{"id":14031,"date":"2016-01-25T09:01:14","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/indigenous-leader-save-native-languages-from-extinction\/"},"modified":"2016-01-25T09:01:14","modified_gmt":"2016-01-25T17:01:14","slug":"indigenous-leader-save-native-languages-from-extinction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/indigenous-leader-save-native-languages-from-extinction\/","title":{"rendered":"Indigenous leader: Save Native languages from extinction"},"content":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS \u2014<\/strong> A Canadian tribal chief is calling for urgent efforts to revive indigenous languages, saying their extinction is going unnoticed while the world focuses on the preservation of cultural heritage sites.<\/p>\n

Edward John, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told a news conference that ancient wonders are important but indigenous languages are \u201cthe essential component of cultural heritage\u201d and should get international attention and support to ensure their survival.<\/p>\n

John spoke Thursday at the end of a three-day meeting of indigenous language experts at U.N. headquarters on revitalizing many of the estimated 6,000 to 7,000 languages spoken by native peoples around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe priority focus that I hear from all of the experts is, create fluent speakers,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s what you need to do. How do you do it? That\u2019s the discussion taking place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s been a large focus on literacy, developing books and calendars and dictionaries\u201d in indigenous languages, John said, \u201cbut not as much of an effort in fluency.\u201d<\/p>\n

John pointed to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon\u2019s address in May 2011 to the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues where he said: \u201cToday, one indigenous language dies every two weeks. Indigenous cultures are threatened with extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s needed urgently is a commitment from every government to identify the indigenous languages in their country and the number and age of speakers so that a global map of where they are can be drawn up for the first time, he said. Then, the focus must be on revitalizing those with fewer speakers and finding the resources to keep languages from becoming extinct.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know there are some languages where there are less than a handful of speakers left, and when they\u2019re gone that language is gone and everything \u2014 everything about that culture and that heritage is gone as well,\u201d John said.<\/p>\n

Tatjana Degai, an ethnic Itelman from Kamchatka on Russia\u2019s Pacific coast, said her people\u2019s language \u201cis severely endangered.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are only five elderly speakers left, all of them female speakers, about 70 years old,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are about 10 to 15 middle-aged speakers who grew up hearing the language but don\u2019t consider themselves speakers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Degai, who is trying to help keep the language alive, said Itelman is taught in only one school, and for just 40 minutes a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe appreciate that Russia is developing legislation in relation to indigenous language but we also think that it is not enough for our language to survive,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Degai said Itelman is not the only language in trouble \u2014 40 of the 47 recognized indigenous peoples in Russia are from the north, Siberia and the Far East, and most of their languages \u201care at the brink of extinction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amy Kalili, a native Hawaiian who heads an education organization promoting fluency in the Hawaiian language, said that in middle of the last century there were perhaps 30 speakers under the age of 18. But she said there was \u201ca cultural renaissance\u201d in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and now schools are educating 3,000 students a year in Hawaiian.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are passionate about not letting language die,\u201d Kalili said, and not just in Hawaii.<\/p>\n

She said the Maoris in New Zealand not only get education in their own language but they have government-funded Maori language radio and television channels.<\/p>\n

John, who is grand chief of the Tl\u2019azt\u2019en Nation in British Columbia, said he attended a residential school for native Canadians and was banned from speaking Dene, a language also spoken in Alaska and the northwestern and southwestern United States by native Americans.<\/p>\n

He said smart phones and technology should become tools to help teach young people today their native languages.<\/p>\n

Google sent an expert to this week\u2019s meeting, he said, and \u201cwe will reach out to all willing partners to help us in this gigantic effort of revitalization.\u201d<\/p>\n

John said recommendations from this week\u2019s meeting will be presented to the Permanent Forum meeting in May, and then to the U.N. Economic and Social Council in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

UNITED NATIONS \u2014 A Canadian tribal chief is calling for urgent efforts to revive indigenous languages, saying their extinction is going unnoticed while the world focuses on the preservation of cultural heritage sites. Edward John, a member of the U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, told a news<\/a> conference that ancient wonders are important but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":14032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14031"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}