People who live in states with significant Native American populations (ie New Mexico), did your school have a class/club/etc that taught that tribe's language?
Posted by man_itsahot_one@reddit | AskAnAmerican | View on Reddit | 45 comments
Grew up in South Dakota. As far as I can remember, my elementary school had a sort of after school club/class to learn Lakota (probably since it was a small town and there wasn't much else for kids to do in town outside of summer lol), and in highschool, a separate class outside of the regular language learning class (I'm not aware if there was one in my middle school).
I'm mostly curious about how it works in other places across the country since state curriculum can vary greatly. I'm also aware this is probably a newer phenomenon, I am turning only 22 this winter and this sub tends to skew older.
Designer-Throat9666@reddit
Sorry unrelated but what do you mean you’re turning 22 “this winter”? Like, as in the last few days of December, or the upcoming winter extending into 2027?
My birthday is in January and I would say “I turned 22 this winter” but I turn 23 “next winter”.
It’s the most confusing season to refer to since it’s at the beginning and end of the year.
Alternative-Pear9096@reddit
There are three major Souian languages (Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota), teaching Lakota only is fairly arbitrary. And South Dakota is home to a fairly homogeneous Native group. New Mexico has 8 major Native languages. It would be very difficult for a school most places to choose one language and teach it as “the” language spoken in the area.
nsnyder@reddit
Yes there are 8 major languages, but Navajo really is an outlier. It has more speakers than all other native languages of the US combined.
2PlasticLobsters@reddit
I suspect it'd be the same here in Washington state. There are multiple Native groups with different languages, in the western part alone.
TomMyers_AComedian@reddit
I don't think there are even enough speakers of the indigenous languages of Washington to teach them in more than just a few schools.
Current_Mongoose_844@reddit
When I was a teacher I would always devote a lesson to the Indigenous tribes of New York State, whether or not it was part of the curriculum. My AP got mad at me but the kids learned.
Huntscunt@reddit
Yes. I'm from New mexico, and Navajo was one of the 3 languages you could take at my school (Spanish and French were the other two).
purritowraptor@reddit
Did a lot of non-Native kids take Navajo, or was it more of a "closed" class?
Huntscunt@reddit
I honestly don't know. I took Spanish.
514geekgirl@reddit
Wow surprised to hear French, I know there's some French in Louisiana, is there French in New Mexico? I'm QC, Canada (Primarily French, we all learn English/French)
Huntscunt@reddit
Yeah, idk why we had French. We have a big Vietnamese population, so maybe related to that?
Maurice_Foot@reddit
French is probably the second most common high school foreign language across the US.
Tristinmathemusician@reddit
Unfortunately not. I think you have to be going to school in a native reservation to learn that option.
Real pity though, I think it’d be sick to know Navajo.
LankyIron7145@reddit
I grew up on the Flathead reservation in Montana and we had Salish language classes starting in elementary school up through high school. Montana's state constitution requires all public schools to teach Native American history and culture, so most (if not all) schools on the reservation offered Salish language classes with some offering Kootenai language classes as well.
cactusfairyprincess@reddit
We’re in AZ and my kids take Oodham language lessons but it’s something we set up privately with the tribe. I have been looking into how to set it up as an after school club instead though, it seems like if they were learning alongside friends at school they might retain more.
IndependentMacaroon@reddit
Good on you!
koreanforrabbit@reddit
I teach in a largely Native community in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The kids have Ojibwe language and culture as a Special once a week, and we have a yearly powwow at the school.
gottarun215@reddit
I grew up in MN near several reservations and I can't recall having any clubs of this sort nor were any native languages offered as a language option in school. This was 20+ years ago though.
Spirited-Way2406@reddit
It is an elective in high school when a teacher is available. It's taught at the college more often. They also have an immersion preschool, a radio program that repeats online and in the newspaper, and a small publishing house.
Jumpingyros@reddit
Grew up in Alaska. You can take native language classes at the university level but nothing in high-school or younger. We did always have an Alaskan history segment each year and part of that always included native culture and history.
My parents are from SD originally and my mom has told me that when she moved she was completely shocked (in a good way) at how integrated native Alaskans are in AK. She’s white but she worked on a reservation for a while and had native friends and it was strictly and vigorously segregated in SD. In college she used to make calls for her native friends to set up apartment viewings because if they heard a native accent on the phone they’d lie that the place wasn’t available anymore. We’re talking about graduate level university students here, to be clear. Meanwhile my mom’s landlord would let her skate on rent when she was broke. This would have been in the late 60s. And there were absolutely no after school Lakota classes in the public schools back then.
minkameleon@reddit
Just adding to this. I spent elementary school in Juneau and we did have Tlingit classes (mostly basic words, greetings, etc) and story times with local elders. It was treat like PE, music, etc as one of the non-core but still weekly/biweekly classes of the day. That was 20ish years ago, so who knows if that is still a thing, but that was my experience. Obv it’s going to vary a lot from place to place. I’d be curious to know if anyone knows if those lessons are still a thing. The main elder who came in passed away several years ago and I don’t know if anyone continued that after his passing.
redditburner_5000@reddit
No. Maybe you'd learn it on the reservation. Maybe. Certainly not in mainstream schools. There's just no utility in the languages beyond the reservations. It's like learning Cajun French. Neat, but....okay.
yunwibubu@reddit
Central Oklahoma. We did not. The only language my school taught besides English was Spanish, and even that was limited.
I learned simple words in Cherokee through my family and learning the language in a more structured way has been directly through my tribe.
El-Mas-Vetado@reddit
Enough people learned or speak Navajo to do this.
Consistent_Damage885@reddit
We have a native club here in Colorado Springs but we have kids from many tribes, many languages so language isn't a focus as far as I know.
Lower-Gap-4251@reddit
I grew up in upstate, NY and I would say Native American history & culture was always brought up. My US history teacher in 11th grade gave us a whole unit on the Native American tribes and their impact of NYS/US history
StickaFORKinMyEye@reddit
Upstate NY GenX here and we had a big focus on the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquois League/People of the Longhouse) well as more general Native American history including the trail of tears.
Maurice_Foot@reddit
Wasn’t a lot of the US govt plan cribbed from the Iroquois League?
Maurice_Foot@reddit
My mom and her sisters had their hands hit with rulers if they spoke Spanish in school (1950s).
As a teacher in the ‘90 and 2000s,, my mom worked at a high school near four corners (Navajo res) and taught English to students there. No word on if they had Navajo classes. I’ll ask her the next time I see her.
ExternalTelevision75@reddit
I, a white woman, went to school with predominantly indigenous people, and only English was used at school
_Smedette_@reddit
Oregonian here. Native history was included when the local/regional history units were being taught. I don’t know if it’s because of significant events in our local history (the Lewis and Clark expectation, and the Oregon Trail), but we learned a lot about Native tribes in the area. Field trips included going to Longhouses, seeing how salmon was smoked/preserved, making jewelry, and learning about crest animals and totem poles.
As you know, curriculums vary wildly all over the US, so I have no idea if this was standard in other parts of Portland or Oregon. If it’s of any consequence, I attended elementary school in the 80s.
marylander_@reddit
grew up in Oklahoma and nope. We did have occasional native ambassadors who would give guest lectures. but there definetely wasn't a class, and if there was a club I wasnt aware of it
domestic_omnom@reddit
Oklahoma as well, and we had the same thing. Tribal ambassadors, usually from cultural preservation would give lectures and bring in traditional clothing and tell us about history. Mostly Choctaw, cause we were in their territory. I remember a day where Chickasaw and Cherokee came in.
syncopatedchild@reddit
Navajo is common in high schools and colleges in New Mexico, but we also havetwo bands of Apache and 19 Pueblos (each of which is its own national with it's own language), so most indigenous languages aren't represented in schools here. Some of the Puebloan people's consider it taboo to teach their languages to outsiders, so they don't even want them taught in public schools.
jojoefs@reddit
Went to public high school right next to a reservation in AZ and absolutely didn't.
pudding7@reddit
Same. Went to HS in Pinetop, a couple miles from the res. Nothing in our curriculum touched on the tribes around us.
johnqadamsin28@reddit
I bet they were on the reservation instead
boopbaboop@reddit
Not in Massachusetts, even in places with a lot of Wampanoag.
I used to live in upstate NY right next to the Seneca territory, and while road signs there were in Seneca and English and I think they had immersion classes for Native kids, it wasn’t part of the normal public school curriculum. Apparently they did learn a lot about it in history, though (lots about the Cornplanter agreement).
mspaintlock@reddit
It’s rare for Oklahoman public schools, with most of the classes and programs I’ve seen being at universities or organized by the nations. For instance, OU teaches Tsalagi (Cherokee), Mvskoke (Muskogee/Creek), Chahta (Choctaw), [Gáui[dóñ:gyà (Kiowa), and Bodwéwadmi (Potawatomi). Most kids will learn Spanish instead.
Illustrious-Shirt569@reddit
No, we did not. There were no native speakers of the indigenous languages from our area left in the world when I was a kid. In the last 20 years, they’ve tried to document and research the language in order to revive it (using recordings and writings), but as far as I know, it’s a very limited immersion program on the reservation and there are still very few fluent speakers.
bmsa131@reddit
No but I am From NY and our state curriculum in the 70s and 80s for social studies was like half a year on Iroquois.
Additional-Software4@reddit
My high school in West LA was literally built on a natural springs/sacred site to the local natives. They do have special access to the school from what I know for ceremonies, etc.
I dont recall anything like that, our schools nickname was Warriors with the stereotypical "Indian Warrior" mascot, but that was changes a few years after I left.
HarlequinKOTF@reddit
I grew up in Arizona, the state with the largest amount of reservation land as a percentage of the total. We learmed a lot about which tribes lived there in school but outside reservations teaching the native languages was rare.
houdini31@reddit
I am from Arizona and there was nothing like that
johnqadamsin28@reddit
There's only a couple kids that I remember were natives but we learned about the missions the Spanish built around the 17th century and how the natives were brought there as basically slaves but we got to make a copy of them and put little goats and sheeps it was cool