AFP | Nicolas Revise with Joe Prezioso in Newton, Massachusetts
As Native Americans this week celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day — the holiday increasingly recognized in the United States in lieu of “Columbus Day” — members of the continent’s hundreds of tribes shared a common concern: the ongoing extinction of their ancestral languages.
The United States is currently home to 6.8 million Native Americans, or two percent of the population.
Members of the Shinnecock Nation on Long Island gathered for the sunrise to honor this week’s holiday, which has been adopted by more than a dozen US states and cities amid the growing view that Italian explorer Christopher Columbus brought little more than genocide and colonization to the Americas in 1492.
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And further north on the Atlantic Coast, people of the Americas and Caribbean ate together as they held discussions, danced and sang.
But while their ancestors saw their communities decimated by centuries of colonization, descendants today fear their culture and languages could be swallowed up in a single generation by English and Spanish.
Decrying “the invasion of the 21st century,” Anthony Sean Stanton, the 64-year-old head of the Narragansett tribe, said his people must “hang onto what we got because once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”
Further west, the Lakota — a prominent subculture of the Sioux, located primarily in North and South Dakota — also fear the extinction of their language, currently spoken by 1,500 people, compared to 5,000 speakers two decades ago.
For many communities, including the Lakota, the generational transmission of languages halted around the mid-1980s, said linguist and activist Wilhelm Meya, who serves as president of The Language Conservancy (TLC) in Indiana.
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There is “a very small window of opportunity to try to bring the language back before the last speakers of this language pass on. And this is a story that’s replicated across hundreds of communities in North America,” he said.
“We’re in the forefront of trying to prevent this total collapse of Indigenous languages in North America.”
‘Hungry’ for language
According to TLC, some 2,900 languages of the approximately 7,000 spoken worldwide are endangered.
At this rate, the organization says, nearly 90 percent of all languages could become extinct in the next 100 years.
Native American languages are dying out at an even faster rate, according to the non-profit, with more than 200 already eradicated.
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The best preservation strategy is to teach these languages in schools, says Meya, who notes that the federal government finally allowed communities to take up the practice in the early 1970s.
He also urges the development of other materials in the ancestral languages, including translating cartoon series and documentary films, as well as creating dictionaries and assisting with teacher trainings.
“Anything we can do to reach the young people who are very, very hungry for their language,” Meya said. “They want their culture, they want their identity.”
‘Part of who I am’
Miya Peters, an 18-year-old member of the Wampanoag tribe along the northeastern US coast, is one such example. She learns her language as part of a partnership between her tribal school and public school.
“I love it. It is hard. It’s very different,” she said. “But it’s part of who I am. So it always just gives me that encouragement to just keep going and bring it back.”
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Meya and his colleague Travis Condon aim to continue the work of Kevin Locke, an ardent defender of his Lakota language and culture.
The 68-year-old flautist, hoop dancer and storyteller died suddenly on September 30.
“He was definitely a warrior for his tribe, you know, an ambassador for mankind,” Meya said.
The linguist emphasized the need for federal investment in language preservation.
“It took the federal government 100 years and billions of dollars to eradicate Native American languages through the boarding school system,” he said. “And it’s gonna take equal amount of resources to bring back Indigenous languages in North America.”
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“It’s much, much more difficult to create than it is to destroy.”
(FILES) In this file photo taken on October 10, 2022, Pow Wow Princess of the Mashpee Wampanoag (R) dances with the public at Indigenous Peoples Day in Newton, Massachusetts. - As Native Americans this week celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day -- the holiday increasingly recognized in the US in lieu of "Columbus Day" -- members of the continent's hundreds of tribes shared a common concern: the ongoing extinction of their ancestral languages. The US is currently home to 6.8 million Native Americans, or two percent of the population. (Photo by Joseph Prezioso / AFP)
The new truce plan in Gaza includes “many demands” from Hamas, according to an Egyptian source
The talks held between delegations from Egypt and Israel in Tel Aviv for a truce in Gaza were “largely positive and successful” and included “many of the demands” of the Islamist movement Hamas, an Egyptian security source familiar with the negotiations and another from Hamas reported to EFE on Sunday.
A delegation from Hamas, headed by the member of the political bureau Khalil al-The Hague, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Cairo, mediator in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian group, to deliver its response to the mediators, according to the Egyptian source, which asked not to be identified by the sensitivity of this issue.
This new proposal, on whose content it did not provide details, “overcomes the obstacles that hinder” the declaration of a truce, a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners and hostages, as well as the entry of aid into the Gaza Strip.
The possible announcement of a truce “will contribute to the approval of a first phase and to the efforts of the entire international community to consolidate this ceasefire and seek to move to a permanent truce instead of a temporary one,” according to the informant.
On the other hand, a source of the Palestinian Islamist movement, which also asked for anonymity, confirmed to EFE that tomorrow a delegation from Hamas will arrive in the Egyptian capital to present its response to the new Israeli proposal.
The informant added that the proposal includes “reducing the minimum number of kidnapped that Hamas will commit to freeing and eliminating divisions in sections of the Gaza Strip.”
Last Friday, an Egyptian mediating delegation traveled to Tel Aviv to discuss this truce with Israel, while the Jewish State has warned that it will not allow the Palestinian group to delay and has once again threatened to invade Rafah, at the southern end of the strip and where more than a million refugees are overcrowded.
Hamas warns the United Kingdom that if it sends soldiers to Gaza they will be a “legitimate” military target
The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas warned the United Kingdom on Sunday that if it deploys military personnel in the Gaza Strip, after information that they could help in the distribution of humanitarian aid, they will be “legitimate targets” of its armed wing.
“We alert Britain, or any other country, against the deployment of forces on land or on the coast of the Gaza Strip and affirm that they will be legitimate targets for our people and their resistance,” Hamas said in a statement.
The armed group charged against any initiative in the Palestinian enclave that does not have its approval.
The Islamist group responded to the information released on Saturday by the British network BBC, according to which the British Armed Forces could deploy troops to deliver humanitarian aid on the ground arriving in Gaza through the new floating dock that is being built by Israel and the United States.
The public broadcaster indicated that the United Kingdom could be the intermediary to which the United States referred when it said that it would not be the American soldiers, but others, who would distribute the food packages sent by ship from Cyprus and then transferred to Gaza.
Yesterday, the Israeli Army assured at a press conference with international media that international organizations would be in charge of the distribution of humanitarian aid, but did not indicate which ones would have agreed to collaborate.
Although the British Government has not confirmed the news, the BBC affirms, according to anonymous sources, that the Ministry of Defense is considering getting involved with ‘wet boots’ on the ground.
The possible role of the British forces would involve driving the trucks with the help from the landing boats on the floating runway, hundreds of meters long, and delivering it to a safe distribution area on dry land, the station explained.
The London Ministry of Defense reported on Friday, in turn, that the British Navy auxiliary ship RFA Cardigan Bay set sail from Cyprus to provide support for the construction of the temporary dock, which is led by the United States.
This ship will provide accommodation for hundreds of American sailors and soldiers, about whom Washington has made it clear that they will not set foot in Gaza territory.
Nancy Pelosi says that Netanyahu “could not have made things worse” in Gaza
Former President of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi said that the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, “could not have made things worse” in the conflict in Gaza, in an interview broadcast this Sunday by the BBC.
Pelosi, who on Thursday participated in an event at the English university of Oxford, told the ‘Laura Kuenssberg Program’ that Netanyahu “was never a peace agent” and admitted that she “is not a great fan of his.”
The congresswoman said that what is happening in the Strip “challenges the conscience of the world” and maintained that the impact of famine on children “is almost unforgivable”, while calling the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on October 7 “barbaric”.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, but the way it is doing it is a challenge because Netanyahu has never been a peace agent,” he said.
“I’m not a great admirer of yours; I couldn’t have done things worse than those tens of thousands, or whatever number it is, of dead people, malnourished children and the uncertainty that exists… and that’s what people are talking about,” he said.
Asked if she understood why young people in the United States used controversial tactics when protesting against the conflict, Pelosi opined that “when they go beyond the campuses and block the Golden Gate Bridge, or something else, for a long time, and people can’t go to the doctor or the hospital or anything urgent in their lives, they don’t get support.”
But he added: “How can demonstrations on (university) campuses be criticized? That’s a way of life in the United States.”
On Thursday, the British police evicted two pro-Palestinian protesters who protested during their speech on populism to students from the University of Oxford, while abroad another group criticized her for her defense of Israel and her position on the movement to support Palestine.
