How the Osage are fighting to protect their language from extinction
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How the Osage are fighting to protect their language from extinction
We’re reading and watching “Killers of the Flower Moon” for “Econ Extra Credit” this month. The 2017 true crime book, and its new feature film adaptation, shine a light on the conspiracy to murder Osage people for their oil rights in early 1920s Oklahoma. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is in theaters now.
Throughout “Killers of the Flower Moon,” many characters switch between speaking English and Osage. Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, learns the language to woo Mollie, portrayed by Lily Gladstone, before they get married. He doesn’t know Mollie and her sisters have already discussed her romantic interest in Ernest, out of earshot and in Osage.
The use of Osage often helped convey a sense of intimacy between characters, but its inclusion wasn’t just a creative choice. Martin Scorsese promised the Osage Nation that he would accurately and authentically portray their culture in the film. It would be impossible to do so without the language, which many people spoke fluently in the 1920s.
What may be less apparent after watching the film is just how hard the Osage Nation has fought to protect and preserve its language, even now. The last native speaker of Osage died in 2005, so second-language learners have had to invest significant time and money to prevent Osage from being lost forever.
“We have no real fluent speakers left,” said Janis Carpenter, an Osage language teacher, who also served as a language consultant for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
“None of them were actively trying to teach us Osage. We were just around it all the time. I just didn’t realize how important that could have been,” she said.
Like most Osage members who were born after 1940, Carpenter’s first language was English. She grew up hearing her parents and grandparents speak the language, but she didn’t learn how to speak it herself until much later in life.
Between 1819 and the 1970s, the federal government operated boarding schools for Indigenous children to assimilate them into white culture. Schools were often banned students from speaking any language but English. Rebecca Nagle, a Cherokee writer and host of the podcast “This Land,” calculated that the U.S. government has spent less than 7 cents on programs to revitalize Native languages for every $1 spent trying to eradicate them.
The Osage are not alone in this. By 2100, anywhere between 50% to 95% of the world’s 7,000 languages are likely to go extinct or become “seriously endangered,” according to the United Nations. Absent intervention, 67% to 100% of Indigenous languages in the U.S. could disappear within three generations, The Hechinger Report says.
“Nearly every language that’s ever reached this point has never come back,” said Braxton Redeagle, director of the Osage Nation Language Department. “Our biggest challenge is how do we do something that almost everybody else has failed to do?”
In 2003, the Osage Nation established the language department through which it developed a standard system for writing Osage that makes it easier to learn. It also successfully submitted that system of writing to Unicode, making it possible to write in Osage on phones and computers.
The language department now runs 12 community classes with more than 500 enrolled students, who attend both in person and virtually via Zoom. It has helped establish a language-immersion elementary school and developed middle school and high school classes taught by certified teachers in public schools. The department has also launched an online dictionary, published a book and created augmented and virtual reality experiences for language learners.
“A lot of those people that [take classes] are people that are trying to rediscover what that Osage identity looks like and what that means. Some of them are trying to establish that for the first time,” Redeagle said. “We’re kind of the easiest, I think, first grab for people.”
One advantage the Osage people have, Redeagle noted, is the tribal government constitutionally protects the language and directly funds revitalization efforts on an annual basis. While the federal government and foundations provide grants for short-term language revitalization projects, Andrew Cowell, the director of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that most of that funding focuses on language documentation. It typically doesn’t pay for ongoing costs like teachers’ salaries or operating costs for immersion schools.
“If you want a long-term program … you pretty much have to do internal tribal funding,” Cowell said.
The Osage Nation’s larger goal is to one day revive the use of Osage in daily life, but it is far from realizing that.
“We hear more language being used by more people, and more people are in classes. But because we don’t use it all the time, so it’s hard to keep it going,” said Janis Carpenter of the progress made since she began teaching Osage about 12 years ago.
Of the 25,415 Osage members, Redeagle estimates there are fewer than 20 known people who can carry on extensive conversations in Osage. But he suspects that there are many others that have not yet been recognized for their exceptional language skills, especially young people.
One of the language department’s priorities is to standardize curriculum across all Osage language classes, which will help them better assess the efficacy of their teaching and identify students with higher proficiency. And more federal funding and support could also be soon available. The Biden administration committed last year to finalize a 10-year national plan to revitalize Native languages.
Redeagle is cautiously optimistic about the positive momentum that he and others at the language department have made so far.
“I’m trying to look 150 years down the road and build something that someone’s going to look back on and say, ‘You know, I’m glad they took that step and made that effort.’ Or better yet, they’re completely oblivious to it and don’t even remember the struggles that we’re going through now,” Redeagle said.
“They’ll just be standing on our shoulders and be unaware of it.”
For December
We will be revisiting a classic screwball comedy for “Econ Extra Credit” in December, “Trading Places.” The 1983 film stars Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy whose characters become involuntary test subjects for two billionaire brothers seeking to prove whether nature or nurture determines success in life.
“Trading Places” is available to rent or buy on several platforms.
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