OLD TRIBAL LANGUAGE
part of the Wopanaak Language Reclamation Project (WLRP) founded by Mashpee Wampanoag linguist Jessie Little Doe Baird, said the Montessori teaching method overlaps with Wampanoag cultural values.
“It’s really an empowering experience for young people,” Weston said.
“Most of our communities have high dropout rates and low college matriculation rates and that’s not the case in tribal communities where children are able to attend an immersion school. So there’s something about the process of understanding your culture from within your culture rather than through the lens of English that’s a really positive aspect of forming your identity as a native person and it connects you to your culture in a way that English just can’t.”
A group of universities in the western U.S., including University of New Mexico, UCLA and others, launched a four-year study last year to measure the difference indigenous language classes make among Native American students.
Nitana Hicks Greendeer, a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, said “until college, for me school and Wampanoag culture just didn’t overlap at all. Or if they did it was because of some special occasion like a multicultural fair.”
Hicks Greendeer’s 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter attend the school, where she is the education director. She said it is important for her children to have a foundation in Wampanoag culture and that the kids are exposed to a variety of languages at home.
She uses some Wampanoag words with them daily, her mother speaks French, her husband shares Ho-Chunk Nation words, and her son also picks up some Spanish from watching “Dora the Explorer.”
“I think it’s really interesting to him to know that there are different ways to say the same thing,” she said.
Thomas said his son’s learning experience makes a difference throughout the family.
“The words that I knew growing up … were incorrect or not the correct pronunciation, so now the kids are really teaching us as well,” Thomas emphasized.