Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds

Our languages define the world around us—and indigenous languages are being lost at an alarming rate. Through deliberate suppression and cultural destruction, the 500 languages spoken before contact in what would become the U.S. and Canada have dwindled to about 150. Of those, only twenty are spoken by children. For many native nations that still have languages to think about revitalizing, the future vitality of the language may be possible, but it is not certain. That depends on the depth and breadth of immediate interventions.
Anton Treuer has been at the forefront of the battle to revitalize Ojibwe for many years. In this impassioned argument, he discusses the interrelationship between language and culture, the problems of language loss, strategies and tactics for resisting, and the inspiring stories of successful language warriors. He recounts his own single-minded and sometimes hilarious struggle to learn Ojibwe as an adult, and he depicts the astonishing success of the language program at Lac Courte Oreilles in northern Wisconsin, where dedicated families and teachers have raised a hundred children who speak Ojibwe as their first language.
This is a manifesto, a rumination, and a rallying cry for the preservation of priceless languages and cultures.