More on Rez LIfe, language activism, and the beauty of Native language

Having just posted about David Treuer's new book Rez Life, I now see that the book is getting some international media attention -- not just in the form of book reviews, but in a feature article on tribal sovereignty in this week's Economist. The article also cites Native American scholars Manley Begay and David Wilkins in what turns out to be a fairly accurate summary of the sovereignty issues laid out in Treuer's book.

In case you still haven't had a chance to read the book, here are few more points to whet your appetite:

Treuer recognizes the grass-roots character of many language programs as essentially anti-assimilationist, working against what the Economist article refers to as the specter of "dissolution in the American mainstream." But Treuer also recognizes that these efforts are also at odds with the desires of many Native Americans.

"Impatience with the sometimes self-serving identity politics is what motivates language-immersion activists.... The renewed interest in tribal cultures and tribal language runs against hundreds of years of government policy. It also runs directly against the thoughts of many Indians." (p. 295)

Here I am reminded of Nora and Richard Dauenhauer's 1998 article on some of the barriers to Tlingit language revitalization. But Treuer's message is a more optimistic one. Treuer clearly recognizes language revitalization as a being about so much more than language, a fact that sometimes gets lost as we focus on the nitty-gritty linguistic details of grammar and pronunciation and fluency.

"For language activists, the language is the key to everything else -- identity, life and lifestyle, home and homeland... [L]anguage activism is one way Indians are not only protecting themselves and their rights but also creating meaning in their lives." (p. 300)

Still, what Treuer does best is to eloquently summarize the value of Native language. Over the past two decades so many writers have attempted to tell us why we should care about language loss. So many justifications have been given, anchored in obscure concepts of diversity and knowledge and linguistic structure and human rights. These are no doubt important points. But there is no escaping the most intangible but arguably most powerful aspect of language: its sheer beauty. Treuer expresses this wonderfully at the end of Rez Life.  

"If we lose our language and the culture that goes with it, I think, something more will be lost than simply a bouquet of discrete understandings about bears or namesakes.... If the language dies, we will lose something personal... We will lose our sense of ourselves and our culture.... I think what I am trying to say is that we will lose beauty -- the beauty of the particular, the beauty of the past and the intricacies of a language tailored for our space in the world. That Native American cultures are imperiled is important not just to Indians. It is important to everyone, or should be. When we lose cultures, we lose American plurality -- the productive and lovely discomfort that true difference brings."

Read the book. You'll be glad you did.