The story, “And Then I Went to School, by Joe Suina is about the difficulties he went through in the process of assimilation. When he was a child at the age of five, his grandmother helped him practice his cultural traditions and responsibilities to which he had a “Sense of Closeness” to who he was. When Joes started schooling at age six, it’s where he started the process of losing track of who he was meant to be. He was being taught in an environment that was all new to him and was being punished if he did anything that was his heritage. Suina knew that his mindset was changing, even if he was told, “...at home I was encouraged to attend school so that I might have a better life in the future.” Being pulled in “Two Directions”, he was moving away from his traditional ways every time he went to school. After fighting for so long, he realized that he “...had to give up part of his life”, to more or less, survive in this world. 

Suina, Joseph “And I Went to School: Memories of a Pueblo Childhood,” Pp. 1-6, Reprint with 

permission of the author from the New Mexico Journal of reading, winter 1985, Vol. V. 

NO.2, “Rainbird” illustration by Tom Lea from H.P. Mera, Pueblo Designs. 

This article is about how the original ways of teaching Indian education within native tribes had changed with the arrival of the Europeans in 1492. Preliminary before Columbus’s landing, they were taught different roles to focus on the “survival as a group of people.” Alongwith the traditional history of their people, culture, and religion that “...was passed as through oral tradition....” A professor, Raymond Cross, has said, “ Traditional Indian education emphasized learning by application and imitation, not by memorization of basic information”, which Indian children back then had a good learning environment in their tribal community, surrounded by elders to teach them the right way. Storytelling, prayer, language, and oral teachings were being lost or broken up by intrusion from the Europeans, but the failure of assimilation led the Natives to have their own sovereignty status, the ability to have authority over their educational systems in their schools, and have the state and federal governments respect their “unique cultural and education”  programs from sold “judicial scrutiny.”

Juneau, Stan, et al. “Chapter One: Traditional Indian Education and European Intrusion (1492-1787).” History and Foundation of American Indian Education, Montana Office of Public Instruction, Helena, Montana, 2013, pp. 4–7.

In summary, this article is about the history of how Indigenous languages have fallen or disappeared over the years since European colonization and the attempts to revive them with Indian education programs. Going from 300 to 155 original spoken languages in the span of about 400 years since the 1600s, people thought and argued that languages are “living entities and as such are born, flourish, mutate, wither, and die in a natural cycle” (Lateu, 2014, p.13). When the Europeans tried to eliminate the entirety of Native culture, they started a chain reaction of globalization, starting with the boarding schools. Moreover, when people moved from their home reservation to cities to seek survival or a better life, they had to learn the ‘dominant language’ and it caused “tremendous impact on Indigenous language loss around the world.” Within this article, it also explains that keeping the languages within our culture is important because it’s part of the heart in our communities and it connects with the “unique features of each Native tribe.” The way tribes have been able to pass the torch is by starting “Master/Apprentice programs, Immersion schools/language nests, and home based immersion settings.” Many efforts have been put into the goal of creating more people fluent in their language and it will continue to live on, as long as they have “commitment” and “passion”.

Gantt, Amy M. Native Language Revitalization: Keeping the Languages Alive and Thriving, Southern Oklahoma State University, Sept. 2019, www.se.edu/native-american/wp-content/uploads/sites/49/2019/09/AAA-NAS-2015-Proceedings-Gantt.pdf.

This paper focuses on the what’s or why’s of visual literacy, its comprehension, and the findings of how it came to be called this term. It is described in the text that it’s the “ability to contract meaning from visual images”, where the idea of perception plays a big role. Humans have communicated through interpretations of pictures and it’s where they have acknowledged “sophisticated and complex ideas....” Researchers have found that very young children, like babies, learn through this the most by creating memories when they see their mother and father for the first time. It doesn’t matter which age the person is learning at so this knowledge can be exposed to kids through multiple disciplines like visual arts, linguistics, educational technology and so on. Visual literacy has been used in teaching resources in the past, plus is on the way to becoming the “predominant form of communication.” Providing the bases for students to be less manipulative by “visual means”, it leads a pathway to strengthen their verbal, writing literacy, and vocabulary skills.

Bamford, Anne. The Visual Literacy White Paper, Adobe Systems Pty Ltd, Australia, 2003, aperture.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/visual-literacy-wp.pdf. 

Starting with the statistics, the survival of 95% of languages around the world would become very endangered or fallen over the edge of extinction. Quotes have been spread among this article and one them reads," Expressing yourself in the way that your ancestors did makes you feel connected to them on a deep level...", giving the bond to Native American heritage a good forthcoming of what the reasons were behind language speakers teaching their language to people today. Some of the struggles that have been seen such as, less immersion settings, opportunities to use it at home, and the lack of commitment when being faced of learning a new language or complex principles which "...itself scares people." But, more methods are being tried through books, music, plays ect., that can play into the focused goals of native tongue revitalization like "identity, resilience, and well-being among community members." It revolves around reversing what Indigenous Oppression has done over the past centuries they have not given up. Another message that came to life was that even though your gaining knowledge from the speakers, your letting them know "that they are valued and important to you." Teaching a young person these values has proven for them to remember it forever."

Zazar, Isabella. Indigenous Language Revitalization: Native American Communities Reclaim Their Culture, Scot Scoop News, 19 Oct. 2023, scotscoop.com/indigenous-language-revitalization-native-american-communities-reclaim-their-culture. 

This article flows into the realm of immersion into the dominant world, or language, involving English. Throughout the years in some parts of Africa, black kids would get treated with bias if they spoke their native language like Xhosa or Sotho. These experiences are what led them to want to disconnect from their Indigenous side. English was the "key language" to learn in schools and "amaka", a 22-year-old Nigerian from Lagos, was a part of that system which led her to getting in trouble for speaking her language when a TV station was speaking the same tongue. By the time she was fifteen, she didn't know how to speak anymore and couldn't talk to her grandmother because they had no connection through their Native words. It establishes one of the important foundations of culture which is identity. These children are facing an identity crisis of: "I can't speak my Native language.""Language gives you a sense of community ," said Amaka. being connected to a community meant that you got to see the world differently, which also can make "...something greater than yourself....," to be how they want to be before European influence.

Chakanetsa, Kim. "Africa's Lost Languages: How English Can Fuel an Identity Crisis." BBC News, 15 May 2021, www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-57093347

Colonizers arrived in Australia in 1788 and continued to the 2000s. Their languages were ridiculed. "I think, growing up, I knew there was something missing from my life...realised that the missing link for me was our language," said Clark Webb, a teacher at "The Gumbaynggirr Giingana Freedom School. With him, there are only 30 proficient/highly proficient speakers of Gumbaynggirr in 2023. Australia consisted of "250 Indigenous languages, including 800 dialects...," and close to 9.5% of Indigenous Australians speak one or two of the remaining 150 languages now. Seeing now, there are many plans of reviving their languages and remaining consistent throughout the recent years. They have been creating schools like Ray Ingrey who made "The Gujaga Foundation" in 2019 who teach, with the help of "...recordings made by anthropologists of Dharawal elders in the 1960s." The Freedom School where clark works to have the students go out once a week "into the countryside" to learn about their connection "to country." One that stood out the most was New South Wales, a primary school that teaches Dharug, creating a Broadened Aboriginal Languages syllabus in 2024. As a result, it gives kids whose first language is an Native one, "will have new pathways to continue studying it at school." 

Redmayne, James, and Alasdair Pal. "Australian Schools Lead Revival of Fading Indigenous Languages." Reuters.com, 31 Aug. 2023, www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/australian schools-lead-revival-fading-indigenous-languages-2023-08-31. Accessed 8 Feb. 2024

For what got Brazilians at this state of losing their Native languages was due the hard effects of encroachment that was said and seen visually through this video. These indigenous tribes were met with the cruelty the Portuguese put upon them. Iawá, the  last of her people that knows how to speak Kuruaya, told the interviewers, "If they spotted an Indigenous women, they shot the man and kept the woman," in which they were losing their own blood at the time. The Kuruaya people were forced to move all over the place following and working for Non Native "profiteers," collecting/harvesting rubber, nuts, and more. This undoubtedly is what caused the scarcity of their language, "...constant moving led to a very low range of people speaking Kuruaya," Iawá said. Due to this, an estimate of 25% of those Brazilian (Native) languages, are in danger of being extinct recorded before 2020. Not only the indigenous tongues are being affected, but land loss is also in the equation. "According to researcher Philip Fearnside, forest loss caused by large dam envelopment projects...makes them ore vulnerable than other populations." Water shortages, decline in wildlife, low water quality of their river (which causes the fish to die and children getting sick from drinking it) etc. All of the tying problems can be pointed back to the lack of laws, and regulations, to protect the Native Peoples there.

"Brazilian Indigenous Languages Could Go Extinct From Exploitations of Native lands." Youtube, uploaded by Nowthis Earth, 29 Dec 2020, youtube.com/watch?v=dPlS66x0egc