Bilingual Curriculum among the Northern Arapaho: Oral Tradition, Literacy, and Performance

In a recent book on the Northern Arapaho tribe, Jeffrey Anderson argues that the tribe has been negatively impacted by the adoption and influence of certain Euro-American practices. ¹ He suggests that the negative impacts include a dissolution of tribal cohesion and a discontinuity between older and younger generations. Among the practices on which he focuses is literacy: he argues that literate forms of knowledge constitute a key vehicle for the imposition of Euro-American ways of knowing and governing onto the tribe, particularly in the form of bureaucracy. ²

The negative impact of literate forms of knowledge and governmental organization contrasts sharply with the neutral or even positive impacts of other Euro-American practices upon the Arapaho. Anderson highlights the tribe's often successful efforts, in a number of domains, to incorporate and assimilate new Euro-American forms of knowledge and practice over the last century and a half. ³ However, he argues that the Euro-American model of formal education—with its basis in literacy—has been especially resistant to successful assimilation by the Arapaho. Thus literacy, formalized bureaucratic models of government, and formalized educational models are interrelated components of an overall shift towards abstract formalism, which is essentially counter to the tribe's traditional ways of "knowing" and "life movement". ⁴ In particular, the literacy-based educational model "knows nothing of local realities" (276) he suggests, and "requires a break in social space from the family and the community" (231).

Within the world of formal education and literate modes of knowledge, he suggests that the contradiction between traditional and Euro-American ways of knowing and acting is most acute in the area of Arapaho language and culture education in schools: "recent efforts to reinvigorate Arapahoe language and culture have also appropriated the knowledge forms of Euro-American formal education, thus using the same tools that have been used and are now used to effect assimilation" (276). These new knowledge forms contrast sharply with the traditional Arapaho educational model, which was based on highly localized cultural and geographical knowledge, imparted for the most part informally by the extended family and especially by elders such as grandparents. ⁵ There was also a more generalized component to this education model. It, too, relied on Arapaho elders, acting in the context of various tribal social and religious ceremonies. Anderson points out that in the strictly age-graded Arapaho society, knowledge was assumed to be the privileged, closely-held possession of the oldest individuals, and it was intimately tied to their own personal accomplishments and histories, which justified their access to it. ⁶ In contrast, Euro-American society tends to adopt a "democratic" view of knowledge so that it is publicly available to all in depersonalized settings (such as schools, libraries, or Web sites). Such a view removes control of knowledge from individuals and thus deprivileges them and their authority over it. Thus formal, literacy-based education works against the more traditional informal, localized, oral-based, age-graded Arapaho model of education. ⁷

The correlation between increasing formality of education and the loss of influence of traditional elders (and traditional culture) has been noted not only for the Arapaho but more generally. ⁸ Anderson's more specific remarks about Arapaho in the classroom raise important questions which have been hotly debated in many Indigenous communities: for example, the issue of Native language and culture in the classroom, especially the issue of literacy within language retention programs, has generated widespread discussion in both local and academic communities. ⁹ As a university-based, white scholar who has become involved in Arapaho language preservation, retention, and revitalization efforts as an adjunct to my specific research interests in descriptive linguistics and linguistic anthropology, I have had the opportunity to witness and participate in this debate and to see its practical implications on the Wind River Reservation. ¹⁰ Yet based on my own knowledge of Northern Arapaho life and...