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Article: A matter of survival: a national movement is afoot to revitalize the hundreds of native languages that once flourished across North America and the Hawaiian islands.
- Article from:
- Diverse Issues in Higher Education
- Article date:
- November 2, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Cox, Matthews & Associates. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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To the average car, the words and sounds of Arapaho are from another world. But to Felicia Antelope, they're the sounds of home. Antelope is a student at the University of Wyoming and an Arapaho from the Wind River Reservation in the central part of the state. She is one of the dozen students in Wayne C'Hair's twice-weekly Arapaho language class.
Although Antelope, 35, grew up speaking her native language at home, she quickly forgot it after her elementary school teachers told her she had a problem.
"I was told I had a speech impediment," she says. "But I don't. I was speaking what they call 'lazy English,'" the basic English she heard on the ...