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Language Planning and Policy in Native America: History, Theory, Praxis
Author(s): Teresa L. Mccarty (Author)
- Publisher: Multilingual Matters
- Publication Date: 15 Dec. 2012
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 304 pages
- ISBN-10: 184769862X
- ISBN-13: 9781847698629
Book Description
Comprehensive in scope and rich in detail, this book explores language planning, language education, and language policy for diverse Native American peoples across time, space, and place. Based on long-term collaborative and ethnographic work with Native American communities and schools, the book examines the imposition of colonial language policies against the fluorescence of contemporary community-driven efforts to revitalize threatened mother tongues. Here, readers will meet those who are on the frontlines of Native American language revitalization every day. As their efforts show, even languages whose last native speaker is gone can be reclaimed through family-, community-, and school-based language planning. Offering a critical-theory view of language policy, and emphasizing Indigenous sovereignties and the perspectives of revitalizers themselves, the book shows how language regenesis is undertaken in social practice, the role of youth in language reclamation, the challenges posed by dominant language policies, and the prospects for Indigenous language and culture continuance current revitalization efforts hold.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Grounding her position in the principles of tribal sovereignty, McCarty provides an insightful, thoroughly investigated, and critical examination of the complexities of Native American language rights and change. She deconstructs commonly held perceptions and theoretical positions of language change and re-introduces us to the multifaceted and resilient qualities of Native peoples and their languages in our contemporary world.
In terms of both the breadth and depth of scholarship Teresa L. McCarty's Language Planning and Policy in Native America is an extraordinary contribution. The work of those in Native language revitalization, the perspectives of a number of academic disciplines as well as education and Native language policy development are uniquely and artfully brought together in this volume by a scholar whose career has had significant involvement and contribution in each area.
Language Planning and Policy will serve as a valuable resource for scholars interested in establishing research agendas in language policy and planning, education policy, or work with Indigenous communities. McCarty's theoretical framework provides a resource for understanding how language policy shapes and is shaped by Indigenous communities. Teresa L. McCarty, as a professor and researcher, successfully presents her argument in an attempt to better understand the inequities facing Native communities.
McCarty's Language Planning and Policy in Native America is a beautiful testimonial to this historic time when Native American communities are taking control of their own linguistic futures. In contrast to the view of language policy as primarily a top-down set of regulations from various levels of government and authorities, McCarty recognizes the primacy of tribal sovereignity, and puts together a new and exciting approach to LPP in Native America as indigenous and community-driven. This inspired and hopeful volume provides a theoretical analysis of the history of oppression and subsequent reclamation of Native American languages, combined with current case studies and a view to the future through the eyes of indigenous youth. A must-read for community language activists and all those interested in language revitalization.
About the Author
Teresa L. McCarty is an educational anthropologist and applied linguist who lives and works in the homelands of the Gabrielino-Tongva, Tovaangar. At the University of California, Los Angeles, she is Distinguished Professor and G.F. Kneller Chair in Education and Anthropology, and Faculty in American Indian Studies. A member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and the International Centre for Language Revitalisation, she is the former editor of the American Educational Research Journal and the current coeditor of the Journal of American Indian Education. Her books include A Place To Be Navajo--Rough Rock and the Struggle for Self-Determination in Indigenous Schooling, "To Remain an Indian"--Lessons in Democracy from a Century of Native American Education (with K.T. Lomawaima), Language Planning and Policy in Native America, Indigenous Youth and Multilingualism (with L.T. Wyman and S.E. Nicholas), Indigenous Language Revitalization in the Americas (with S.M. Coronel-Molina), A World of Indigenous Languages: Politics, Pedagogies, and Prospects for Language Reclamation (with S.E. Nicholas and G. Wigglesworth), and Critical Youth Research in Education--Methodologies of Praxis and Care (with A.I. Ali). She is currently engaged in a multi-university, US-wide study of Indigenous-language immersion schooling funded by the Spencer Foundation.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Language Planning and Policy in Native America
History, Theory, Praxis
By Teresa L. McCarty
Multilingual Matters
Copyright © 2013 Teresa L. McCarty
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84769-862-9
Contents
Dedication,
Statement by Miami Tribe of Oklahoma Chief Thomas Gamble,
Acknowledgements,
Foreword by Richard E. Littlebear,
Preface,
1 Contextualizing Native American LPP: Legal–Political, Demographic and Sociolinguistic Foundations,
2 Conceptualizing Native American LPP: Critical Sociocultural Foundations,
3 Native American Languages In and Out of the Safety Zone, 1492–2012,
4 Indigenous Literacies, Bilingual Education and Community Empowerment: The Case of Navajo,
5 Language Regenesis in Practice,
6 Language in the Lives of Indigenous Youth,
7 Planning Language for the Seventh Generation,
Appendix 1: Native American Languages Act of 1990/1992,
Appendix 2: Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act of 2006,
Appendix 3: 2 December 2011 Executive Order on American Indialaska Native Education,
References,
Author Index,
Subject Index,
CHAPTER 1
Contextualizing Native American LPP: Legal–Political, Demographic and Sociolinguistic Foundations
The very persistence of viable languages speaks immensely to the vitality of Native life in the United States. Medicine, 2001: 52
I begin this chapter with this statement by Lakota anthropologist, educator and language activist Beatrice Medicine because she situates the dynamic cultural context for Native American language planning and policy so perceptively and well. Despite 'generations of pressure to change', Medicine argues, the 'nexus of sociolinguistic manifestations' within diverse Native communities persists – a sign, she adds, that Native cultures continue to thrive (Medicine, 2001: 51–52).
This chapter provides an overview of diverse Native American communities and the 'sociolinguistic nexus' at their heart. I begin with tribal sovereignty, a defining status of Native peoples that implicates critical questions of identity, authority and self-determination (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001: 4), including rights to language. This is followed by a demographic and socio-linguistic sketch of contemporary Native American communities and linguistic groups. Within this discussion, I introduce readers to the ways in which Native American languages have been described numerically, classified linguistically and 'staged' in terms of vitality and endangerment. I stress, however, that the numbers and classificatory schemas are, as multiple scholars have noted (including those who posit the numbers and classifications), imperfect representations of what constitutes 'speakerhood' that greatly simplify the complexity of language use and change 'on the ground'. That complexity is addressed in detail in subsequent chapters. Because enumeration and classification are common practices, both in the scholarly literature and in public discourse on language endangerment, it is important that we understand them and what they are attempting to do. The chapter concludes with illustrations of Native American language use in the public sphere, including education, arguably the most significant – if contested – domain for Native language use historically and today.
First Peoples, First Principles: Tribal Sovereignty
Understanding Native American language planning and policy (LPP) requires, first and foremost, understanding the unique legal and political status of Native peoples in the United States. As indicated in the Preface, the term Native American encompasses diverse American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian peoples. Although each of these peoples has encountered the US sociopolitical system in different ways, all are descendants 'from the populations which inhabited the country ... at the time of ... colonization ... and ... irrespective of their legal status, retain some or all of their own social, economic, cultural, and political institutions' – the internationally recognized definition of Indigenous peoples (International Labour Organisation, 1989, Article 1.1.b).
From a legal–political perspective, at the core of this collective identity is the principle of tribal sovereignty: the 'right of a people to self-government, self-determination, and self-education', including the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local languages and norms (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006: 10). Like the sovereignty of US states and the federal government, tribal sovereignty is not absolute; the political realities of tribal–federal–state relations, 'competing jurisdictions, local histories, circumscribed land bases, and overlapping citizenships', all constrain, but do not negate, the exercise of sovereignty (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001: 5).
Examples of tribes' sovereign powers include 'the right to determine their membership, administer justice through tribal courts, govern their citizens, and regulate the use of their land base' (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006: 10). At the federal level, recognition of tribal sovereignty in the linguistic and educational realm includes the 1990/1992 Native American Languages Act and the 2006 Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act (both discussed in Chapter 3). At the state level, Indigenous linguistic and educational sovereignty is reflected in such policies as Hawai'i's constitutional recognition of Hawaiian as co-official with English (Wilson, 2013 [in press]); Montana's 1999/2005 Indian Education for All Act requiring public schools to implement programs that fulfill the state's constitutional commitment 'to the preservation of [American Indians'] cultural heritage' (Ngai & Koehn, 2010: 50–51); New Mexico's Indian Education Act, designed to increase the number of Native American teachers and school leaders and provide resources for Native language and culture instruction in the state's public schools (Jojola et al., 2010); Arizona's 2012 partnership between tribal governments and the state department of education to enable tribal control of Native-language teacher certification; and Alaska's 2012 Senate Bill 130, which establishes an Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council to assess the status of Alaska Native languages and make recommendations to the governor and state legislature on new or reorganized language education programs. At the tribal level, educational and linguistic sovereignty is expressed in tribal language policies, education codes and legislation such as the 2005 Navajo Sovereignty in Education Act (discussed in Chapter 4).
Tribal sovereignty predates the US Constitution and is therefore inherent (Wilkins & Lomawaima, 2001: 5). Tribal sovereignty is also recognized in the U.S. Constitution, which grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations and tribes, and authorizes the President to negotiate treaties with foreign nations and Indian nations. From the first encounters between Native peoples and Europeans, the two groups operated on a government-to-government basis, with the US government acting toward Native peoples 'much as it would with foreign nations, using a mixture of diplomacy, treaties, and warfare' (Snipp, 2002: 2). (A similar government-to-government relationship exists between First Nations, Inuit and Metís peoples and Canada's federal, provincial and territorial governments.)
Between 1779 and 1871, the...
