Tribal immersion schools rescue language and culture

The immersion-school model reached the mainland United States in 1985, when the Akwesasne Freedom School in upstate New York started creating fluent speakers of the Mohawk language.

Impressed by the success of these schools, Kipp and the rest of the staff at the Piegan Institute thought immersion could bring back the Blackfeet language. To overcome resistance on the reservation, they showed a video of tribal elders speaking about their experiences with the language.

"People realized we did not quit using the language out of choice," Kipp says. "Our parents and grandparents were forced to. They didn't pass the language down because they loved us, and they didn't want us to suffer the same abuse."

Such campaigns are slowly restoring pride in tribal languages and the unique cultures they describe, says Mark Trahant, a journalist and a member of the Shoshone-Bannock tribe. "Now, there's a recognition that people are better off being multilingual. These languages contain a way of looking at the world that has a 10,000 year-old history.... Those of us who don't speak our language are viewed as less prepared for the world."

Immersion schools are not for every tribe, says Inee Yang Slaughter of the Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe, N.M. "Immersion is the ideal situation for any language, but you have to look at the community."

Fundraising responsibilities, complex tribal politics, and a shortage of qualified language teachers can easily turn an immersion school into an overwhelming project.

Yet the idea is increasingly popular. Tribes have recently opened immersion schools in Nevada and Wisconsin.

In one week in late April, the Nizipuhwahsin Center hosted visitors from the Kootenai tribe of Montana, the White Earth Band of the Ojibwe tribe of Minnesota, and the Tlingit tribe of Alaska.

The Lannan Foundation, which has underwritten language-preservation projects throughout the US, estimates there are 50 tribes interested in starting immersion schools.

Mary Hermes, an education professor and the administrator of a publicly funded Ojibwe-language immersion school in northern Wisconsin, says many tribes are running out of time to protect their languages. On her reservation, there were 15 fluent Ojibwe speakers at the beginning of the year. Now there are 13.

Dr. Hermes says there's another motivating force at work: the power of hearing a language, and a culture, come back to life.

When her 6-year-old daughter said a prayer in Ojibwe at a recent powwow, she says, "there must have been 500 people in the audience, and they were blown away when they heard that.... They just yelled and yelled when she finished. On an emotional and spiritual level, what we're all doing is healing."

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