LANGUAGE DEATH AND NATIVE AMERICAN LANGUAGES: THE CASE OF SAUK ALGONQUIAN
Michael Reinschmidt
Department of Anthropology, CSU-Chico

This presentation gives a short overview on the state of endangered world languages before it will discuss selected details of the plight of Native American Languages. The main reasons for "language death" such as interethnic power dynamics, educational policy, economic requirements, and especially rapid progress in communication technology are now much better understood than 100 years ago. High levels of awareness, however, still have to be reached because informing the public at large was severely and purposely neglected until about the 1950s. While people have become highly sensitized on the endangerment of plant and animal species, it is surprising that language – one of the most important species-characteristics of humankind – is in such threatening decline.

Despite several successful attempts, revitalization of Native American languages will remain futile in the long run. Strong emphases should be placed on the maintenance of languages with sufficient active native speakers. As powerful as language eradication has caused a high death toll among Native American languages, as powerful an effort would be required to resurrect them to the point of first language status.

Argumentation of this paper will be informed and exemplified by case study material gathered during what I identified as the "last stage" of Sauk Algonquian, i.e., from about 1988 through 1995. However, because "language death" is a question of definition by perspective, this paper will be open-ended and invite the audience into a closing discussion on differentiating terms such as "functional Sauk," "spoken Sauk," "conversational Sauk," "traditional Sauk," "religious/ritual Sauk," or "ancestral/liturgical Sauk."