Cultural Survival and the Sauk Language Department, based at the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, sent our master-apprentice team on a week-long language immersion field trip to their sister language community, the Meskwaki Nation, based in Tama, Iowa. Team members return from Iowa today, and have spent over 8 hours each day during the past week communicating exclusively in the Sauk/Meskwaki language. They also participated in a language conference designed for local Meskwaki community members to set priorities for long-term language revitalization efforts.
The Meskwaki Nation (also known as the Sac and Fox of the Mississippi in Iowa) and the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma, are politically distinct communities today but share close ancestral and linguistic ties, and this marked the second language immersion visit by the Sauk master-apprentice team to the Meskwaki community. While the Sauk language community in Oklahoma has dwindled to a handful of elderly first-language speakers who are working with dedicated corps of language apprentices over a three-year period, the Meskwaki community has hundreds of first- and second-language speakers throughout its adult population; however, a recent language survey conducted by their Language Preservation Office found very few speakers among those in their 40s and younger. The Sauk Language Department in Oklahoma is on-track to open a preschool immersion program in 2012 (to be staffed by the current language apprentices) and shared their language revitalization planning approaches with the Meskwaki community during their visit in Tama. The trip was their second language immersion outing this fall—last month they attended the Oklahoma Native Language Association (ONLA) annual conference.
October Language Summits: In addition to the ONLA conference, Cultural Survival last month hosted the final day of the National Indian Education Association’s annual three-day Language Summit in San Diego, CA, screening two films featuring our partner language programs based in the Northern Arapaho and Wampanoag Nations. Language apprentices from both communities attended to participate in a lively audience discussion, and fielded questions on integrating both archival language documentation and ceremonial and traditional songs into their language acquisition programs.
Also in October, Cultural Survival’s Endangered Language program officer Jennifer Weston attended the Indigenous Language Institute’s two-day Language Terminology Development Conference in Albuquerque, NM to meet with partner staff from the Sauk Language Department, and with new Endangered Languages Program Advisor Dr. April Counceller, from the Alutiiq Language Program based in Kodiak, Alaska. Visit the Indigenous Language Institute online to view and download a selection of conference presentations.
