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Lang->Blackfeet: Blackfeet tribe immerses students in language to reclaim lost culture
Posted on Monday, January 27 @ 16:02:45 PST (6429 reads)
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KEYWORDS: Blackfeet language Blackfoot lost Indian languages native language total immersion school blackfeet tribe's language and customs Browning school teaches native language America's tribes viable Indian languages Blackfeet name coming-of-age ritual bicultural children in America native speakers Blackfoot Art Prints Blackfeet Art Print american Indian art print
AUTHOR: Fred Tasker, Knight Ridder Newspapers
(BLACKFEET RESERVATION, BROWNING, MONTANA)- "Tsa nii ksistikowatts sa-ahsi?" teacher Shirley Crowshoe asks her class of elementary students sitting in a circle on a thick rug in a bright, modern classroom. "What kind of day is it outside?"
Jessie DesRosier, 13, is quick to raise his hand: "Sugapii ksisko, ahstosopo," he says. "Nice day, cold wind."
Jessie is one of a handful younger than 60 in the 15,000-member tribe on this isolated reservation who can speak its native language. He's one of 31 students in a total immersion school in the Blackfeet language and culture set up by Darrell Kipp, Harvard-trained historian of the Blackfeet Tribe, and teacher Dorothy Still Smoking.
They created it because too few Blackfeet children knew the tribe's language and customs.
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