Indigenous Languages, Current Status

When the first English colony was established at Jamestown in 1607, some 350 indigenous languages were spoken on the North American continent. The effects of settler encroachment on Native American lands, forced relocation of entire tribal groups from one area of the country to another, overt efforts to eliminate native-language use in boarding schools, and now mass media and technology have all taken a great toll on indigenous North American languages, as described in this entry. The number still actively spoken is now about 155.

Clarence Wesley, then chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe in Arizona, wrote the opening article, “Indian Education,” in the inaugural edition of the Journal of American Indian Education published in June 1961. He highlighted a need for more effective English language programs particularly in situations where children do not come from English-speaking homes, and where a different culture is the dominant factor.

A generation later, indigenous communities across the country have experienced a dramatic language shift toward English language dominance, at the expense of ancestral languages. This is especially true where it concerns children. The situation in 2007 is now the reverse of what Wesley described in 1961. Native children are now more likely to speak English and know only a few words of their ancestral languages. Native communities have become alarmed by this development, and now federal law and statutes enacted in various states support vigorous campaigns by many American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian groups to preserve, restore, and retain their heritage languages.

Michael Krauss estimates that 87% of the Native American languages still spoken in the United States are moribund, which is evidenced when native children are not learning and using their heritage languages and instead speak English. Krauss further predicts that if the present rate of language loss continues unabated, 105 of the currently viable 155 American Indian/Alaska Native languages will be extinct by 2025, and 135 by 2050, leaving only 20 highly endangered languages.

James Crawford characterizes native languages as an endangered species requiring urgent measures to preserve them. Crawford considers Native American languages to be in a state of crisis and threatened with extinction. He further maintains that as many as one-third of these languages, along with the last people who speak them, will vanish unless something is done to stop the trend.

The most recent figures available with respect to the status of American Indian and Alaska Native languages in the United States is reported in the 2000 U.S. Census. The census questionnaire inquired about languages spoken in the home by persons 5 years of age and older. It also asked respondents to identify those languages.

The U.S. Census Bureau's publication, Characteristics of American Indians and Alaska Natives by Tribe and Language: 2000 lists 2,447,989 individuals who reported their ethnicity as American Indian or Alaska Native. A small subset of that number—115,000—reported their ethnicity as Hispanic American Indian, originating in language groups from Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Of the total American Indian/Alaskan Native population, 353,340 individuals—28% over the age of 5 years—reported that a native language was spoken in the home, indicating that the English language seems to have become the dominant language among most American Indians and Alaska Natives. The group with the largest number of active native language speakers is the Navajo; the census indicated that 173,800 persons over the age of 5 years reported speaking it in the home. Conversely, speakers of the Miami language number only 5 individuals. Most of the languages reported have less than 500 speakers and more than one third are spoken only by elders. Populations of American Indians and Alaska Natives are concentrated in the western states where, accordingly, the largest numbers of native language speakers are found: 242,038 across the mountain and desert states and 41,591 in the Pacific region, including Hawai'i and Alaska.

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