American Indian English Background And Development

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,3, Free University of Berlin (John-F. Kennedy Institut für Nordamerikastudien), course: Linguistic Varieties and Language Practices in the USA, language: English, abstract: When the first Europeans came to America, there existed more than 500 different Native American and Alaska Native languages. Through the contact with the English language and Euro-American cultures, the usage of indigenous languages started to decline. But it had an influence on the way Native Americans started speaking English.

Seminar paper from the year 2009 in the subject American Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, Free University of Berlin (John-F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien), course: Language Change II: Language Contact Phenomena and Change in English, language: English, abstract: The number of indigenous people that inhabited the American continent before the European settlers arrived is still debated about today. Based on numerous different sources, printed as well as online, it ranges from 8 million to 112 million people who lived in tribal societies. Those tribes were often very different in the way they lived: some societies were nomad tribes, their major source of food being hunting - which was why they followed their prey. Others lived from growing maize and plants. Again others in the rocky desert regions lived in houses which they built using the natural rock foundations of the area. There were different sizes of tribes, some being rather small, and some being huge, like for example the Aztec societies or the Anasazi people. But no matter what size the population of tribe was, or how advanced they were in their way of life, there's one thing all of them had in common: the moment of contact with the European settlers changed their lives forever. Today the number of Native American people in the United States, although slowly increasing again, is still considerably low: about 1.9 million people today consider themselves to be Native Americans. They make about one percent of the overall population of the United States of America. Throughout the last five centuries, their population was decimated by diseases and wars, caused by the invasions of European settlers. Special programs during the nineteenth century, aiming to "kill the Indian, save the man" have further added to not only the decimation of a race, but the loss of cultures and related to that, languages. Yet, a lot of aspects of Native American cultures and languages live on today in the modern languages

American Indian English documents and examines the diversity of English in American Indian speech communities. It presents a convincing case for the fundamental influence of ancestral American Indian languages and cultures on spoken and written expression in different Indian English codes. A distillation of over twenty years' research, this pioneering work explores the linguistic and sociolinguistic characteristics of English language use among members of Navajo, Hopi, Mojave, Ute, Tsimshian, Kotzebue, Ponca, Pima, Lakota, Cheyenne, Laguna, Santa Ana, Isleta, Chilcotin, Seminole, Cherokee, and other American Indian tribes. American Indian English fills numerous gaps in existing studies of language histories, Indian student school experience, Indian-white contact, and "acculturation." Unlike contemporary studies on schooling, ethnicity, empowerment, and educational failure, American Indian English avoids postmodernist jargon and discourse strategies in favor of direct description and commentary. Data are derived from conditions of real-life experience faced by speakers of Indian English in various English-speaking settings. This practical focus enhances the book's accessibility to Indian educators and community-based teachers, as well as non-Indian academics.

Representations of Indian economic life have played an integral role in discourses about poverty, social policy, and cultural difference but have received surprisingly little attention. Daniel Usner dismantles ideological characterizations of Indian livelihood to reveal the intricacy of economic adaptations in American Indian history. Officials, reformers, anthropologists, and artists produced images that exacerbated Indians’ economic uncertainty and vulnerability. From Jeffersonian agrarianism to Jazz Age primitivism, European American ideologies not only obscured Indian struggles for survival but also operated as obstacles to their success. Diversification and itinerancy became economic strategies for many Indians, but were generally maligned in the early United States. Indians repeatedly found themselves working in spaces that reinforced misrepresentation and exploitation. Taking advantage of narrow economic opportunities often meant risking cultural integrity and personal dignity: while sales of baskets made by Louisiana Indian women contributed to their identity and community, it encouraged white perceptions of passivity and dependence. When non-Indian consumption of Indian culture emerged in the early twentieth century, even this friendlier market posed challenges to Indian labor and enterprise. The consequences of this dilemma persist today. Usner reveals that Indian engagement with commerce has consistently defied the narrow choices that observers insisted upon seeing.

Throughout this analytical book the idea is developed that theories of language do not transcend the language in which they are written, and ways are uncovered that are peculiar to the American-language linguistic tradition.

In this comprehensive history of American Indian education in the United States from colonial times to the present, historians and educators Jon Reyhner and Jeanne Eder explore the broad spectrum of Native experiences in missionary, government, and tribal boarding and day schools. This up-to-date survey is the first one-volume source for those interested in educational reform policies and missionary and government efforts to Christianize and “civilize” American Indian children. Drawing on firsthand accounts from teachers and students, American Indian Education considers and analyzes shifting educational policies and philosophies, paying special attention to the passage of the Native American Languages Act and current efforts to revitalize Native American cultures.