"Sharing One Skin" Jeanette Armstrong

When reading the article “Sharing One Skin” I really liked how he introduced who and where he was from right in the beginning. When reading a phrase that was translated from Okanagan to English which wrote, “the land-dreaming capacity” to me that would probably mean that they really want people to respect their bodies. “You’re within a family and community” was a line that many could reflect on from it, maybe being a birthday party on an in-laws' side or it being a feast day. This article had many touching phrases that could be used from now on by me to make other people understand. The narrator says “Translation is difficult” but throughout the story, he is trying his best to translate as many words as he can just so we could understand what he is trying to tell us.

Armstrong, Jeanette. “Sharing One Skin: The Okanagan Community,” in Jerry Mander and Edward Goldsmith (eds), The Case Against the Global Economy. San Francisco, CA, Sierra Club Books, 1996. Pp 460-470. 

"How place names impact the way we see landscape" B. Toastie

Reading “How place names impact the way we see landscape” really brought information to my mind. A lot of these sacred sites have really deep meaning to the indigenous people and white people are doing their best to try and change their name because they feel like it is offensive to them, but when natives try to or do change names like the “redskins” they feel the reason to have an opinion. When Taho said “when a sacred name persists, it can be an agent of healing.” I feel that she is completely right about what she said. Sacred names that are continued to be used are significantly stronger places in my opinion but even when the sacred names are hardly used for a sacred place it shouldn’t mean that we just forget about how or when it came to existence.

Toastie, B. “How place names impact the way we see landscape.” High Country News: Know the West, 

1 May 2022, https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.5/people-places-how-place-names-impact-the-way-we-see-landscape. Accessed 27 August 2022.

While searching for an article I found something that relates to my topic which is, “New Mexico pueblo attempts to save language from extinction.” I found that it related to my topic in a sense that it shows how Acoma Pueblo is doing something to try and save their language. Although this specific article isn’t based on Laguna Pueblo itself it gives me an insight of how my pueblo could try and do something to save our language. Reading that Acoma Pueblo only has 100 fluent speakers as of 2018 makes me wonder how many does Laguna have, or do we still have any. Laguna Pueblo had multiple language programs, I remember SFIS having one but then got their funding cut so it is no longer here. Right now I believe that there is only one language class that teaches the Laguna dialect of Keres.

Helms, Kathy. “New Mexico pueblo attempts to save language from extinction.” The Durango Herald, 

19 May 2017, https://www.hcn.org/issues/54.5/people-places-how-place-names-impact-the-way-we-see-landscape. Accessed 13 October 2022

“The Keres Language: A Language Family Fighting for Survival” has stated many great examples of why the Keres language is being lost. Many see language loss as “they’re not even trying to learn their own language.” Looking back into history we see that throughout colonization many native tribes along with languages were being lost. We were at one point told to never speak our language and to only speak English. The article states that pueblo people see Keres as a language that shouldn’t be written because it is sacred to us. Rather, we should learn it orally. Although Keres is its own language, Spanish had an influence on many words that are spoken in Keres. Overall Keres has been impacted not by only one language but two, the Spanish and English languages. 

Scribe, Atomic. “The Keres Language: The Language Family Fighting for Survival.” AtomicScribe, 

9 June 2022, https://www.atomicscribe.com/the-keres-language-a-language-family-fighting-for-survival/. Accessed 13 October 2022

While listening to the first half of the video named “K’awaika (Laguna)” the speakers in this video introduced themselves and they also told their stories in Keres. In the video, they mentioned how traditional ceremonies were never pushed back for work when the languages (Keres) were all great grandparents knew. The ways that were taught and done back then are just stories to our modern day era. Many people nowadays have some sort of electronic device where it has become a problem especially for native languages. The girl in the video states that many new kids are getting to learn the newest technology, but they’re becoming too distracted to learn the tradition and language. With the language loss our community heart hurts because no one is interested in learning the language but rather be on technology.

Thomas, Samantha. Chino, Shaylene. Silva, Bradley. “K’awaika (Laguna).” YouTube. 

Indigenous Language Institute. 2 March 2009, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Edio3V6mdPs&t=22s. Accessed 13 October 2022

I read the article “Lost in Language and Language Lost: Considering Native Language in Classrooms.” It states in the article that American Indian languages finds little space in school classrooms today. The little boy Anthony in the article started kindergarten and was asked by his teacher in English what his name was. Anthony was a fluent in his Native language and didn’t know how to respond to the teacher. He had gained so much support not only from the teacher but also from his peers. He need the help because they didn’t have bilingual teachers to help him communicate well in English. Bilingual education didn’t exist at the time when Anthony was a child. The issue of not having bilingual education for Native children could potentially hurt not only them but the language as it is slowly dying. 

Smolkin, B. Laura. Suina, H. Joseph. “Lost in Language and Language Lost:

Considering Native Language in Classrooms.” JSTOR, March 1996, https://www.jstor.org/stable/41484057. Accessed 18 November 2022

Researching for a second article I found a similar situation to Laguna Pueblo in Indigenous Australia. The article was called “We are on the brink of losing Indigenous languages in Australia-Can schools save them,” and it talks about how one of the world's fastest rates of language loss is in Australia. There were more than 250 Indigenous languages and over 750 dialects that were originally spoken. Now experts expect that only 40 languages are still being spoken and about only 12 languages are being learned by children. There was a poll in 2022 in Australia that 650 primary school students found they wanted to learn an Indigenous language ahead of other, foreign languages.

Lim, Lisa. Steele, Carley. Dobinson, Toni. “We are on the brink of losing 

Indigenous languages in Australia-could schools save them?” PHYS ORG. 5 July 2022, https://phys.org/news/2022-07-brink-indigenous-languages-australiacould-schools.html. Accessed 1 February 2023.