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,…

Stories of personal experience of supernatural events are a highly-valued form of verbal art for Cherokee speakers. Both the people who tell them and those who listen regard such stories as entertaining and instructional. These stories even reflect some of the tensions that exist between traditional Cherokee culture and modern American social…

Past U.S. policies toward Indian and other Native American languages have attempted to suppress the use of the languages in government-operated Indian schools for assimilating Indian children. About 155 Native languages are spoken today in the United States, but only 20 are spoken by people of all ages. The Native American Languages Act of 1990…

Yurok Indian legends in Yurok Unifon text include English translations of the entire texts in order to produce fluent reading for English speakers and a continuous text for Yurok readers. Although corresponding sentences are numbered, translation is not word-for-word or sentence-for-sentence. The five stories refer to a time when animals could…

The Wapanakamikok, or Eastern Land People, have been forced to do a great deal of moving about since the beginning of European contact in 1607. The Lenape dialect of their common language is spoken today primarily in Oklahoma and Canada and descendents of Wapanakamikok groups are scattered in Wisconsin and Kansas as well. (The other two dialect…

The Makah Language Program Curricular Code (MLPCC) facilitates the systematic storage of Makah curricular information, provides a method of cataloging Makah language materials, is available to all Makah Language Program staff members, and is readily adaptable to any information processing system. The MLPCC consists of a series of symbols…

A program of planned intervention to facilitate language growth in kindergarten children at Cheyenne Eagle Butte was conducted during the 1970-71 school year. The study sample consisted of the students in 2 kindergarten classes, one considered low and one considered high, as judged by family economic background, Headstart experience, and…

Compiled and edited by the Museum and Research Department of the Navajo Tribe in 1972, the text provides information about the Navajo Indians and their vast reservation. Major areas covered include Navajo history and customs, religion, arts and crafts, Navajo tribal government and programs, Navajoland and places to go, 7 wonders of the Navajo…

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…

This paper examines the belief that as English rapidly infiltrates Native American cultures, school programs for teaching and maintaining native languages are not working. It suggests that Native American children who learn English first and their heritage languages second have difficulty learning the structures of their ancestral languages…

This paper discusses the evolution of missionaries' role in U.S. settlement and education, focusing on the impact on American Indian languages. Missionaries did not know the respective cultures of the American Indian tribes they worked with, and they viewed cultures different from their own as inferior. They could not conceive of any difference…

Describes and assesses American Indian bilingual programs and names colleges and universities that accept American Indian languages in fulfillment of foreign language degree requirements. Some reactions to bilingual education projects are briefly described. (CM)

Lakota Indians use five speaking styles--formal and informal Lakota and three types of nonstandard English. Choice of style is determined by the social context and the individuals. Since the styles are used to meet specific linguistic and social needs, they are likely to be maintained simultaneously. (PMJ)

Mi'kmaq is a First Nations language spoken in Atlantic Canada and the north-eastern United States--and like most surviving indigenous languages in North America, it is at risk. The small community of Wagmatcook, Cape Breton, determined to see Mi'kmaq return from the brink of extinction, has implemented 2 initiatives that are changing the fate of…

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…