The Bearer of This Letter: Language Ideologies, Literacy Practices, and the F

6. The Nakoda Alphabet: Reimagining Literacy and Tradition

6. The Nakoda Alphabet Reimagining Literacy and Tradition “The students today are not oral, they are visual. They have been visually trained through the years. They weren’t orally instructed like we were.”— Participant in Orthography Workshop, June 1996 Despite a changing ideology that accepted Indigenous languages as symbols of Native identity and as a valuable pedagogical tool for educating young tribal members, the number of Indigenous-language speakers at Fort Belknap decreased rapidly during the last decades of the twentieth century. This precipitous decline forced community members to reevaluate existing approaches to language education that emphasized language instruction exclusively for children and to consider focusing on community-centered language preservation. Indigenous-language education for children on the reservation continued; however, during the mid-1990s, educators shifted their attention to efforts, such as surveying the community for speakers, recording elders, and developing curriculum for college-level courses, that were aimed at halting language obsolescence. During the 1990s discourse surrounding Indigenous languages at Fort Belknap centered on their endangered status 202 the nakoda alphabet and the need for immediate intervention to stop language loss. This change in ideology mirrored larger changes in the country as a whole and inÁuenced the methods the communities employed for language education, particularly in regard to Indigenous-language literacy. For example, the emphasis on endangered languages prioritized the preservation of phonological and lexical distinctions, as well as dialectal differences, over ease of use when determining orthographic choices. New educational programs directed at teaching Indigenous languages to adults who were already literate in English, rather than to children, similarly created new requirements for developing writing systems. Bridging the growing differences between generations was a central concern during the earlier bilingual programs; however, at the end of the twentieth century, this concern was subsumed by the loss of Áuent speakers and the immediate need for trained language teachers. In a seeming paradox , when the speaking communities were at their most impoverished, the scholarship regarding endangered languages and innovative programming was more plentiful. This was partly due to shifting federal policy and the passage of legislation that focused on endangered languages and provided new and more substantial funding for programs . The Fort Belknap communities capitalized on this expansion by becoming aware of available funding resources and becoming involved with other tribal communities dealing with similar issues. During this period Fort Belknap College emerged as the central location for language programming, and the Nakoda community moved to develop and standardize a writing system as a result of a collaborative curriculum project between the college and Indiana University. This time was marked by not only an increase in attention to language 203 the nakoda alphabet programming but also the development of new technologies to facilitate language learning. Further, an examination of the broader social and intellectual impulses during this time reveals yet another national shift in attitudes regarding Indigenous-language programming and the development of a new ideological basis for language retention. While the federal focus during the lenient times of the late 1960s and early 1970s concentrated on the role of a heritage language in an individual’s development, by the 1990s the focus was on the languages themselves and their endangered status. However, the intersection of broadly articulated concerns regarding endangered languages conÁicted with established views toward language use at Fort Belknap and ultimately gave rise to new concerns regarding the use and limits of Indigenous-language literacy. In discussing these concerns I concentrate almost exclusively on the Assiniboine rather than Gros Ventre community. My position as curriculum coordinator for the collaborative project between Fort Belknap College and Indiana University from 1996–2000 offers a unique vantage point from which to observe the incorporation of literacy into the Nakoda classroom. By focusing on the Nakoda language project, I can explore the highly nuanced meanings associated with Indigenous-language literacy and how those meanings affect the success of language programs in general. The Ideology of Endangerment Throughout the 1990s the fact that 90 percent of the world’s languages were expected to become extinct within the Àrst decades of the new century gained popular attention.1 What was already known about language death among linguists and Native communities found a wider audience as people began to observe the effects of globalization on Indigenous 204 the nakoda alphabet languages worldwide.2 Accompanying general excitement about the world becoming smaller and more accessible was the concern among particular...