Utes fear their language could disappear

The Ute tribe is concerned that not enough of its younger members are learning to speak the Ute language.

Of the 3,100 tribal members, only about 320 speak Ute, and most of those who speak Ute are 45 years old or older.

Linguists and Native Americans from North and South America were in town earlier this month at the University of Utah for the Conference on Endangered Languages and Cultures of Native America. Participants shared research and experiences with helping to revitalize dwindling languages in the Americas.

In 1979, the Ute tribe started a program to revitalize the language and push for it to be spoken more, but the program waned. It was reinstated in 2000, said Venita Taveapont, the Ute tribe's language coordinator.

Now, there's a danger the Ute language could disappear altogether, Taveapont says, especially with the sheer amount of media produced in English.

"If we don't continue to do our most," she said, "it eventually will."

Taveapont teaches Ute to children ages 5 to 10 with their parents, so that the children will be encouraged to keep up their native language skills. She also teaches in high schools, where many children don't have as much language support at home.

Until recently, it was thought that the Ute and Shoshone languages were healthy, said Lyle Campbell, director of the Center for American Indian Languages at the University of Utah. But most Shoshone speakers are over 60 years old, he said.

Shirlee Silversmith, Indian education specialist in the State Office of Education, is working on a proposal for next year to help teach the languages of the five main tribes of Utah: Navajo, Ute, Piute, Goshute and Shoshone.

The Legislature this year didn't fund a request for $275,000 in ongoing funding for an "Indigenous Heritage Language Program," she said.

San Juan District has programs to teach the Navajo language and culture, and the Utes have also made an effort to offer such a program, she said. The state funding would go to classroom programs, and also to online instruction.

"It is core to the self-esteem and identity of students," Silversmith said. "So much of our culture is embedded in the language. When a child is receiving instruction in a native language and learning a native language, so much culture is included. ... They do much better."

It will likely take a lot of work to keep the Ute language from going the way of Penobscot, whose last speaker died in 1994, or Canadian Delaware, which has fewer than five speakers.

Of the 155 native languages in North America, only 20 are being actively learned by children, which means a majority of those languages could be in danger of extinction over the next century, Campbell says.