The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the Oneida and other tribes are working to get more of their members interested in learning their native languages. The efforts of the Ho-Chunk tribe, which is sponsoring an annual native language conference and fields 19 instructors in the field, are just one example of the many initiatives underway in Wisconsin. Anthropologist (and frequent visitor to Cultural Survival) Bernard Perley (Maliseet of New Brunswick), recently arrived at the University of Wisconsin to establish a native language resource center. The Indigenous Language Institute in Santa Fe has said that five hundred American Indian languages existed when Columbus came to the new world; now only 175 remain. Only 20 native languages are still known to speakers of all living generations, and some projections suggest that by 2050 these are the only indigenous American languages that will remain. The Oneida language is a tragic example: with a total of 15 fluent speakers out of 15, 000 tribal members.
