beneath the sun. The English language as taught in America is good
enough for all her people of all races.
(Atkins 1887, as quoted in Crawford 1992: 48–49)Reading this passage, one is calmed, somewhat, by its date. This was
written over a hundred years ago, the rationalization might go. We have a
more democratic and fair-handed approach now. We are making slow
progress on the rights of the continent’s indigenous peoples.
In matters of indigenous language use and retention, there is some
evidence that the native peoples are determining their own educational
language policies and looking for ways to encourage use of the mother
tongue. New Mexico, in particular, has instituted procedures by which
state educational administrators work together with tribal authorities to set
up bilingual education policies acceptable to the tribal administration.
This would seem to be a necessity in a state where 73.1 percent of the
population was born in Mexico (U.S. Census Bureau, 2006–2008
American Community Survey Three-Year Estimates).
As a part of these policies, the New Mexico Department of Education
worked together with the Pueblo Indian community, for example, to
establish an assessment protocol for those Pueblos who teach in the
bilingual education program (Sims 1992). Because each tribe has a
different set of views on bilingual education, each designs its own
program.^12 More recently, New Mexico has instituted a path to alternative
certification that has provided a way for American Indian language
speakers to teach language and culture in public schools. Even more
important, it gave tribes in New Mexico the means to conceive and
develop internal tribal certification processes of their own (see especially
American Indian Language Policy Research and Teacher Training Center
2008). In a similar way, there are healthy and growing immersion schools
for the Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) – primarily in Canada – where policy
and curriculum are directed exclusively by and for that language
community.