Putting words in their mouths

Posted by Colleen Keane | Dec 8, 2016 | Education |

Teaching the languages of the soul at home and abroad

TO’HAJIILEE, N.M./NORTHERN IRELAND

Navajo Times | Colleen Keane
Mary Whitehair, Diné language instructor at To’hajiilee Community School, answers a question high school senior, Tessa Jake, asks about her final project for her Navajo 101 afterschool class.

During a time when there’s rising conflict around the world, there are also signs that some communities are joining hands and speaking with new, energized voices.

“The Navajo language has life in it. It fulfills your inner and outer self,” said Mary Whitehair, Diné, who teaches Diné language at To’hajiilee Community School.

“By using the Navajo language, students respond positively to it. It’s innate in them,” she added.

Thousands of miles away across the Atlantic Ocean, Geraldine McGloin from Ireland’s County Leitrim expressed similar sentiments about her traditional language.

“Irish (Gaelic) is the language of my soul. I’m re-awakening it, because it’s there. It’s in me,” she said.

McGloin was one of dozens who participated in a weekend Irish language workshop this past October. They travelled from all parts of Ireland to take the course at Oideas Gael, an Irish language school located in Gleann Cholm Cille on the west coast of the Emerald Isle.

Both here in the U.S. and in Ireland, colonizing governments invaded the people’s lands and in the process took aim at the fabric of their societies, their indigenous languages.

In the U.S., Native American students were forced by the federal government to attend boarding schools where they were often punished for speaking their tribal dialects.

“It was beaten out of us,” said Whitehair, who attended several boarding schools growing up.

Irish students experienced much of the same.

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