Maintaining and renewing native languages

This article reviews research on maintaining and renewing American Indian languages. A rationale is given for the importance of maintaining tribal languages in terms of Native students’ cross-cultural understanding. Then Joshua Fishman’s theoretical paradigm for reversing language shift is summarized and tribal and national language policies are reviewed. Early childhood, elementaiy, secondary, and tribal college native language efforts are described along with Navajo and Yup’ik examples of school-based native-language maintenance/renewal efforts. Based on the research of tribal native- language renewal efforts and current research on second language teaching, specific suggestions are given for maintaining and renewing native languages.