Tribe fights to save language

The vast majority of the estimated 300 languages spoken in North American before the arrival of Christopher Columbus are endangered or extinct. But the Miami language, once spoken throughout much of Ohio and Indiana, is in the process of being revitalized.Thanks to a cooperative effort by the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University, the college named in honor of the tribe, the first comprehensive dictionary for the language is due to be published in late February. Titled Myaamia neehi peewaalia kaloosioni mahsinaakani (or A Miami-Peoria Dictionary), the 200-page book contains about 3,500 entries plus a brief description of the language and an English cross-reference list. The accomplishment reflects a university/tribe partnership that is unusual in higher education, says Daryl Baldwin, director of the Myaamia Project for Language Revitalization and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. He, along with David Costa, a linguist who has done extensive language work on the Miami-Peoria language, are co-editors. When Miami University was founded in 1809, the Miami Tribe was well known throughout the Midwest, but in 1846 the tribe was forcibly removed from Ohio and Indiana and relocated first to Kansas and then in the 1870s to what is now Oklahoma. Being uprooted twice was devastating to a tribe struggling to maintain its way of life in the face of government efforts to suppress the use of native languages and force assimilation, says Baldwin. [more]