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

Notes

Notes Introduction 1. For discussions relating to the creation of Indigenous writing systems and the current debates within contemporary communities, see Collins, “Language”; Grenoble and Whaley, Saving Languages; and Hinton and Weigel, “A Dictionary for Whom?” 2. The idea of a divide between literate and oral cultures in anthropology can be traced back to works such as Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society and Tylor’s Anthropology, which view literacy as a crucial technology separating “civilized” societies from primitive ones. Later approaches such as Goody and Watt’s “Consequences of Literacy” and Ong’s Orality and Literacy distance themselves from this evolutionary framework but still argue that there are substantive differences between literate and nonliterate societies and that literacy has the ability to transform thought. For a fuller discussion and critiques of these approaches see Grenoble and Whaley, Saving Languages, 102–36; Street, Cross-Cultural Approaches and Literacy in Theory; Besnier, “Literacy”; and Collins, “Literacy and literacies .” 3. Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies, 3. 4. These materials were designed by linguists at Indiana University based on previously collected linguistic information as well as contemporary Àeld research among Nakoda speakers. See chapter 6 for a more detailed discussion of the lessons and the community decisions that underlay their development. 5. For an extended discussion of the project, see Parks et al., “Native American Languages.” 6. This use of Indigenous terms by nonÁuent speakers occurs in many Native communities throughout the United States. Jocelyn Ahlers discusses this within the particular context of California in her article, “Framing Discourse.” 252 notes to pages 5–12 7. See chapter 6 for a fuller discussion of the issue of cultural knowledge and authority. Other tribes have similar issues regarding how Indigenous languages are used in regard to ritual knowledge. For a discussion of these issues among the Hopi, see Whiteley, “Language Rights.” 8. Leanne Hinton discusses this historical legacy in her article, “New Writing Systems.” 9. See, in particular, Fogelson, “Events and Nonevents,” and Trouillot, Silencing the Past. 10. This discussion is inspired by what Ann Laura Stoler has termed “ethnography in the archives.” She suggests that scholars should not focus solely on information that can be extracted from historical documents but rather should be attentive to the form of documents, how they were employed, and the construction of the archive itself. See Stoler, “Colonial Archives.” 11. Stoler, “Colonial Archives,” 91. 12. Desai, Subject to Colonialism, 5. 13. For the issue of literacy in general, see Grenoble and Whaley, Saving Languages; and Hinton and Hale, Green Book; For examples of how community attitudes toward literacy have shaped the development and use of Indigenous writing systems, see Anderson, “Ethnolinguistic Dimensions”; Bender, Signs of Cherokee Culture; McCarty and Watahomigie, “Language and Literacy”; and Valentine, Making It Their Own. 14. There is a wealth of literature in what has been termed “new literacy studies,” but see, in particular, Collins and Blot, Literacy and Literacies; Collins, “Literacy and literacies”; Schieffelin and Gilmore, Acquisition of Literacy; and Street, Cross-Cultural Approaches and Literacy in Theory. 15. For good examples of how literacy itself is part of larger social and cultural systems see Besnier, Literacy, Emotion, and Authority; Heath, “Protean Shapes”; and Schieffelin, “Introducing Kaluli Literacy.” 16. There is excellent historical work in this area, including Adams, Education for Extinction; Coleman, American Indian Children; Child, Boarding School Seasons; Fear-Segal, White Man’s Club; Lomawaima, Prairie Light; and Trafzer, Keller, and Sisquoc, Boarding School Blues. 17. For extended discussions of English use in schools, see Katanski, Learning to Write “Indian,” and Spack, America’s Second Tongue. 18. Both Lomawaima and McCarty’s “To Remain an Indian” and Szasz’s Education provide good histories of Native education in the twentieth century , especially the move to greater self-determination in the 1970s. 19. By language ideologies I mean a set of beliefs individuals hold regarding language and its role within social life. These beliefs, in turn, can inÁuence language practice. There is a rich and emerging scholarly literature regarding language ideologies. For overviews, deÀnitions, 253 notes to pages 13–23 and differing perspectives of what is meant by the term, see Schieffelin, Woolard, and Kroskrity, Language Ideologies; Errington, “Ideology”; and Kroskrity, “Regimenting Languages.” 20. I am using the idea of diglossia articulated by Charles Ferguson in “Diglossia” to describe the coexistence of two languages in simultaneous use by one speech community. 1. Before the Reservation 1. Schieffelin...