Back from the Brink

CU Linguists Make Haste to Save Native Languages

By Ruthanne Johnson
Black-and-white photographs by Sara Wiles

What happens to a culture when its language is lost? Can it still flourish and grow, or does it die like a flower deprived of sunlight?

For many Native American tribes, the United States government’s assimilation policies of the 19th and 20th centuries severely threatened their culture and language. Dozens became extinct. But a new sense of urgency is growing within many native communities to revitalize their heritage through language preservation. With the help of linguists at CU’s Center for the Study of Indigenous Languages of the West (CSILW), a handful of endangered languages are being pulled from the very brink of extinction.

“There are about 6,000 languages spoken in the world, and out of those about 1,000 have been described in written form,” says Dr. Zygmunt Frajzyngier (pronounced Fry-zing-er), who chairs the Department of Linguistics at CU-Boulder. “Languages are in more danger of extinction than wildlife, especially the ones with smaller numbers of fluent speakers.”

To ensure that some of these languages are preserved, the university organized CSILW in 2004. Three of the school’s linguistics professors, including Frajzyngier, are involved in projects transcribing the endangered languages of the Wandala tribe in northern Cameroon; the Wichita of Oklahoma; and the Arapaho, who lived in Colorado until the U.S. government split them into two groups that now live on separate reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma. According to recent scientific data, the Great Plains is one of five global hot spots from which languages are vanishing fast.

A language hero of sorts, Frajzyngier has written the grammars of six declining African tribes and is working on his seventh. Why does he do it? “For any community, language is the most complex system they have ever produced,” he says. “Once it’s gone, the thousands of complex meanings can never be recovered. We won’t know what kinds of things people were talking about or how they were talking about them.”

Girls compete in a foot race, a traditional activity, at an Arapaho language and culture camp that was sponsored by the Arapaho Tribe and the Wyoming Council for the Humanities.

Threats to indigenous languages include natural, economic and political catastrophes, and the greatest threat of all—urban expansion. It’s difficult, Frajzyngier explains, for endangered languages to withstand the encroachment of a dominant language such as English, or the naturally occurring exodus from a village to an urban environment. “It’s hard to tell which languages will survive, especially with the limited number of linguists working on preservation and the problem of funding,” he says.

On the Western front, Dr. Andrew Cowell has been working with the Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming since 1998 to help compile a complete grammar of their language. Of the three major indigenous tribes in Colorado—Arapaho, Cheyenne and Ute—Cowell chose to study the Arapaho language because the tribe regularly migrated through what is now Boulder and were camped in Boulder when the miners came in 1858. After reading what little research he could find on the Arapahos’ language, he started traveling to the Northern Arapahoe reservation in Wyoming to work on a comprehensive documentation of their grammar.

Leo and Elizabeth Lone Bear at the visitors’ center at the top of Trail Ridge Road in Rocky Mountain National Park. The Lone Bears, who speak and teach the Arapaho language, were two of many tribal members touring the park with Prof. Andrew Cowell.

“I didn’t know if they’d be interested, because some tribes are closed to outsiders,” he says. “But the Arapaho have been very open and accommodating.”

Like other linguists, Cowell believes the revitalization of an endangered language is not only about preserving the spoken word in written form, but also stimulates pride in culture and ancestry.

‘The Heart of Our Culture’

“Our language is the heart of our culture, a connection to our past and future,” says the president of the Wind River Tribal College, Marlin Spoonhunter, 51, who remembers his language being spoken around the house when he was young. For him and many others, leaving the reservation for boarding school—still a common progression for young teenagers—eroded his ability to speak Arapaho: “My use of it became minimal.” According to Spoonhunter, the tribe has fewer than 300 members who speak the language fluently, the majority of them well over 55 years of age. “I don’t think we have anyone under 40 who speaks it fluently,” he says.

Stories of lost language and culture are common among Native American people. Spoonhunter’s sister, Tillie Jenkins, 49, has similar recollections of boarding school. “We weren’t taught my language, but I spoke basic Arapaho to classmates from my nation,” she says. “It wasn’t until 1990, when I went back to college, that I started relearning it in language classes at Central Wyoming College.” Wind River Tribal College, Central Wyoming College and the University of Wyoming are the only institutions of higher education that currently offer Arapaho language classes. There’s an immersion program on the reservation that teaches the language to children up to kindergarten age. Once the children reach first grade, however, the reservation’s public schools offer nothing beyond occasional short lessons in Arapaho—not nearly enough for long-term retention, Spoonhunter says.

Marlin Spoonhunter, president of Wind River Tribal College,
at commencement 2007 in full regalia.
Photo courtesy Wind River Tribal College

Full Circle

After years of using English only, both Spoonhunter and his sister have come full circle. They are closely involved in a concerted effort on the reservation to revitalize their language through classroom study and by speaking it in everyday life. “I have family members and friends who have really benefited from relearning our language,” Jenkins says. “It’s drawn my family back together, and it’s helped my children understand the Arapaho way of life.”

Kayla Lincoln, 25, a student at Wind River Tribal College, is glad to have taken advantage of the classes. “I remember going to boarding school in Oregon and hearing a group of Havasu from the Navajo Reservation talking to each other in their own language, and laughing and telling stories back and forth,” she says. “They talked in Navajo for a long time, and I remember thinking I wanted to be able to do that with my friends.” Lincoln and her boyfriend now take Arapaho language classes at the college, and even text message each other in their native tongue. “I still have to look in the dictionary sometimes,” she says, adding proudly that her son’s first word was the Arapaho word for dog, heth. “Now my dad, brother and sister want to learn, and they want me to teach them.”

Kayla Lincoln (right) and her boyfriend send text messages in Arapaho,
and her son’s first word was heth—”dog.”
Photo courtesy Kayla Lincoln

“It is of absolute priority to revitalize our language, because it is our identity,” Spoonhunter says. “It separates us from any other tribe in the world, and it will help us develop pride and self-esteem in who we are.” Spoonhunter adds that language is an integral part of the tribe’s religious ceremonies, an important aspect of Arapaho culture.

Stories of Plants and Mountains

An unexpected benefit to spring from the Arapaho language project has been a cooperative effort between Cowell and Rocky Mountain National Park. Cowell’s study has brought to light historically important information about the park’s weather events and indigenous plant life, birds and animals. “There’s one particular place—Specimen Mountain—called the Mountain That Smokes, Hohe’xonouu’oo’. It’s controversial what that actually means. It may be a myth preserved from the volcanic age or just a reference to the clouds and lightning that build over this particular mountain when storms come. Either way, it shows an awareness of the landscape and a certain sense of place.”

Tessa Bell with her daughter. Photo by Sara Wiles

From Cowell’s work, online and audio dictionaries have been developed, as well as two collections of traditional narratives and a set of CD-ROMs documenting Arapaho culture. “My interest is in the way their language is tied to the place they live, the way they live—the traditional and modern lifestyles—and the language and culture connections,” Cowell says. “For example, we’ve been able to document their connection to Colorado’s plant life: each plant’s name in Arapaho, its use and description, and its medicinal uses. And now, we can hear the plant’s name spoken by an Arapaho speaker.”

CU linguistics professor Andrew Cowell gives a talk on natural history as reflected in Arapaho words. Photo by Ruthanne Johnson

Cowell says the Arapaho people are interested in his work, both on their reservation and at the park, because he’s giving the tribe a voice and helping to preserve something that could have been lost forever. “The Arapaho see Colorado as their ancestral homeland,” Cowell says, adding that his project has documented the Arapaho words for well over 100 places in Colorado. “I’ve recorded the English name and the Arapaho name, and several of the official names are borrowed from Arapaho.” Kawuneechee Valley, on the west side of Rocky Mountain National Park, derives its name from the Arapaho word Koo’ohwuuniicii, meaning Coyote River, and the park’s Nohku Crag comes from the word Nohuux, meaning Nest of the Thunderbird [thunder]. “This research allows both us and the Arapaho tribe to rediscover our connections,” he says.

Like Cowell, the Arapaho language preservationists on the Wind River Reservation are hopeful. “For me, the Arapaho language is sacred,” Jenkins says. “I know we won’t lose it.”

“Our language is not lost,” Lincoln says in agreement. “It is hidden, and we just have to dig if we want to learn.”

A regular contributor to Boulder Magazine and Boulder County Home & Garden Magazine, Ruthanne Johnson also writes for the Denver Urban Spectrum, a newspaper for people of color.