Native American languages and the internet

McHenry, T. (2002). Words as big as the screen: Native American languages and the internet.
Language learning & technology. Vol. 6. No. 2. pp. 102-115.

This article discussed the ways in which Native Americans can use the internet to help in revitalizing and or maintain their Native languages. It started out in discussing how America has basically dismissed the Native American as part of history. It was termed “orientalism”. Meaning that Native Americans only exist in a museum and linguistic grammar. The Native Americans are seen only as things to be studied and preserved, not having a voice in those studies. There was a brief discussion of the terminology used in referring to the diminishing indigenous language use of the Native Americans: language loss, language shift, and language renewal. The author then stated that these types of research studies being done with and move forward and learn from what is being done in to preserve languages by looking and study the successful “…language preservation efforts” (p. 104). The article mentioned three models for teaching language schools; culture and language education, Elders and immersion programs, and Yupik immersion program. Culture and language was criticized for not having real language and interaction between students, the counter was that as long as the students knew the past and knew their traditions and values they were learning their identity and that this would transfer language somehow. The difference between Elders and immersion and immersion is that the Elders and language programs were like the language nests, where the Elder is the Real Teacher, and the teacher is like an assistant to the Elder. While an immersion program is when the student is taught by the teacher who fluent in their Native language and they are taught by hearing only their language in all content areas. It discussed the negative and positive aspects of each program. In discussing the negative aspect of these models it was mentioned that the specialists in these models were non-native. To remedy this situation the author mentioned suggestions made by researchers to have the non-specialist Natives to become educated to carry the research that is from the Natives from those areas. The last portion of the paper discusses the impact of what and how technology can do to help in preserving and facilitate the language revitalization efforts by Native speakers. The article discussed the negative aspects of use of technology, like the web-sites that are supposed to be Native are actually made by non-natives. As a positive the article discussed a web-site based in an Indian reservation in Washington that is made by Native students at an elementary school. It is written all in their Native language, with some English in it.
In reading this article, I was amazed at how fast programs go through changes! Now with the technology as the way of the future, even now, there are efforts to incorporate it into indigenous language programs. As were are doing for SLATE. I can’t wait to read and hear about the efforts of Native educators and Native researchers finding and using technology in different ways, this will probably happen in the next five years!