become more numerous and more linguistically diverse, the educational…

The Learn in Beauty Project at Northern Arizona University worked with a consortium of seven Navajo Nation school districts seeking to implement the Dine Language and Culture teaching perspective. This perspective is based on the premises that education is best when it reflects a sense of place; education should be based on the philosophy and…