Forty years ago there were approximately fifty child speakers of Hawaiian in the state of Hawai‘i. Today there are thousands of speakers of all ages and a constellation of pre-K–PhD programs to promote the Hawaiian language and culture. In the early 1990s, there were no living speakers of myaamia (Miami) or Wôpanâak (Wampanoag), both North American Algonquian languages. Today, these languages, once decreed “extinct,” live in vibrant community-based education programs and family homes. Drawing on an international scholarly literature and the author’s long-term collaborative research with Indigenous educators, this chapter reflects backward and forward on the field of Indigenous language reclamation, tracing its development against the violence of settler colonialism and exploring current movements, their challenges, and the language planning and policymaking possibilities they suggest. In an age of growing raciolinguistic inequality, these movements provide both a cautionary tale and a vision of the interventions necessary to support Indigenous self-determination and sustain linguistic diversity for all.

Introduction

Of 300 languages indigenous to what is now the USA, 175 are still spoken (Krauss 1998). The language with the most speakers – 178,000 in the 2000 Census – is Navajo but, as Table 3.1 shows, most Native American languages have many fewer speakers. More than a third have just a handful of elderly speakers. For example, Eyak, a language once spoken by people indigenous to what is now southern Alaska, lost its last speaker, Marie Smith Jones, in 2008. All Native American languages are endangered, as Native children are increasingly socialized in English. The causes of this are complex – a topic we will discuss later in this chapter. The consequences are grave, for, unlike speakers of languages spoken elsewhere in the world, Indigenous communities have no external pool of speakers from which to replenish their numbers. “The loss of the indigenous language is terminal: language death” (Warner 1999: 72). Given this situation, language revitalization is a significant goal in Native American communities throughout the USA.

Tribal sovereignty

Understanding Native American language issues requires understanding the unique legal and political status of Native peoples in the USA. The term “Native American” encompasses diverse American Indian tribes, Alaska Natives, and Native Hawaiians who share a status as first peoples, with the right to exercise tribal sovereignty, which is the “right of a people to government, self-determination, and self-education,” including the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local languages and norms (Lomawaima and McCarty 2006: 10).