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Weekly UpdatesABSTRACT
The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma has implemented some new technological means of teaching the Choctaw language to its dispersed members. After an initial year of telecourses, an Internet course was introduced in 2000 which has served approximately 1,000 students at varying levels of intensity. The design of the course makes direct evaluation of language learning difficult; however, the program has served other goals, such as cultural solidarity and political prestige for the tribal government. The introduction of high technology into the Choctaw Language Program has had other strong effects in facilitating other ventures into high-level preservation, literacy, and pedagogical efforts, the most important of which is putting the Choctaw language into all the public schools in southeastern Oklahoma. The ready acceptance of technology and deliberateness of its introduction is partially attributable to cultural attitudes.
INTRODUCTION
Within the past two years, the potential for the use of the modern communications media, particularly two-way interactive online conferencing, to teach small and endangered languages has been developed, generally in the media development departments in university settings. It may come as something of a surprise that one Native American political unit, the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma, decided to implement distance learning of the Choctaw language without outside collaboration and without previous experience in distance learning technologies.
This report is a description and analysis of the story of the implementation of an Internet Choctaw language course and its development as a teaching and learning tool. Most important, it describes the effects that the presence of the technology has had upon other departments and services in the Choctaw Nation government and on individuals in the Choctaw communities. This report describes how two distance learning technologies, videoconferencing and interactive Internet, have been appended, if not integrated, into the existing institutions and cultural milieu of Oklahoma Choctaw communities. The problematic nature of evaluation of the objective goal of language learning is discussed, particularly with respect to competing cultural and political goals.
This report does not draw on any theoretical models, but will serve instead as one of the first descriptions of the impact of technology on endangered language preservation for later reference and theory formulation. Included in the discussion is pertinent cultural material to the extent that it has shaped the outcome of community response and acceptance of this technology.
The report first describes the Choctaw people in a brief historical sketch, then describes the early innovations of the Choctaw Language Program since its institution in 1997. The report focuses on the latest of the program's developments, an Internet-based, live, interactive language instruction program. The problems of curriculum development and especially program evaluation are discussed in light of the challenges that this kind of program encounters. Finally, the report describes far-reaching effects that can be attributed to the presence of the new communications technology, and their shaping by cultural attitudes and practices.
THE SETTING
To understand and appreciate the effects of current technology on the Choctaw community, it is important to understand something about the history of the Choctaws and new technologies in general. As one of the first native groups to encounter Europeans in the mid-16th century (most notably Hernando de Soto, Tristan de Luna, and Juan Pardo), the Choctaws had yet to learn that eventually Europe would vanquish all natives; nor were they aware of a European agenda beyond the self-evident benefits of trade. Choctaws entered into active trading relationships with different European groups, engaging in the play-off system (White, 1983), wherein the dissension between European groups was exploited for Choctaw gain. The Choctaws amassed considerable wealth and political power during the 18th century in this way, until the newly formed United States evicted the European powers and playing off one trading partner against another no longer brought results (Wesson, 2001).
The Choctaw people were similarly heavily engaged in trade and other social intercourse with United States citizens and institutions. The Choctaws, far from resisting Christianity, invited Christian missionaries to teach them what they knew, including the contents of the Bible, and how to read and write (Kidwell, 1995). It is fascinating, though now a source of embarrassment to modern Choctaws, that the Choctaw word for "white person" is nahullo, which means "sanctified being."[1] It was the Presbyterian missionary Cyrus Byington, following in 1821 the first missionary to the Choctaws, Cyrus Kingsbury, who had arrived in 1818, who did virtually all the early language work. From the time he preached his first Choctaw sermon in 1823 until his death in 1868, Byington worked on the language, producing the only full Choctaw-English dictionary ever written, a grammar (in its seventh revision on his death), and several translations of books of the Old and New Testaments (Byington, 1915).
Choctaws were quick to recognize and appropriate material goods that would benefit them, even adopting the dress of nahullo settlers. The traditional women's dress today is not deerskin, but the long, deeply ruffled, prairie-style dress of the 19th-century frontier, and men abruptly gave up the traditional turban and began wearing hats of that era.
Socially, the Choctaw leadership intermarried with white Americans. This led to discontent and factionalization when the mixed-blood leaders began to treat with the United States Government over land cessions. That being said, these intermarriages also permitted the Choctaws considerable access to American institutions. In numbers greater than their proportion of the population, Choctaws served in American wars under American command, perhaps most famously Pushmataha in the War of 1812, and more recently, the Choctaw Code-Talkers of World War I. Because they lived in the slave-holding states, some Choctaws owned slaves themselves when they were wealthy enough; these slaves accompanied them on the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma during the time of Removal, 1830-1833, and became members of the tribe by virtue of this relationship.
In their new home in Oklahoma, Choctaws formed a government that closely followed the model of their victors': an elected tripartite (legislative, executive, judicial) government with both bi-cameral legislative and two-tiered judicial branches (Lambert, 2001). This government was quite different both from the traditional chief and moiety system in place only a hundred years earlier.[2] This Choctaw Republic in Oklahoma lasted until 1906, when the United States government terminated it through the new land policy of allotment which did not permit American Indians in Oklahoma to own land in common. During the existence of the Choctaw Republic, many modern institutions such as law enforcement, schools, and newspapers were established and operated in the Choctaw language, which was written and studied in schools.
These features, among others, are the basis for the Choctaws, along with their southeastern neighbors the Chickasaws, Cherokees, Creeks, and Seminoles, to be known as the Five Civilized Tribes. This epithet causes some discomfort in present times, with our modern sensibilities about what exactly "civilization" might have wrought in these cases, but it was a valued distinction earlier and a name that older individuals still use with pride.
The Modern Scene
After the fall of the Choctaw Republic in 1906 and Oklahoma statehood in 1907, the Oklahoma Choctaws began a period of decline, marked by the loss of their government, few civil rights, and little integration into the white society. Together with the boarding school system of conscripting Indian children and ridding them of their home languages, a devastating world-wide economic depression, and common racism, Choctaws seemed destined to join their Native American brethren at the economic bottom of American society.
This, however, has not been the case. Beginning in 1972, when the Choctaws were permitted to elect their own chief, the modern government (the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) has moved from a Bureau of Indian Affairs appendage to a very different government. The new government is quite unlike the imitation of the United States government that the Choctaw Republic successfully attempted to reproduce. The modern government has a powerful chief, more akin to the miko of traditional times (this term is, in fact, used to refer to him). A Council approves actions and policies, but it is the Miko who holds the major power and, thus, can act quickly and deliberately.
The way that modern chiefs maintain their popularity, and thus their power, with the people who elect them is through a system of redistribution of resources through myriad tribe-owned businesses, which then preferentially employ Choctaws. More recently, Choctaw Nation is in the business of consulting for the United States government, has contracts to do eligibility work for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and sets up offices and training world-wide for the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) Program. This is not a tribe that fears involvement with any aspect of modern society.
THE CHOCTAW LANGUAGE PROGRAM
Because of the great influence of the miko over the kinds of activities the government engages in, the Language Program as a direct, programmatic activity within Choctaw Nation is unequivocally the result of the interest of the present miko, Gregory Pyle, who was first elected in 1997. In that year, a Language Coordinator and a Language Specialist were hired to develop community classes in the Choctaw language. The primary qualification for these positions was the ability to speak the language; of course, other organizational skills that could be brought to bear on the development of a new program were highly desirable.
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