Neneehove’tanonėstse tsehe’enėstsestse; tsehe’enėstsetse neneehove’tanone: We Are Our Languages; Our Languages Are Us

Photo by Gary Leavens, CC BY-SA 2.0

Talking and teaching the Cheyenne language are passions for me. I am so glad that the Cheyenne language is my first language, and I am so glad to be a Northern Cheyenne. National Geographic’s Enduring Voices Project (2007-2013), led by linguists G. Anderson and K.D. Harrison, discovered that a language dies every 14 days and estimated that by the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on earth will likely disappear as communities abandon Native languages in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish.

In 2015, we had 566 original speakers of the Cheyenne language on the Northern Cheyenne reservation. That means they spoke only Northern Cheyenne until they went to school. Now we have 344 speakers remaining. The reduction has been through natural attrition, natural mortality. But the Covid pandemic really did a number on us. It took a lot of Cheyenne speakers; some of them were still quite young.

If our current mortality rate persists, we predict that our language will be gone by 2036 as a spoken, oral language. It will persist as a written language forever, and hopefully future Cheyenne people will someday want to revive it as a spoken language. If our language dies, at least they will have written resources to aid them. They will have help, but I hope it never comes down to that.

What does the death of a language mean? It means a loss of our cultural bearings and the age-old customs they conveyed to us for eons of time. Marie Smith, the last fluent speaker of the Eyak language in southeast Alaska, died on January 19, 2007. I happened to meet her a couple of months before that. I was fascinated by her. Here was the last speaker of her language, and she had no one to speak with who equaled her fluency. I saw in her the loss of a whole universe of knowledge, linguistically and culturally, that she would take with her to the next camp when she walked on from this world. She had boldly tried to perpetuate her people and her language. I hope that none of our languages ever have a last speaker. It is a heartbreaking and devastating experience, even seen from a distance.

What does language revitalization mean? It means a lot of work. It is a monumental effort. It means dedicating one’s life to a lifelong effort. Languages that have been prolonged or revitalized after near extinction have usually had dedicated proponents of their languages and cultures.

The Wampanoag language was revitalized by the leadership of one woman, Jesse Little Doe Baird, a Mashpee Wampanoag Indian woman. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda brought the Hebrew language back to everyday use after it had been dormant for 3,000 years. He dedicated his life to this revitalization.

Are we willing to do what these two did? If we are, we must minimize tribal strife and learn to read and write our own languages. Oral fluency is good, but it is not enough in a revitalization effort. We must share a message that works, even if we don’t speak the same language. We must read about language revitalization and adapt our teaching to those methods that are successful. We must minimize possessiveness about language materials and share them. We, Indigenous people, are all in this together. We can minimally depend on schools, churches, and local, state, and federal governments.

Why should we save our languages? We should save them for ourselves. I believe that knowing two languages, Cheyenne and English, plays a very important part in who I am. And I wish it had the same influence on others. Knowing two languages and having a good vocabulary in both have enabled me to express and deal with any psychological or spiritual hurt I may encounter because I can express deeply this hurt in two languages. It helps me vent that way. Furthermore, these languages contribute in another way: Cheyenne enables me to take care of spiritual distress, and English enables me to make a living in the white world.

We should save our languages because they knit our cultures together and keep our sovereignty intact. Eliezer Ben-Yahuda realized that if the Israelis were ever to have a country of their own, they would also have to have a language of their own, because the language is a central component of sovereignty that knits everything together.

So how do we save our languages? Let’s use every method we have and use it at home, at school and non-school settings. I used to work in Alaska visiting many villages throughout the length and breadth of that huge state and I did that for almost 10 years. But there was nobody around to speak Cheyenne with. The nearest ones were probably 2,500 miles away. So, I self-immersed. I talked to myself out loud in Cheyenne. I also got many strange looks from people passing by. But I withstood all that.

Since our languages are now being taught in school settings, we must adapt to the learning and teaching methodology schools require. Most mainstream educators, teachers, and administrators are not taught about Indigenous language efforts in their methodology classes in college training programs. This situation often results in failure of the Indigenous language teacher and for the superintendents, principals, and school board members.

Language teaching and learning are often accomplished in the family, but because of previous language oppression policies and practices, many of our people do not speak their Indigenous languages in the household. So, there is no reinforcement for our children at home once they’ve learned something at school.

How do we teach our languages? There are three kinds of curriculum: teach about the language, teach with the language, and teach the language itself. We must concentrate on teaching the language. We must learn to teach the languages ourselves. We need to read about other language groups and how they have survived and revitalized the languages.

Coining new words and adding new meanings to existing words to keep up with current, newly emerging social, technological, and cultural phenomena is a sign of language health. The English language is very good at this. For instance, years ago, the word “web” commonly referred to a spider’s web. Now it is almost synonymous with all the latest technological phenomena throughout the world. We need to coin new words, because if we don’t, if our languages don’t keep up with current phenomena, we are contributing to the death of those languages.

And let’s quit talking about our languages. Let’s talk, let’s talk them everywhere, to everybody. If there is no one around to talk to, talk to the sagebrush, the willows, the pine trees, and even the fence post.

Give your youth names in their tribal language. You’ll be surprised at their positive reactions. At Chief Dull Knife College, we used to get requests for the names of our people. We need to keep up this practice.

And furthermore, let’s quit blaming schools and government policies. We know they’ve done traumatic damage to our people by depriving us of our languages and by suppressing our cultures, which have had lasting effects. We can blame them, but blaming wastes energy and does not solve anything. We must refocus and maintain our languages because mainstream America is succeeding in doing away with them and doing away with us physically, culturally, and linguistically. If we don’t do anything about all this loss, we are in a dire situation.

And finally, what will happen to us when nobody speaks our tribal languages anymore? The people who lost the tribal language will be struck mute. Those who have lost their languages will still dress in their tribal dress and regalia. They will still sing their tribal songs. They may even sing tribal lyrics. But they will not understand what they are singing. The songs will have a hollow sound.

The women may still ululate, the men may still war-whoop, but the ululation and the war-whoops will have minimal significance. Even though the meadowlark will still sing songs with Indigenous words, no one will be around to understand them. It’s the same way with the owl, who will still hoot for bread late at night, but no one will understand the owl’s request. Listeners will have lost something vital.

When no one speaks our languages, the slow-motion genocide of Indigenous people in this country, which began in 1492, will be nearly complete. Because all that will remain are the empty shells of people who still look Indigenous. If we don’t do anything to save our languages, we will help to complete the cycle of destruction. We will have helped mainstream America destroy Indigenous people on this continent. Let’s stop the cycle of destruction that is slowly succeeding by doing something about it.

If you don’t speak your language, there are a whole lot of reasons for that. There were many forces, including boarding schools and language oppression policies instituted by the government. But if you don’t speak your language, don’t be comfortable in that. Learn about your language—and learn your language.

Richard Littlebear, EdD (Northern Cheyenne), is the former president of Chief Dull Knife College and author of numerous articles and essays on Indigenous language sustainability.