Native American Languages Research Paper

For the purpose of this project, our group has decided to focus on Native American culture and their non-verbal communication patterns. We chose to focus on Native American culture due to their unique methods of communication. What makes this culture so distinct is the way in which they encompass their values into their communication methods. Their communication methods are unlike most cultures and are even utilized within Western culture in modern day.

There were many places throughout the parts of the book I read, where I felt extremely grateful. Two of them were when I was reading from page 11 through page 13, and I stumbled against two things Junior said that struck me. The first part was when Junior said “They (his parents) never got the chance to be anything because nobody paid attention to their dreams”, on page 11. While the second part was when he said, “But we reservation Indians don't get to realise our dreams. We don’t get those chances. Or choices. We’re poor. Thats all we are,” on page 13. While and after reading this I felt extremely fortunate, yet apologetic. I felt extremely fortunate, due to the fact that I was born into family that isn’t a victim of poverty and also because

European settlements in the new world had a number of impacts on Cherokee Native Americans. It led to them dying or being pushed onto reservations.

In 1997, a group of Indian Code Talkers were communicating between radio during war time communications. These codes were created by Native Americans, also the Choctaw language was used during these wars to create secret messages. The United States used these codes because they believed it would secure any messages that they send. Navajo Code Talkers had many advantages in WWII because it saved millions of lives due to their ability to communicate with one another. Since the United States had this code, it gave them an advantage against their enemies.

Speeches are an iconic and widely used means of expression for our political leaders, particularly when discussing issues of importance such as Indigenous Australia. Paul Keating’s ‘Redfern Speech’ and Kevin Rudd’s ‘Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples’ are the two political speeches which I will be analysing in this paper.

To a Native American, ones heritage can define who an individual is and may become. When America was being populated by Europeans there was an effort to alter the way of life for Native Americans forcing them to adopt new ideas and abandon their traditions. This has led to modern Native Americans feeling like they have lost a large piece of their identity. Native Americans struggle in mainstream society because they have dealt with great trauma and don’t have the tools to help them cope in healthy ways. They have been torn from their homes and heritage, as there was “centuries of forcible removal of Native American children from their homes in order to be assimilated into mainstream American culture” (Wyant). The result of these kinds of actions

The Chippewa tribe also called the Ojibwa tribe was and still is a sizeable group. To this day, they are the largest Native American Tribe in North America. The Chippewa tribe is a unique and well-known tribe with many exciting aspects.     The tribe originated around the 1600’s and began in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. While they did originate in Michigan, the tribe has a large population in Southern Canada, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.

The Native Americans of The Southeast indian Language is hard to learn because there are different languages spoken. The main language spoken is called Muskogean. The Tutelos, Biloxis, Ofos Mosopeleas and Catawbas spoke Siouan languages. The largest linguistic group was most likely a bunch of people that spoke the same languages. And Siouan languages was probably the 2nd most spoken language. The Southeastern Indians had many different languages that were spoken.The language section of the exhibit is on the outside part of it.

For those languages which have no written form, when the language dies off, so does the accumulated knowledge and history of the culture. Sadly, indigenous languages around the world are dying off at an alarming rate. It is estimated that nearly half of the languages spoken today are likely to die off within the next century if steps are not taken to preserve those which still exist.

Over centuries we have seen the amount and complexity of languages all across the globe reduced. If this trend continues, we could see the number of world languages potentially reduced from 6,000 to 600 in the future. Colonization and urbanization has led to the abolishment of languages spoke by smaller and less dominant civilizations. McWhorter uses the Native Americans in North America and the Aboriginal

“People without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots” Marcus Garvey once said. Ellen L. Lutz article “Saving America's Endangered Languages”, she begins to talk about how the Native Americans language was stolen and needs to be brought back. She mainly focuses on the Navajo language. Her article is very intriguing and grabs the reader's attention as it continues with facts and evidence to back up how the Native American languages are being lost and stolen. However, she also talks about how she is in this group called Culture Survival and is promoting it so we don't forget about languages/cultures in the future.

The Northeastern tribe has many different languages and ways to communicate. There are 3 major language families in this tribe. The three major groups are Eastern Algonquian, Central Algonquian, and the Iroquoian languages. Also, there could have been a thousand Native American languages. It is important to know these languages if you were studying artifacts from the Native Americans and wanted to learn more about it. There was a sign language that was used to communicate with other tribes. If you want to trade with another tribe, it is very important to know this language to communicate. The Northeast Native American tribes spread their languages amongst everybody else in the group and communicated

Language creates spaces where linguistic features are associated with ideas that are attributed to its speakers. The previous is best recognized as language ideologies. In “Western language ideologies and small-language prospects,” on page three, Nancy C. Dorian refers to language ideologies as a vehicle through which certain languages are made unappealing by its mere association to communities of low-prestige. For example, in my hometown, Castroville, Spanish is associated to low-income farmworkers. And as a result, most of the Youth in Castroville stick to English. Despite the fact that most of their parents are Spanish speaking farmworkers, the mindset of Castroville teenagers seems to be formulated around embarrassment. Just like English is adopted in place of low-prestige languages, the opposite also occurs.

Native Indian is the pioneer of immigrations in America, and they created the earliest culture and languages on this land, and these heritages have influences for American deeply. In the 1880s, American government forced Native Indians to use English and abolished Indian languages, but native Indians remains some characteristics when they are using English, and linguists called it as American Indian English (AIE). Indian English has extensive influence from the speaker’s native language traditions. On the other hand, after European American came to this land, they did not have terms to describe many natural things in English. However, Native Americans have these in Indian languages. Therefore, some words we used came from Indian languages. For example, some vocabularies for indigenous plants (e.g., milkweed, pawpaw), animals (e.g., Otter) and pace (e.g., Mississippi). Thus, American Indian English plays a significant role in English variety. However, there are few studies specifically discussed Indian English and people have less perception of it. I think this topic is especially important in Arizona because there is a Native American reservation in Arizona. As a result, there are more American Indian English speech communities around us.

There are approximately 6,000 different languages spoken in the world today. Many of which will be considered the primary language and others are believed to disappear in the future and decrease the number of languages to 600. An article written by John H. McWhorter in The Wall Street Journal, “What the World Will Speak in 2115”, gives a good explanation of what is possibly going to happen in the near future for languages. Some of the main points of this article may give reasoning’s to why this might be true or not.