American Indian Culture and Research Journal

Kenneth Hale (1972a, 1972b) has stated that the potential future of anthropological linguistics will depend very much upon the involvement of Native American scholars, a statement which is basically applicable to the entire field of Native American Studies. Despite the fact that Native Americans have contributed a substantial amount of publications to this field since at least as early as the 18th century--the poet, artist, and scholar Wendy Rose (1980) has compiled a bibliography containing over two-thousand titles-very little reference has been made to them (Notable exceptions are Liberty 1978 and Larson 1978). Nevertheless, literary productivity in the English language, progressively intensifying throughout the 19th century up until the present, has been an important aspect of Native American political evolution. The steady growth of political awareness, the manifestation of activism and, subsequently, the stepped-up production of scholarly or creative literature are in turn interrelated movements within the general struggle for the preservation of Native American culture and identity. When two distinct cultures come into contact, a system for cross-cultural communication is quickly developed. According to one study on acculturation (Barnett, Broom, Siegel, Vogt, and Watson 1954), as long as autonomous groups are motivated to retain their cultural differences, communication between them will involve either bi- or multilingualism on the part of both; the development of a marginal, mixed, or simplified language; the adoption of a lingua franca; or, at worst, the use of some sort of sign language. In North America, specifically in the present day United States where a neocolonial situation has developed with EuroAmerican society vastly outnumbering and dominating Native American societies, the English language has become the lingua franca for cross-cultural communication. Bilingualism is still practiced among several Native American groups in relatively isolated areas where they still form a substantial part of the population, such as the Arctic and Subarctic; or where a larger group speaking the same language has been forced to live within the confines of a reservation, such as the Navajo; or when smaller groups have managed to maintain a high level of cultural cohesiveness, such as the Pueblo Indians. It is still obvious that a steady language shift towards English has been taking place among all of the groups.