<
https://coloradosun.com/2023/11/06/colorado-navajo-language-durango-high-school/>
"Some of the students in Elfreida Begay’s class timidly sound out the syllables
of a language they had never heard uttered in school before this year. Others
are more forceful as they test out the sharp edges of the Indigenous words
their teacher asks them to repeat.
But it doesn’t matter how they speak the language — only that they are
speaking.
“This language is born in you,” Begay tells her Navajo students. “It is in you
at this moment. We need to somehow unpack it and unfold it and release it. I
want you to be able to speak the language, not just for me as a grade but for
your family, for your legacy.”
The Durango High School teacher, who is Navajo, introduced the Indigenous
language Diné Bizaad to high schoolers this fall, breathing sound back into her
first language, one she fears will one day be replaced by silence. Her class is
part of a growing movement to help Indigenous students in Durango School
District 9-R — where kids representing 31 tribal nations attend school —
reclaim their culture and thread their families’ long-held traditions and
language back into their education. It’s a weighty undertaking that also
demands delicacy, with Indigenous communities caught between the horrors of
history and controversies that overwhelm schools today.
Some of those horrors unfolded beginning in the late 1800s right in Durango,
where a federal, off-reservation Native American boarding school preceded Fort
Lewis College. It forced Indigenous students to assimilate to Western culture
and barred them from expressing their Native culture. More than 130 years
later, school districts across Colorado are now embroiled in debates over how
to teach the darker chapters of American history, with some districts embracing
the conservative American Birthright standards, which largely reject teaching
history through diverse perspectives.
That’s why district leaders in Durango have poured more effort into
communicating with families and taking the time to understand their
backgrounds, said Vanessa Giddings, executive director of Student Support
Services.
“It’s about just really getting to know families and having conversations with
families about where they are, where they’ve come from, leaning into those
conversations and just doing it from a place of care,” Giddings said."
Via Diane A.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
