Читать книгу Lost Worlds of 1863. Relocation and Removal of American Indians in the Central Rockies and the Greater Southwest онлайн

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If anything, Indian people have found new ways to remain distinctive despite the power of global economies, colonial militaries, and national governments. The “vanishing American” of the late nineteenth century refused to be vanished! Reports by non-indigenous observers of cultural demise and death were wrong in the 1870s, misguided in the 1920s, and overly pessimistic today.

While many groups are losing their languages, many societies have continued to survive even stripped of their language.¹⁴ While the boarding school experience from 1878 to 1930 discouraged the use of Indian languages by their pupils, the Navajo, Hopi, Comanche, Sac and Fox code-talkers of World War II revived their tribal tongues. Contemporary technology is being used to initiate language comeback programs, ranging from apprenticeship programs pairing fluent elders with young students to YouTube videos, or native speaker’s language-learning apps for Indian students with iPads.¹⁵ For example, the summer of 2013 saw the release of the classic George Lucas “Star Wars” movie that was dubbed by Navajo voice actors, a use of native language designed to appeal to a younger generation.¹⁶ Evidently, while the colonial empires that first colonized indigenous societies no longer exist, the native groups have persisted.