College-Educated Young Adults—A Key Demographic
College-educated young adults are perhaps the most important of all demographic groups relative to the advancement of language revitalization. They are often open to learning research-based formal skills for language revitalization. At an age optimal for language learning, they are also able to dedicate time to work with Elders, documentation, and formal classes to master an endangered language. Furthermore, the idealism of youth makes them psychologically oriented toward breaking social and other norms that may be barriers to the revitalization and survival of endangered languages.
Once young adults are proficient in speaking and analyzing their endangered language, they are in a position to raise their future children as speakers of the endangered language and further its spread. Organizational skills of college graduates can be used to create groups who work together to protect and expand the use of their language, creating a multigenerational community of speakers (Figure 8.1). They can then assume responsibility for the expansion of language movement networks. The university component of such a network is itself a crucial one that, if sufficiently developed, can continually feed new human and material resources into the network.
Study of the Practice of Language Revitalization
Increasingly, American and Canadian universities are offering courses on language endangerment and revitalization. The University of Victoria in British Columbia is an example of an institution that has integrated courses from its linguistics and education departments into a full program of Indigenous Language Revitalization. It offers a certificate, diploma, B.Ed. and M.A./M.Ed. Most courses are in the theory and practice of language revitalization, rather than in specific languages. An evaluation of the B.Ed identified developing proficiency as a particular challenge. With the loss of Elders, communities throughout North America are increasingly looking to universities to develop programs that produce proficient speakers. Finding ways to help students develop proficiency in their languages is a major problem in areas of great linguistic diversity. The University of Victoria is trying to serve over 30 Indigenous languages in British Columbia alone. The university is using a variety of methods to help their students become more proficient, including community-based language learning for credit.
Figure 8.1 Students practicing Hawaiian grammatical structures
Teaching Indigenous Languages in Tertiary Education
It is now not uncommon for North American tertiary education institutions serving Indigenous students to offer some tertiary-level Indigenous language study. A growth in interest in Indigenous languages is indicated by recent statistics that show nearly 30 Native American languages taught in U.S. colleges and universities, and a higher growth rate in enrollments in those languages than in European languages (Goldberg, Looney, and Lusin 2015). The high level of New Zealand Māori enrollments provides some idea of what is possible when there is strong interest in Indigenous language study (New Zealand government 2016).
Tertiary Indigenous Language Study for Revitalization Purposes
The World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium (WINHEC) has recognized five purposes for which Indigenous higher education institutions would ideally provide training in Indigenous languages (World Indigenous Nations Higher Education Consortium 2011), namely:
Revitalize/maintain use as a marker to outsiders
Revitalize/maintain internal ritual use
Revitalize/maintain home and community use
Revitalize/maintain internal official Indigenous government use
Revitalize/maintain Indigenous language use with non-Indigenous peoples living on Indigenous land
The first two purposes can be achieved through memorization of a set body of vocabulary, proverbs, songs, and traditional orations embedded in general daily use of the dominant non-Indigenous language. Depending on the amount of language to be memorized, such a goal can be reached within a relatively short period of time to include one or two years of tertiary-level study. An example of a program specific to Purposes 1 and 2 is that proposed by Kahakalau 2015.
The common assumption within Indigenous communities is that tertiary education programs for “Indigenous language revitalization” will help them move to Purpose 3 or above, possibly by graduating professionals who can operate immersion programs. However, to achieve the high communicative proficiency required for such purposes, one must move beyond memorized chunks of a language and master its grammar. A natural process for a child being raised within a community where the language is in normal use, it is also somewhat natural for a second-language learner who moves into a similar social context. Developing high proficiency, however, is a considerable challenge when a program is attempting to assist college-aged adults to master an endangered language that is not the normal language of daily life anywhere. Tertiary Indigenous language revitalization programs are exploring ways to meet that challenge.
An Overview of Tertiary Programs in Indigenous Languages
Where Indigenous language study is offered at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, it usually ranges from two to four one-semester courses. Tribal colleges and universities are the loci of many such programs. Tribal institution-offered two-year certificates in Native Studies may include some language courses. Generally, however, the role of Indigenous language courses is to provide an Indigenous pathway to meet general education second-language study requirements of any two- or four-year degree. In some tribal institutions, such as Tohono O’odham Community College, a one-semester course in the local language is required of all students (accessed October 9, 2016).
The University of Oklahoma is an example of a state university program that includes courses in Native American languages. It teaches Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, and Kiowa with two semesters of five-hour study at the first-year level followed by a single semester of three-hour study at the second-year level (accessed October 10, 2016). The purposes are similar to those of tribal institutions relative to use for general education and the University’s Native Studies B.A. More developed programs are offered at such institutions as the University of Minnesota—Dakota, Ojibwe, University of New Mexico—Navajo, and University of Alaska, Fairbanks—Iñupiaq and Yup’ik Eskimo (all accessed in October 2016). These provide students with specific language-focused qualifications, which may be a minor, teaching certificate, B.A., or tribal language focus in an M.A. They range from 24 to 38 credits when prerequisites in the language are counted. Some credits, however, are more broad theory related than language skill specific, and thus minimally affect proficiency.
Issues for Language Learning
Devoting Sufficient Time to the Language
A major challenge for tertiary institutions is allocating sufficient time to skills in the target language to produce proficiency needed to effectuate WINHEC revitalization levels 3 and 4. The U.S. Foreign Service Institute has ranked languages based on difficulty for English speakers with an estimated number of hours needed to reach proficiency level S-3 General Professional Proficiency, which would produce the needed immersion teachers for the higher WINHEC purposes (accessed October 10, 2016). Indigenous languages generally require 1100 hours of study to reach S-3. Some that have exceptionally intricate phonologies and grammars (e.g., Tlingit, Cherokee) may require more time. A five-credit language course meeting 50 minutes a day, five times a week, over a 15-week semester would result in 62.5 hours of study. It would therefore take approximately 18 such courses, or 90 credits, to reach 1100 hours. At more than twice the number of credits for a standard baccalaureate degree, this sort of time commitment can be overwhelming to program developers.
Acquisition Through Use Within a Cultural Context
Even highly resourced foreign language departments in selective universities find designing a campus-based foreign language degree producing S-3 level proficiency a daunting task. Therefore, such foreign language programs typically depend on student travel abroad to develop higher levels of proficiency. These study-abroad programs provide well over 1100 hours use of a language in a wide variety of situations of daily life (Mitchell et al 2015). However, similar travel to a homeland with vigorous language use is not available for endangered Indigenous languages.
For Indigenous language learning, something similar to study abroad is interaction with Elders in culturally authentic contexts—the basis of the Master- Apprentice program. The University of Victoria certificate referred to earlier incorporates four 100-hour Master-Apprentice experiences paired with four 3-credit language-specific courses. The total number of language study hours, however, is very much under the 1100 needed to reach the S-3 level. The University of Victoria provides further support to language proficiency development with courses in linguistics that give students a means to improve their skills for learning more language on their own from documentation and/or elders. Such an approach is best practice for languages that are the patrimony of small Indigenous groups from which there may be only a single student studying the language.
A way to provide for time using a language with more than one or two advanced students is to establish the language as the medium of general interaction among students. An exceptional example of this is Te Panekiretanga O Te Reo, a program operated by Te Wānanga O Aotearoa in New Zealand. The Program involves periodic intensive live-in study periods operated totally through Māori by nationally recognized experts. Enrollment is by invitation only with students being highly skilled second-language speakers who work in Māori language media and education systems.
Cultivating a Community of Users
Simply teaching about language revitalization, providing linguistic skills for learning a language, or even teaching a language to a high level of proficiency does not result in intergenerational language revitalization. To seriously affect language revitalization, tertiary programs must directly address use in one or more communities. There are basically two approaches to spreading use. One approach involves movement of the entire Indigenous community to higher levels of use. This works best for WINHEC Purposes 1 and 2. The other involves establishing, and then expanding, protected family-based core groups of proficient speakers at Purposes 3 and 4. Successful tertiary programs work to effectuate both approaches.
The spread of Purposes 1 and 2 can be done through special events, publications, and media outreach. These raise the status of the language and increase opportunities to learn more of it. Purposes 3 and 4 require spreading and intensifying actual daily use at a proficient level among adults of child-bearing age and their children in increasingly expanded networks of speakers. Purposes 3 and 4 also require protecting children from assimilation away from the language. Such assimilation normally occurs in English-medium schooling even when the school is supportive of retention of the language.
One way protection can be provided is to help endangered language–speaking parents pursuing homeschooling in the endangered language. Another way is to develop alternate P–12 schooling through the medium of the endangered language. Key to both is producing college graduates with sufficiently high proficiency to be the parents, teachers, and curriculum developers to effectuate Indigenous language–medium education and to coordinate it with the tertiary-level program. If developed to a strong enough level, such protective schooling environments can assimilate other children and families into the language.
Ka Haka ʻUla O Ke‘elikōlani College of Hawaiian Language
A tertiary education entity that has had considerable success in developing endangered language proficiency for students and cultivating a community of users is the Hawai‘i State Hawaiian Language College, Ka Haka ‘Ula O Ke‘elikōlani, at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo. Hawaiian is an example of a language with almost no children speakers reestablishing through the work of college-trained second-language speakers.
Beginning Similar to a Tribal College Program
While now having an extensive array of programs, Ka Haka ‘Ula began somewhat similar to American Indian Tribal College language programs. At the insistence of the surrounding Indigenous community, Hawaiian was included in what was initially a two-year institution with Elders doing the teaching. Later when the institution moved to four-year status, students pressured the administration to add four years of Hawaiian language and then a Hawaiian Studies B.A. degree.
I arrived in 1978 to develop that B.A. with the approval of Elder Edith Kanaka‘ole. Our new Hilo program was built from a series of innovations. First, we established our own Hawaiian Studies Department separate from the Foreign Languages Department. Courses were taught by three tenure-track faculty members, with some assistance from lecturers—typically recent graduates or more advanced students. Second, all Department language and culture courses beyond the first year introductory level were taught through Hawaiian. Third, we established two B.A. Hawaiian Studies tracks: one completely within the Department and delivered through Hawaiian and another interdisciplinary track that included English-medium courses on Hawaiian topics. The double-track approach provided inclusiveness while also allowing our department to fully focus on language revitalization. We, the first three program faculty, had ourselves become proficient in Hawaiian primarily from years of interacting with Elders after having taken a minimally developed program taught through English (Wilson and Kamanā 2013).
From the beginning of its B.A. program, Ka Haka ‘Ula has extensively incorporated insights from linguistics into its courses. The College uses a modernized writing system that marks all phonemic distinctions and uses it from the very first day of class. Some Elders initially criticized use of the writing system, but gradually its crucial importance became widely recognized. Ka Haka ‘Ula language courses also focus heavily on teaching linguistically informed lexicon, grammar, and diagramming of sentences. The grammatical diagrams are based in Hawaiian cultural images with terminology in Hawaiian, facilitating teaching through Hawaiian. This grammatical focus allows students to rapidly access the full language beyond memorized phrases. Other examples of programs that have similarly benefited from insights from linguistics include the Mohawk “Root-Word Method” and the Tlingit program at the University of Alaska Southeast.
Beginning in the early 1980s with three tenure-track faculty, we were able to teach eight graduated semesters of Hawaiian, three performing arts courses, three Hawaiian linguistics courses, and two general culture courses—all through Hawaiian. The initial major count in 1982, when the degree was approved by the Board of Regents, was twelve. Upper-level Hawaiian language skill courses enrolled as few as three students.
Before the innovative use of Hawaiian as the medium of instruction, it was rare for students who had completed eight full semesters of Hawaiian at any University of Hawai‘i campus to be able to actually maintain a conversation in the language. With the innovation of use of Hawaiian as the medium of instruction, our program was producing graduates with sufficient Hawaiian proficiency to fully use it in all contexts with remaining Elders (Figure 8.2).
Developing a Hawaiian-Speaking Community Around Schooling
When the Hawaiian language degree began, there was no regularly Hawaiian- speaking community in the Hilo area. Once we had developed a cadre of students with strong Hawaiian proficiency, we moved to make the department into such a community. That community developed first when faculty decided that Hawaiian was to be used with, and by, students outside of the classroom. We further strengthened the program by bringing in Elders—not as language skill course teachers—but as conversation group leaders and teachers of traditional arts— similar to the Aanar Saami program (Olthuis, Kivelä and Skutnabb-Kangas 2013). Those Elder speakers were generally born before 1920 but did not normally use the language in daily life, even with each other. However, they began to use the language more due to interaction with students. Once we were using Hawaiian in the classroom and socially, we took on the challenge of conducting our own department governance meetings in Hawaiian.
Figure 8.2 Ka Haka ‘Ula teacher program graduates
Within a few years, we had Hawaiian-speaking babies (Wilson and Kamanā 2013). Students began taking care of them between classes. This was followed by the establishment of a Pūnana Leo language nest not far from campus. That Pūnana Leo became the focus of our off-campus reestablished Hawaiian-speaking community. At the Pūnana Leo, Elders and our college students used Hawaiian exclusively with children and each other. Parents were taught Hawaiian in evening classes. Many then enrolled in university Hawaiian classes, growing the program and further extended Hawaiian into homes.
The next step was primary education through Hawaiian with our second language- speaking college graduates becoming the teachers. The development of total Hawaiian medium education from the preschool into elementary and eventually secondary school lead to creation of our College’s Nāwahīokalani‘ōpu‘u P–12 laboratory school program (Wilson and Kamanā 2001). We also participated in establishing Pūnana Leo and public school streams taught through Hawaiian in other areas, providing a means for our college students from other islands to give back to their home communities.
The Hawaiian Studies Department grew and sought out the status of a college to eventually provide Hawaiian-medium teacher certification, a curriculum materials and lexicon development center, master’s degrees and a PhD, plus more undergraduate classes. All these initiatives were, and remain, operated through Hawaiian, including Hawaiian-speaking secretaries and technology staff. The growing community of speakers serves as a workforce resource for other initiatives of the larger multi-island Hawaiian language revitalization effort. Graduates of the College are also a primary source of first-language Hawaiian- speaking children, strengthening Hawaiian-medium education.
Time Spent in the Language at Ka Haka ‘Ula
Ka Haka ‘Ula–trained teachers meet the U.S. Foreign Service Institute recommended 1100 hours of study for professional-level use of the language. The Hawaiian language revitalization track of the Hawaiian Studies B.A. presently requires 41 credits taught totally through Hawaiian with 16 prerequisite credits in Hawaiian language. There are eight additional hours not counted for credit in the form of required Friday classes in addition to the Monday through Thursday classes. The student learning outcome expected from the fourth year of Hawaiian is ACTFL “Advanced Low.” All students receiving the B.A. must pass a final proficiency assessment that includes meeting at least ACTFL level “Intermediate High”. Those continuing on to the Hawaiian-medium teacher certificate take another 37 graduate credits provided totally through Hawaiian (Wilson and Kawai‘ae‘a 2007). A student who has completed the program through to that certificate will have accumulated over 1300 hours of classroom study and use of Hawaiian. The M.A. in Hawaiian Language and Literature is also taught totally through Hawaiian, as is one of the elective tracks of the College’s PhD.
Replacing study abroad, many hours of Hawaiian use outside of the classroom assure that all graduates are proficient and accustomed to using the language in daily life. Hawaiian is the medium of business and socialization in the College and of regular weekly and yearly cultural events that draw all faculty, staff, and majors together. In addition, students participate in meetings, extracurricular excursions, off- campus events, and evening presentations through Hawaiian. Some students obtain part-time employment in the College, the laboratory school, or language nest offices, where Hawaiian is the work language. The pervasive use of the language in the College building and the presence of Hawaiian-speaking children of faculty, staff, and students has established an environment that assimilates students to use of the language. Use of Hawaiian also extends into chance encounters in local stores, restaurants, and events. While the Elders who started the program are no longer with us, interaction with them through documentation is part of the program and can also be accessed online outside of the classroom.
The undergraduate major count has grown significantly from the original 12 in 1982 to 88 in the fall of 2015 plus an additional 37 in various graduate programs (University of Hawai‘i 2016). Most encouraging has been the growth of Hawaiian in the surrounding community. When the first plans for the program were developed in the late 1970s, there were no children speaking the language in the Hilo area. The latest statistics show Hawaiian to be the county’s largest non-English home language among children. The 1600 such children are primarily the product of the work of graduates of the College in local Hawaiian immersion schools (State of Hawai‘i 2016).
Reaching Out to Other Indigenous Groups
As part of our movement to college status, we incorporated a linguistics B.A. to provide a pathway for others interested in language revitalization to work with the College. While taught through English, Linguistics students are exposed to data from Hawaiian and other Indigenous languages. The Linguistics Program offers a certificate in Contemporary Indigenous Multilingualism. Furthermore, the College’s PhD in Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization provides for selective enrollment of non-Hawaiian speaking, but highly Indigenous language-proficient, students in all four of its tracks except for “Hawaiian Language and Culture.” The Linguistics faculty are an integral part of the College and are all proficient in Hawaiian, the working language of the College.
Maintaining Ka Haka ‘Ula’s Focus on Language Revitalization
Faculty hired to teach and revitalize Indigenous languages can easily be diverted from language revitalization by the requirements and attractions of academia that are designed for the dominant culture rather than for hands-on revitalization of a suppressed language. The common requirement of a PhD for initial hire in most universities is itself a barrier to language revitalization, as there are no doctorates specific to most Indigenous languages. As a result, those who are most proficient in Indigenous languages and most skilled in teaching them are often independent scholars and professionals who lack graduate degrees. Requirements of degrees and publications in areas not directly affecting the revitalization of the target language can work not only against hiring skilled professionals but also against them once they are Hired.
Ka Haka ‘Ula has been lucky that from the initiation of the program, its tenure-track faculty have been hired based on demonstrated high Hawaiian proficiency and proven teaching and language revitalization success rather than on terminal degrees. It has also developed a college internal tenure-awarding procedure that provides academic recognition of language revitalization as an artistic and academic product equal to standard academic publications. At Ka Haka ‘Ula, priority in awarding tenure is placed on faculty producing books and products for Hawaiian language revitalization schools, presenting and writing for the community of families directly involved in language revitalization, and providing other services to communities involved in language revitalization locally, nationally, and internationally. Publication in academic journals, participation in academic conferences, and service to the larger academic community of the university are not totally dismissed but are placed in a secondary position. The College also provides support to faculty members in pursuing advanced degrees in cases where a talented hire lacks such a degree.
Future Directions
At a higher level of language revitalization development than Ka Haka ‘Ula are a number of small “minority official-language” medium universities, for example, the Sami University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway and the University of the Faroe Islands, Denmark (accessed October 29, 2016). A similar structure for Ka Haka ‘Ula, but integrally affiliated with the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo, could accelerate the production of Hawaiian-speaking professionals who would have taken courses in the sciences, social sciences, humanities, and so on through Hawaiian to further strengthen use of the language and P–12 education through it. Up to the present, responsibility for such courses lies outside of the College in departments in the larger university. Those other departments lack Hawaiian-speaking faculty and the language revitalization focus to prioritize offering Hawaiian-medium courses, much less prioritize their scheduling to integrate into an overall program of Hawaiian revitalization enrolling a limited number of students. To be maximally successful, the offering of such general education courses through Hawaiian would include “dual credit” outreach to the Hawaiian-medium/immersion secondary school sector to assure a seamless connection to the larger effort to provide high-quality education through Hawaiian to the growing Hawaiian-speaking population. Targeted Hawaiian language arts courses for those who have spoken Hawaiian all their lives have already begun in the
College as a first step toward this next stage of development.
Conclusion
There is increased attention to the Indigenous languages of the United States and Canada at the tertiary level. Without a pathway for producing proficient speakers of specific languages, tertiary study about language revitalization lacks a crucial component needed by Indigenous communities seeking language revitalization. At present the number of hours typically devoted to languages is insufficient to produce the level of proficiency needed to advance language revitalization beyond words and phrases.
Ideally, a tertiary-level language revitalization program would produce high proficiency in the target language and be itself an integral part of a larger movement using the language for internal communication. Such a movement would include a means for protecting young endangered language–speaking children from the assimilatory force of English-dominant education and spreading use in the community.
The College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawai‘i at Hilo is an example of a program that has experienced success in developing Indigenous language proficiency and in growing a language revitalization movement. Begun similar to a Tribal College language program surrounded by an Indigenous community where only a few Elders were proficient in the language, it has developed step by step over four decades. Its initial faculty consisted of three proficient second-language speakers. As a path-breaking program, it has had to contend with barriers that have since diminished considerably with the worldwide growth of support of language revitalization. Its early success in producing speakers and teachers for P–12 total immersion education in spite of limited faculty and other resources provides an idea of what might be possible to build elsewhere beginning with a relatively small, but highly focused, program (Figure 8.3).
Figure 8.3 Maui Island Pu¯nana Leo families served by Ka Haka ‘Ula visit the College