The Myaamia Center’s (“myaamia” meaning “the downstream people”) roots go back to the 1990s, when the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma began its attempts to revitalize Myaamiaataweenki, an Algonquian language consisting of two dialects, Miami and Illinois. The initiative first gave birth to the Myaamia Project in 2001, which in 2013 transformed into the Myaamia Center, an institution aimed at advancing research and providing education on myaamia culture, especially language. The center works directly with the Miami Tribe and the Miami University in Ohio.
There is clear need for tribal initiatives such as the Myaamia Center. In Native North America, a survey says that 194 Indigenous languages are still being used. However, of those, only 34 languages are spoken by both adults and children, suggesting the others, without any child speakers, are in imminent danger of eventually disappearing altogether.
The fact that there are nearly 200 Native languages that have survived genocide, several waves of removal and cultural assimilation tells volumes about the power of one’s own Native tongue. Various studies conducted among Native American tribes show the health benefits of speaking one’s own language. For example, a study focused on Southwestern Native communities showed that among those bands where their native language was widely spoken, only 14 percent of the band members smoked. Speaking one’s own language has been shown to positively affect youth suicide ratio and graduation success as well.
Future of indigenous languages
Languages going dormant or extinct is not exclusively a Native American issue. Currently, there are approximately 6,000 languages in the world. Linguists have predicted that within the next century, up to 90% of world’s languages will cease to exist. Especially bringing children to learn their native languages is necessary for the languages to survive the English, French, Spanish, Mandarin and Arabic dominated globalization.
Language revitalization efforts are, according to Daryl Baldwin, the director of the Myaamia Center, mostly done by relying on living, fluent tribal elders in Native American communities. Baldwin commented to the Smithsonian Magazine in April 2017, that there are dormant or little used Native languages well documented in writing, and often these written archives are not utilized. The work he and his colleagues at the Myaamia Center are doing is heavily reliant upon the documentation the 16th-century French missionaries compiled on the Miami-Illinois language during their journeys. The techniques and technologies created and developed at the Myaamia Center have sparked interest, and now more and more tribes are attempting to re-embrace their languages. There are a lot of contexts in which Native languages can find a foothold, whether it be ceremonial or educational usage, or perhaps learning traditional songs.
Bringing native languages to the 21st century
While revitalizing Myaamia, Myaamia Center director Baldwin has faced various practical problems. Figuring out the correct pronunciation is one of them: how, for instance, does one figure out how to pronounce words from a language that hasn’t had a first-language speaker since the 60s? Developing the vocabulary has proven to be tricky at times too. Consider, for example, the need to create new words that fit the 21st-century lifestyle, such as “computer” or “dorm room.” Baldwin has used comparative data to help solve many of these struggles, relying on the help of related Algonquian languages. To keep the language tempting for the youth, this has been an essential task. For, as Daryl Baldwin poignantly asks, : “When a language stops evolving, why speak it?”
SOURCES:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-resurrect-lost-language-180962937/
https://myaamiadictionary.org/dictionary2015/entry/entry.php?entry=2406&type=entry
https://myaamiahistory.wordpress.com/language/
http://myaamiacenter.org/statement-of-purpose/