The Montana Early Childhood Tribal Language Summit isn’t exactly like other conferences. There are keynote speakers and panels, but there are also stories and songs spoken in traditional languages.
Educators, parents, and state and tribal government reps are here to find ways to revitalize and sustain Indigenous languages pushed to the brink of extinction.
Peggy Myers, 75, is one of roughly 60 fluent Cree speakers left on the Rocky Boy's Reservation. As a child, she only spoke Cree. But as she grew older, that changed.
"The longer I went to school, the longer I spoke, it became shameful. It was a shame to talk my language. And I was a feisty one, too," Meyers says.
Myers witnessed firsthand the loss of her language in their community as forced assimilation played out over the decades. But educators like Burt Medicine Bull who teaches Northern Plains sign language are working to sustain them.
"What little I know, I learned it when I was living with my grandparents as a little boy," Medicine Bull says. "It's really important to have that. It's another form of communication."
At the summit, attendees organized plans to bolster language programs, share curricula, integrate more tribal language into classrooms and use new technology to help.
Theron Small, an elder and Cree speaker from Rocky Boy's, says the needle is moving in the right direction.
"These younger ones, when they're speaking up and they're talking Cree to us, we're there and we're listening, and that’s telling us that the elders must be doing something good, to where they’re speaking the language to us," Small says.
Today, Myers' message to those working to revitalize their language:
"Ahkameyimok – keep trying."
