CHRIS MERRILL Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Wednesday, February 6, 2008 12:00 am
ETHETE - Previous efforts to revitalize the Arapaho language have largely failed, but the Northern Arapaho Council of Elders believes it has developed a plan that will finally succeed, taking cues from recent, successful language revival programs in Hawaii and New Zealand.
In both cases, the Hawaiian and Maori languages were moribund before revival efforts.
The Northern Arapaho Council of Elders estimates that there are 225 - maybe 230 - fluent speakers of Arapaho left on the planet. Almost all are over the age of 60, and every time a fluent speaker dies, usually of old age, the number drops by one. The Arapaho language "is now in its 59th minute of the last hour of survival," the Council of Elders wrote recently.
The revival of indigenous languages is a worldwide movement, which has gained significant momentum over the past two decades. A few flourishing programs around the globe have helped establish something of a blueprint for success, the council believes.
Arapahoe School, which last spring completed the first year of a five-year federal grant to create a bilingual, English-Arapaho, program, also took inspiration from the successful Hawaiian and Maori language programs.
Arapahoe School's curriculum has been beneficial because it has given the children some exposure to the language and its cultural underpinnings, and has helped them learn a few vocabulary words, said Ryan Wilson, president of the National Alliance to Save Native Languages and the interim coordinator for the Northern Arapaho Council of Elders. But the children will never gain fluency with such a curriculum, because they only get about 40 minutes a day to practice the language.
"They're a public school governed by all the state requirements, and they have to reach (federal) No Child Left Behind benchmarks," Wilson said. But the net effect of No Child Left Behind, he said, is that American Indians, in general, are left behind.
And because Arapahoe School is hamstrung by having to meet yearly progress goals and teach toward frequent standardized tests, it will never be able to devote the time that would be necessary for the children to master the Arapaho language, he said.
The immersion school, on the other hand, will teach its entire academic curriculum in Arapaho.
The curriculum for the school is being designed to follow statewide benchmarks for each grade, Wilson said, and if children complete the program through the eighth grade, they will ultimately score better on state and federal standardized tests than their public school counterparts.
This has been the experience with the Hawaiian immersion programs, he said, and it will hold true with the Arapaho program.
"The Hawaiians received their techniques from the Maoris in New Zealand, and a lot of what the Maoris used came from Europe," Wilson said. "Immersion school has been successful with other languages, and it can be successful here."