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A Report on the Potawatomi Language Institute

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A Report on the Potawatomi Language Institute Language Use and Language Loss in the Potawatomi Community: A Report on the Potawatomi Language Institute LAURA BUSZARD-WELCHER Hannahville Indian Community INTRODUCTION The Potawatomi Language Institute is a collaborative effort by seven Potawatomi bands/First Nations to promote and preserve the Potawatomi language. This year, the institute was awarded a language planning grant by the Administration for Native Americans, the purpose of which was "to conduct the assessment and planning needed to identify the current status of the Native American language(s) to be addressed and to establish community long-range goals" (Federal Register 1994, 59:14168). The institute's objectives for the planning grant were: (1) a needs assessment including current data on language status; (2) documentation of materials and programs; (3) interaction among Potawatomi speakers; and (4) strat­ egic plans for attaining long-range goals. Each of the seven communities was invited to send representatives to participate in the sessions: Walpole Island (representing the Potawatomi residing in Canada), the Huron and Pokagon bands, Hannahville, Forest County, the Prairie Band and the Cit­ izen Potawatomi Nation (for locations of these communities see Figure 1). Representatives included language advocates, elders and native speakers. The author was the consulting linguist, and organized and facilitated the institute meetings. The institute convened for three three-day sessions in Hannahville, Michigan. Each session was devoted to the discussion of a particular aspect of the language planning process. The first session, entitled "What do we have?", focused on a needs assessment of each community, and the Potawatomi tribe as a whole. For the second session, "What do we want?", representatives discussed their vision for the future of the language. During the third session, "What do we need to do?", the institute set goals for individual communities and the collective Potawatomi Nation. This report discusses the products of these sessions, focusing on the results of POTAWATOMI LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE LOSS 35 NewHanpstwe M2ssachuseTts mode nana Connecticut New Jersey Marytond 1. Walpole Island 2. Huron Band 3. Pokagon Band 4. Hannahville 5. Forest County 6. Prairie Band 7. Citizen Pot. Nation Figure 1. Locations of the seven participating Potawatomi communities. the needs assessment and the institute's particular choice of community and pan-tribal goals. THE NEEDS ASSESSMENT The needs assessment was a set of three questionnaires completed by the representatives from each community. Two of these questionnaires, the "Community Language Survey" (a long form) and the "Needs Assessment Questionnaire" (a short form) asked representatives to describe previous and existing language programs; any language documentation materials of which they were aware; and their perceptions of the degree of language use and language loss in their communities. The "Speaker Status Survey" asked representatives to list the speakers in their community, and to provide for each speaker the approximate date of birth, sex, and whether Potawatomi was a first or second language. Three additional questions on literacy and fluency asked whether the speaker could speak, read, and write "well", "a few words", or "not at all". Below we will focus on a subset of the data from these questionnaires which includes an estimate of the total number of speakers and their levels of fluency, and information pertaining to the degree of language use and language loss in the Potawatomi community. 36 LAURA BUSZARD-WELCHER Table 1. Number of Potawatomi language speakers by tribe/band. Not 30-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90+ TRIBE/BAND known years years years years years yrs TOTA1 Citizen Pot. 1 - - - 1 1 - 3 Forest County - 5 7 10 5 1 - 28 Hannahville - - - - - - - 0 Huron Band 2 - - 1 4 - - 7 Pokagon Band - 7 1 4 6 2 - 20 Prairie Band 2 - 1 - 7 10 1 21 Walpole Island - - 2 4 - - - 6 TOTAL SPEAKERS 5 12 11 19 23 14 1 85 6% 14% 13% 22% 27% 16% 1% 100% The speaker status survey The speaker status survey addressed the need for a modern, reliable estimate and demographic study of Potawatomi speakers. Previous counts neglected demographic information and, based on our experience, were far too large to be accurate today. The estimate most commonly referred to is a 1977 count by the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which cites 500 speakers (out of a population of 7500) scattered across Ontario, northeast Kansas, central Oklahoma, northern Wisconsin, and southern Michigan (Grimes 1988). However, since for at least 30 years no children have learned Potawatomi as a first language, the size of the speech community can only have contracted since this count was made. More recently, the 1990 U.S. census conducted a count of people who speak a language other than English at home. They estimated 200 speakers of Potawatomi in the United States alone (U.S. Census Bureau 1990). However, these estimates were based on 12% of the total population and have notoriously high error rates, especially for languages with few speakers (Broadwell 1995).1 Our estimate, based on information from the Speaker Status Survey, is much smaller. Relevant data are presented in Tables 1-5.2 Table 1 1 For example, the census cites 139 speakers of Miami, an Algonquian language now generally accepted as being extinct. 2 The tabulations here are revised to reflect additions and changes made to the surveys, which are continually being updated. In particular, we now have much more information on the Prairie Band, and the ages of Forest County speakers. The Hannahville count indicated only speakers of the local Odawa dialect, but their information is incorporated elsewhere in this report. The Walpole Island information comes from a 1995 survey, since they were not able to attend the meetings. POTAWATOMI LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE LOSS 37 contains the total number of speakers of all fluency levels, classified by age and community membership. The largest speech community is Forest County with 28 speakers, followed by the Prairie Band with 21 speakers, and the Pokagon Band with 20. The other communities all have under 10 speakers. The mean age bracket is 60-69 years. Table 2. Level of language use by Potawatomi speakers by tribe/band. TRIBE/BAND Speaks a few words Speaks well TOTAL Citizen Pot. 1 2 3 Forest County 10 18 28 Hannahville _ 0 Huron Band 6 1 7 Pokagon Band 12 8 20 Prairie Band 3 18 21 Walpole Island 1 5 6 TOTAL SPEAKERS 33 52 85 39% 61% 100% In Table 2, the total from Table 1 is split to show the total number of speakers who are indicated as "speak[ing] only a few words" as compared to those who "speak well". This brings the estimate of fluent Potawatomi speakers to 52.3 Of these, 58% were listed as female, and 42% as male. Tables 3 and 4 compare fluency level with age. In Table 3, the mean age bracket for people who can "speak well" is 70-79 years of age; 77% of these speakers are known to be above the age of 60. Thirty-one are first- language Potawatomi speakers, while only one is a second-language speaker (20 were listed as "not sure"). Table 4 lists the number of people who "speak a few words" of Potawatomi, based on age. Sixteen are second-language speakers, and five are first-language speakers (12 are listed as "not sure"). A large number of these people are new speakers who participate in community language classes. The mean age bracket is 50-59 years of age, so on average they are about 20 years younger than those who "speak well". Tables 3 and 4 also show two stages of community language shift: the oldest speakers in Table 4 come from the smaller speech communities, whereas in Table 3, all of the speakers under the age of 70 are from Forest County and the 3 Some speakers included in this count show evidence of grammatical attrition. Based on the author's fieldwork, the total number of conservatively fluent speakers is probably less than ten. 38 LAURA BUSZARD-WELCHER Table 3. Number of Potawatomi speakers who "speak well". Not 30-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90+ TRIBE/BAND known years years years years years yrs TOTAL Citizen Pot. 1 - - - 1 - - 2 Forest County - 1 2 9 5 1 - 18 Hannahville - - - - - - - 0 Huron Band - - - - 1 - - 1 Pokagon Band - - - - 6 2 - 8 Prairie Band 2 - 1 - 5 9 1 18 Walpole Island 5 - - - - - - 5 TOTAL SPEAKERS 7 1 3 9 18 12 1 52 15% 2% 6% 17% 35% •23% 2% 100% Table 4. Number of Potawatomi speakers who "speak a few words". Not 30-49 50-59 60-69 70-79 80-89 90+ TRIBE/BAND known years years years years years yrs TOTAL Citizen Pot. - - - - 1 - - 1 Forest County - 4 5 1 - - - 10 Hannahville - ______() Huron Band 2 --13--6 Pokagon Band 7 1 4 - - 12 Prairie Band - - - - 2 1 - 3 Walpole Island 1 ______! TOTAL SPEAKERS 3 11 6 6 6 1 0 33 9% 33% 18% 18% 18% 3% 0% 100% Prairie Band, the largest speech communities. As the speaking population gets older, the size of the speech community inevitably gets smaller. Also, 42% of the semi-speakers are female and 58% are male. This is the reverse of the case in Table 3, where 58% of the fluent speakers were female. This is probably due to the fact that fluent speakers are, on average, older, and women tend to live longer than men. Of those who "speak well", 35% are from Forest County and 35% from the Prairie Band. Although the total number of speakers in the Pokagon Band is almost the same as the Prairie Band (Table 1), its fluent population is much smaller, only 15% of the total.
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