Shortly before the end of President Joe Biden’s term, the White House Council on Native American Affairs put out a plan, detailing 10 years' worth of steps to preserve and revitalize the indigenous languages of the United States.
Much of the plan would take existing spending for indigenous language education to try to make it more focused and effective.
The Salish School of Spokane is one institution that’s already working to revitalize the Interior Salish languages of the northwest.
Salish School Executive Director LaRae Wiley and Principal Christopher Parkin spoke to SPR's Owen Henderson about their efforts and this plan.
This conversation was recorded before the Trump Administration’s attempted freeze of all federal funding. Federal money makes up roughly 12% of the Salish School’s budget, and in a follow-up interview, Principal Parkin said he’s proceeding with the hope that "the U.S. will continue to honor its laws."
Still, the school officials won’t know whether they’ll get funding until they apply for their reimbursement for January spending later this month.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: One of the things in this proposal was supporting language nests, focusing on language learning for kids under seven. And I was curious if one of you could speak to why that age is so important for language learners.
LARAE WILEY: We have a language nest at Salish School of Spokane. And the thing about engaging language at an earlier time in your life is that you pick up the phonemes of language, you pick up the sound, and that stays with you throughout your life.
That's why I feel like it's important to have younger students pick up language. And they learn it as a first language rather than a second language. And that is a really big difference.
CHRISTOPHER PARKIN: And a hallmark of the language nest approach is also intergenerational language use and transmission. So all of the parents who have their children in the Salish School of Spokane language nest, those parents are also active language learners.
So the adults in the family, even some of the grandparents, are learning the language along with the children. And that's the key to successful language revitalization. It's actually not schools.
Schools is something we need right now to repair the harm and recover from the trauma. The future lies in families that have relearned the language, reconnect with the culture, and are speaking the language to their children as they grow up, even in the home. The language nest model really supports that approach.
OH: Well, and speaking of adult learners, another aspect of this plan was specifically supporting mentorship programs for adult learners. And I was curious if you guys could speak to why that style of learning might better support adult learners versus the younger kids who would be learning this as a first language?
LW: Well, I learned my language as an adult through a mentorship program with my mentor, Sʕamtíc̓aʔ, Sarah Peterson, in British Columbia. And I learned by doing things with her and listening to her and having that fluent speaker there.
And as an adult, you're just more aware of your mistakes and you're nervous. And so having that fluent elder there to help you and to be patient with you and help you learn is really a great way for adults to learn. Also, that can entail cultural immersion where you're speaking in the language every day, but you're also learning about medicine, maybe tanning hides, making rattles, making drums, different types of harvesting food. So different types of cultural activities as well.
OH: And speaking of the people who teach, they want to recruit and train 10,000 native language teachers. I was curious, do y'all struggle to find educators? And what kinds of things does it take to make someone an effective language teacher?
CP: All four of our southern Interior Salish languages, Spokane-Kalispel, Colville-Okanagan, Coeur d'Alene and Wenatchee Columbian, all four are critically, critically endangered.
Among those four languages combined, we have maybe 50 surviving first language speaking elders. These are our mentors and teachers and knowledge keepers who grew up in these languages as a first language. Most of those elders are in their 70s and 80s.
So for Salish School of Spokane to operate an immersion school and offer a really high quality culture-based academically successful school, our number one task is actually to train new advanced fluent speaking adults.
We can't run an ad and hire a Salish teacher. What we can do is connect with people who have that passion for healing, for cultural revitalization, for community connection.
But our big issue is finding the funding to employ people and have the time to train them and help them become advanced fluent speakers so that they can then turn around and be teachers in an immersion school, speak to their own children and advocate for language in the community.
So it's a huge task to find people who are hungry for that connection, who believe in the power and the beauty of these languages. And then we have to work really hard to train those new advanced fluent speaking adults.
And once we accomplish that, then we can have immersion education.
OH: Another thing that jumped out to me from this proposal was support and assistance for programs, especially ones that have specific expertise in urban Indigenous settings. And so as an urban Indigenous school, what are some of those specific challenges that you guys face? What kinds of support are most useful to you?
LW: Sometimes funders for language want to support folks that are out on the reservation, right? And so we're in the city of Spokane, and I chose that purposely because I grew up in Cheney, and I wanted people in town to have services and quality stuff just like they have out on the rez. And so I really think that the funding piece is really critical.
CP: Yeah, the reality is that about half of tribal members for our Southern Interior Salish tribes, the Spokane tribe, the Kalispel tribe, the Colville Confederated tribes, the Confederated Salish Kootenai tribe, about half of tribal members live off reservation. Folks have gone off reservation in order to find jobs and have opportunities for our kids.
But the services for Native American people are still very much focused on reservation. And so there's this deep desire for people who have left the reservation to remain culturally connected, to have their kids continue to have that rich cultural heritage. But it's just tough to find the services, so it's usually delivered by nonprofits.
Salish School of Spokane, we think, is one of two full-time Native American immersion schools in the lower 48 that are located in an urban setting. Our understanding is that there's an Ojibwe immersion school in the Twin Cities in Minnesota, and then there's Salish School of Spokane.
We do have a federal grant right now. It provides 12% of our budget. And our families all pay tuition, and they put in another 12%.
And the rest of that 75%, we are asking for donors from businesses and individuals. We're writing grants to private foundations. We have some earned income from providing services to other communities.
But it's really — the struggle is for resources. People are just hungry to reconnect culturally, to hold on to this beautiful heritage. And something LaRae has always shared is that we really believe the first languages of Spokane, our southern Interior Salish languages, they're just beautiful.
And it's okay for everyone to know about them and to help sustain them. We just want Salish language to just be a regular part of the cultural and civic heritage and the fabric of life here in Spokane and in the greater region.
It took a lot of hands for these languages to be put down. And LaRae has always taught us that it will take a lot of hands to bring them up. It just takes extra effort to do that in an urban setting away from the traditional sources of tribal funding that support Indigenous languages.
LW: Yeah, it's also challenging to be in an urban setting as far as like gathering traditional foods and medicines. And that's something that we try to have our students out on the land a lot. That is an additional challenge, I think, for our school.
CP: But it's also just so powerfully beautiful to see our kids and families come together in the language and go out and really bring home those traditional foods and really heal that relationship with our environment.
LW: One of my concerns is that I would really like to see a lot of this funding go towards highly endangered languages, because the next 10 years is critical. We're going to be losing a lot of our elders who are fluent speakers and are knowledge carriers.
And it's really important that the resources go to those tribes, those people who are in this situation where they're going to lose their language if they don't get the help.
CP: There are more than 160 Indigenous languages spoken in the states and territories that now make up the United States. And the vast majority of those are critically, critically endangered languages.
There are maybe a dozen more spoken Indigenous languages like Navajo, Cherokee, Mohawk, Ojibwe in the Muskogean languages. But most of those 160-some languages are critically, critically endangered. And that includes all 29 Salish languages.
And unfortunately, a lot of attention and funding goes towards the most spoken Indigenous languages. And these critically, critically endangered languages tend to be passed over a little bit. And that's what LaRae's getting at, the need to support those really critically endangered languages while we still have our few surviving fluent elders here to drive that work forward and act as mentors to new learners.
OH: Do you all have hope that this plan will be pursued at all under the incoming presidency?
LW: Well, I always have hope because our people are still here, and we still have our language and we still have our culture despite genocide, despite boarding schools. And I know that as Trump leaves office, we will still be here and we will still be fighting for our language and our culture and still be moving forward. So I'm always hopeful.
CP: Actually, part of this plan, part of it doesn't seek new funding, but rather it's an attempt to focus funding that's already established across various programs and departments in order to support Indigenous language revitalization.
LW: I wanted to say: pútiʔ kʷu aláʔ. We're still here.
CP: wni··xʷ člim̓tm̓stm̓ yʕat swit uɬ iʔ kʷuʔ kn̓xitm̓. We're just grateful for all the folks who have helped us do this work.
