On Monday, October 19, Richard Grounds, executive director of the Yuchi Language Project, delivered the Dana McLean Greeley Lecture for Peace and Social Justice at the Center for the Study of World Religions.
Below, Grounds spoke about his talk, "Reparations for Native American Languages? Churches, Governments, and Cultural Genocide," in which he will discuss the current danger of extinction for many Native American languages, how this is the result of planned cultural genocide, and how people and organizations should respond to this crisis.
(Check back soon for the video of Richard Grounds's talk, "Reparations for Native American Languages? Churches, Governments, and Cultural Genocide.")
HDS: You are the director of the Yuchi Language Project, whose mission it is to keep the Yuchi language alive through immersion with fluent speakers. What was the impetus for you to begin the project, and as it has grown, how has it evolved?
RG: We started the Yuchi Language Project as a 501(c)(3) vehicle (a nonprofit organization) to provide the necessary infrastructure to support the language work at the community level.
It's not about feeding the nonprofit organization as if it were important to keep it functioning in and of itself. It serves only as an instrument to make possible the practical work of keeping alive our language at the grassroots community level by providing honoraria for our Elders, salary for our small hands-on staff to work with the Yuchi kids, and overhead costs for our meeting and archiving space.
There is a minimum size threshold for running a viable program that is effective in developing new fluent speakers among our youth since it must be based on a daily immersion program. Through the Yuchi Language Project, we are able to receive and administer donations and grants that allow us to adjust the programming to our changing needs as we work with Elders and families. In effect, the nonprofit Yuchi Language Project becomes one small vehicle for redressing the generations of economic assault on our Indigenous languages—the billions of dollars that were spent trying to stop the transmission of our languages and cultures from being passed from our Elders to the younger generations.
HDS: For generations, governments, academics, and ordinary people have declared that Native American peoples are "going extinct," and they have treated Native American peoples accordingly. As a Yuchi/Seminole, a member of the very much alive Native American peoples of the United States, what impact does this focus on the decline of Native Americans have on you and your work?
RG: The prevalent colonial notion that our peoples are already extinct or becoming extinct—as publications about our Yuchi nation have claimed for two centuries—makes our work more difficult at every level. The greatest challenge at a community level is overcoming the internalized colonial mentality that says you are not supposed to be here, that you cannot have a voice, that you cannot speak your God-given language.
This self-serving colonial notion also makes it difficult at the critical level of attracting essential funding support. In today's funding-scape, deep-pocket funders only want to invest in what they consider to be successful projects. They are not willing to put money into a project simply because it is a worthy cause. They demand to know how their funds will bring measurable results that are recognizably beneficial. The nature of language work using all soft measures makes it harder to sell funders on the benefits of revitalizing an indigenous language community. Like all humanities funding, it becomes difficult to attract the dollars needed for sustainability. It is especially difficult to attract funding dollars if the noisy background of social injunctions keeps shouting that your culture is dying anyway and therefore, why throw money after a lost cause? Our response, of course, begins with the message from our Elder, Mose Cahwee, who often said, "yUdjEhanAnô, sôKAnAnô" (We Yuchi people, we are still here).
HDS: As you say in your lecture description, the current threat of extinction for many Native American languages is the result of a prolonged cultural genocide. What role should governments, churches, and individuals play in the important task of saving Native American languages from extinction?
RG: Our indigenous languages did not simply wither on the cultural vine. They were not inherently weak and unstable, causing their disappearance, as so-often claimed in a national society rife with colonial rationalizations.
That is, we've had lots of help getting our languages into such extreme trouble. Now we need lots of help getting our languages out of trouble, bringing them back from the brink of becoming lost. The response from the churches and governments should be at the same level as their earlier contribution to the sustained attack on our languages and cultures.
This would require a campaign of equivalency for some approximation of social justice to occur. Churches, for example, could calculate the millions of dollars spent in boarding schools and related missionary programs for estimating an appropriate level of funding response. While funding is a critical issue, there are many ways for churches to support language revitalization efforts that start with becoming informed, participating in the celebration of our languages and getting involved in direct support of indigenous language work. Significant contributions can be made through providing staffing, transportation, supplies or meeting space. Churches can readily serve as a conduit for raising awareness and helping individuals to get involved in supporting roles to help language communities to bring back their original languages. Individuals can also reach out on their own initiative to actively support the revitalization of our common world heritage, which is carried in our indigenous languages.
HDS: What role does your religion play in your work to keep the Yuchi language alive?
RG: Our Elders often tell us that our original language is a gift from the Creator. Since Yuchi is a language isolate that has no close relationship to any other known language, the Yuchi language is understood as a very particular gift. Our Elders remind us that Yuchi has been entrusted by the Creator to our people and that it is our responsibility to care for the gift of our language.
As keepers of this gift, we feel that we are carrying out a work with deep spiritual significance, that we are doing the work of the Creator.
Through our efforts to bring back the language, we are able to strengthen our ceremonial traditions. Our unique ceremonies require the full use of our heritage language in order properly to fulfill our original instructions. Using the language makes our ceremonial fires burn stronger. On the other hand, it is the intense valuing of our ceremonial ways that, in turn, provides the burning source of deep internal motivation for young community members to learn the rich language of our ancestors.
—by Melissa Coles, MDiv candidate