Arapaho, a language spoken in the Plains Algonquian primarily on the Wind River Reservation and parts of western Oklahoma, is facing extinction.
Dr. Aldora White Eagle, CEO of the Northern Arapaho Tribe, says that a “series of genocides” is the root of the issue due to the history of colonization within Native American communities.
From the late 1800s into the mid 1900s, Captain Richard Henry Pratt, known for saying “kill the Indians and save the man,” forced Native American children to attend the Carlisle Indian School as well as other boarding schools across the nation to “Americanize” them.
Children were taken away from their communities at the youngest age of have and were held at the boarding schools until they were 18. There, they were only allowed to speak English and were beaten for speaking any other language, says White Eagle.
“They thought that we were savages, that we didn’t have any way of life and the only way we were going to be successful was to colonize us,” White Eagle adds. “Once they did, it was cultural genocide.”
Upon the children’s return to their communities, their knowledge of languages such as Arapaho dissipated.
“In order to protect our children, because our children are very sacred, [the Elders] didn’t share the language with them because they didn’t want them to be beaten, they didn’t want them to be punished,” says White Eagle.
