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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> U.C. Berkeley has a set of tapes (maybe 15 or 20) that were recorded by
> the
> *supposed* last of the speakers.  Uncle Ernie didn't die until about 2000
> and he still spoke the language.  There were several others but they
> weren't
> willing to sit down with anyone that vaguely smelled of government.  They
> had been to the boarding schools and had the stuffing knocked out of them
> for speaking the language.

My son graduated from UC Berkeley with an undergraduate degree in
linguistics.  One of his areas of study was native languages and mentioned
that many were lost because the last few speakers had been punished for
speaking the native tongue.  The next thing that harmed the study was that
they soon realized that English was a tool to gain acceptance in the larger
economy.  As children moved to cities they no longer taught their children
the native language.  Grand children on visiting grand parents could not
speak to them and made the grand parents feel inadequate.  He said it was a
complicated social problem that is hindering many studies.

While a graduate program at UCLA he studied Kiowa and found a single native
speaker in Los Angles who would speak with him.  Over time he found a few
more but it took a while to build trust.

As part of another study he wanted to record some Puma native speakers.  The
group was from a small tribe that lived in the Warner Springs area separate
from other Pumas.  The language drifted in this isolated community.  In 1903
they were forced to move at gun point from their settled villages to the the
Mission Indian lands in Pala Valley leaving behind a culture and the context
for a language.  It took a while to gain any trust and then only because my
daughter knew another girl from the tribe who introduced him to her
grandmother.

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html