Native language bill to help conservation efforts

A bill that has funded language programs in Montana is going through Legislature again this year.

The Montana Indian Language Pilot Program seeks to use state funds to help preserve some of the original languages of the tribes in the state and has gathered much support from the reservations.

Terry Brockie, the superintendent of Blaine County schools, said around eight to 10 students from Fort Belknap and Harlem visited Helena to lobby in favor of passing a bill that would continue to fund this program.

“Basically what that bill did, was the state provided grants to the reservation for language conservation efforts” Brockie said. “Everyone was unique in the way they used that for their preservation efforts.”

He said state officials contacted the schools to have students go to Helena and speak about the conservation efforts for languages on and off the reservations.

Brockie said he testified with the children and was impressed to watch them work.

“There were a lot of kids touring and our kids were actually part of the legislative process,” he said.

The kids spoke in front of a subcommittee that covers the language conservation portion of Gov. Steve Bullock’s general budget.

Preservation of native languages is a popular issue among reservations as the speakers of the individual languages get fewer and further in between.

“Some tribes have lots of speakers left and some have very few,” Brockie said.

Brockie himself is part of an effort the create audio dictionaries of the languages of Fort Belknap.

He said that preserving the native languages is a big factor in how the tribes of Montana are going to keep their identities as Native tribes. Modern children have to grow up between two worlds, and that creates some confusion in them about their identities.

“If they can find their path and be strong in their identity, it will help the tribes be strong as a whole,” Brockie said.

Initiatives such as the native language bill are reversing some of the recent generational loss of culture the tribes are experiencing, Brockie said.

Ray Cichosz has been the project coordinator for the Montana Indian Language Pilot Program in Fort Belknap since May and said much good as come from the state funding to preserve Native languages.

“We’re looking forward to maybe another year if it gets passed again,” Cichosz said, adding that his work last year was for a pilot program that paved the way for what they plan to do inthe future.

Part of his work in the program was to recruit and certify instructors of the Aaniiih and Nakoda languages to combat the declining number of speakers.