Revitalizing indigenous languages an act of justice

Our indigenous elders tell us that our original languages are gifts from the creator.

Indigenous languages are the most important measures of Native sovereignty in a context of relentless colonial assault on our resources and our communities. Our languages are the last line of defense against the destructive forces of colonization. Indeed, our indigenous languages are the most critical markers of the cultural health of our indigenous nations.

Our languages are essential to ceremonial life, medicinal knowledge, and our identities as distinct Indigenous Peoples. Our languages are the basis for unwritten histories, specialized agronomies, and the understanding of local environments and regional ecosystems.

Indigenous languages carry our original instructions from the creator about the proper way of living in the world. These instructions are the gifts our creator has entrusted to our elders to bring to our youth.

Our original languages make it possible for us to keep proper relations with other-than human beings in the broader circle of life. Research has shown a strong link between linguistic diversity and biodiversity. Maintaining healthy indigenous communities is key to sustaining biodiversity for the planet.

These points are all part of the good news. The bad news is that there is no greater challenge facing Indigenous Peoples than the imminent threat of losing our original languages. The United Nations Educational, Social and Cultural Organization reports that, on average, an indigenous language is lost somewhere in the world every two weeks.

In fact, 100 percent of the 210 indigenous languages spoken in North America are endangered. Moreover, three-fourths of these languages are spoken only by the great-grand parents’ generation, which means that there is an extremely small amount of time to educate our children and youth in the languages of their gifted elders. Australia is the continent in the worst language situation with over 90 percent of its remaining 350 aboriginal languages nearing extinction today.

Unless we reverse the losses, 90 percent of the world’s languages will be silenced within the lifetime of my new grandson. With Yuchi, my own tribal language, as an example, there are only three elders left on the planet who grew up speaking Yuchi as their first language, and these are all churchwomen from our little Yuchi Methodist congregation.

We have managed with meager funds to grow a dozen new young adult speakers. Now, my grandson is the first child raised speaking Yuchi in 70 years. That is to say, we are in a lot of trouble but working together, we can successfully grow new speakers of our God-given languages.

In Yuchi we say, k'aÔk'ûnE TahA Ôk'âfA, “Working together, we can move it forward.”

How did we come to such an abject condition of near-ruin to God’s rich and diverse creation?

Indigenous Peoples have faced many shock waves of brutal assaults emanating from the epicenter known as the Doctrine of Discovery. The destructive forces of physical genocide and cultural genocide were unleashed around the globe by colonial regimes as a means of taking over indigenous resources and justifying the brutal process of subjugation that was for the benefit of their settler societies. Christian churches, including Methodist churches, were complicit in these brutal colonial processes and became a major beneficiary in the theft of many lands and resources in many continents.

The Rev. John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, published horrific false characterizations of Native nations, precisely recapitulating all the logics of dispossession that were used to power the colonial steamroller against indigenous communities around the world. Indigenous Peoples still find themselves reprising the role of Naboth (from I Kings 21) in being forced to cede their ancestral vineyards to powerful government forces on hollow promises of other lands and inadequate payments, or face death.

Despite his many positive contributions to church and society, Wesley had not the prophetic vision to question the devastating consequences of the Doctrine of Discovery. Then, as now, the challenge to the church is to apply the most basic biblical teachings about respecting other people’s property and life.

Today we have adopted a healthier, more biblically consistent stance toward Indigenous Peoples. The 2012 General Conference called for the entire church to undertake a healing process through Acts of Repentance, and for the condemnation of the Doctrine of Discovery.

A gathering in February 2017 in Trondheim and Soltun, Norway brought Indigenous Peoples from around the global United Methodist connection where we focused our attention on moving our church to make visible acts of repentance that redound to acts of justice. The United Methodist Global Working Group of Indigenous Peoples, conceived at the Norway meeting, offers leadership to this crucial ministry.

As we celebrate the Indigenous Peoples Day on October 9, it is time to raise our concern about the rapid vanishing of indigenous languages.

The possibilities for supporting indigenous language revitalization is an especially appropriate way to work on reparations for indigenous communities after generations of cultural assault through programs such as the church and government boarding schools.

Churches operated many of these schools for generations. These schools had a special focus on silencing indigenous languages by punishing children who spoke the languages of their parents and grandparents. This practice was designed to break the intergenerational succession of traditional knowledge and to stop the singing, dancing and storytelling of indigenous communities.

The churches were major players in the demise of indigenous languages, but now we have the opportunity to become major players in restoring indigenous languages.

Today we are working together to create a new day for our indigenous children and youth. We are very excited that the United Nations General Assembly has finally approved the holding of a UN International Year of Indigenous Languages in 2019.

Over the years, I have lent my expert advice on indigenous languages to the United Nations. Through the international year, we will have a special opportunity to raise awareness about our indigenous languages, and gather support to help keep alive our diverse gifts of languages from the creator.

Richard A. Grounds (Ph.D., Princeton Theological Seminary) is a United Methodist of Yuchi and Seminole heritage. He is executive director for the Yuchi Language Project based in Sapulpa, Oklahoma.