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EldersElders from the Doi Tung areagather for a photo. These Akhatell how the government tooktheir land away and they have notplanted rice for eleven years, anunthinkable event. Having livedin the area for 70 years they won-der how the Thais who are notnative to the mountain areas canbe so arrogant. Projects that claimto help the Akha are often no morethan a deception. Ask the Akha.

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The Akha In LaosReportStory and pictures by Paul Hunt2 February 2003

At the top end of the Akha vil-lage of Puko, next to its smallwooden school, stands a largeswing with a rope tied at theapex of its four poles, which arefixed squarely in the ground. Alltraditional Akha villages havesuch a swing, usually erected onhigh ground near the edge of thejungle. Is it not symbolically re-flective of life on earth withinnature’s balance, harmony andlaws; moved, swayed and tossedby seasonal cycles; experiencingthe pull of desires, and the pushof reasons? The Akha hill people ofSouth-East Asia, similarly toother indigenous peoples or eth-nic minorities, are being pushedto a critical extreme testing theirwill and ability to remain withintheir own cultural referenceframe. Giant pushers - UN, state,NGO and private business inter-ests - are shaking the four polesfrom the earth. The Akha arethreatened with being taken foran enormous ride outside of theircultural reference frame bypushers of questionable devel-opment projects who set up fal-lacious frameworks of arrogantself-interest systems from withintheir sterile, air-conditioned, re-port-cluttered city offices. Should we give ear to an Akhaelder whose tried and tested wisdom passed downthrough many generations is in respectful harmonywith the environment? Or should we accept. with-out thinking through, the official UN, state, NGOor corporate argument that the Akha would be bet-ter off with their environmental and village projectsto “sustain” whose way of life? Come, my friends! Who is taking who for a ride? Who is seeking to frame, push, hood and controlwho? We know the interests making most of the

media noise, grabbing global control agendas withtheir jargons of covetousness. But do we listen tothe poor, old, village elder’s words of wisdom froma bamboo, wooden, thatch-roofed hut in a villageon a jungle-covered hillside? Or is it the fat UNDPofficial who is given more weight? Whose languageis more harmonised and sensitised to the environ-ment in which they live? Does the Akha elder in-sist that the World Conservation Union official cul

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tivate bananas in her office rather than rowupon row, stack upon stack of dusty, dry,dehumanised reports?Gates of Eden Traditional Akha villages have twowooden gates, which symbolise the guard-ing of the village from evil or disturbinginfluences. However, in Puko and otherAkha villages I visited in Laos theirschools lack materials in the Akha lan-guage, while the national Lao language istaught and Thai language materials arealso used. Matthew McDaniel’s AkhaHeritage Foundation is addressing thislack, and I distributed Akha books in sev-eral villages in Northern Laos in Late De-cember 2002. Language is the most precious humanresource. Linguist R.M.W. Dixon writes,“Each language has a different phonologi-cal, morphological, syntactic, and seman-tic organisation from every other... By ex-amining the ways meanings are organisedin some little-known language, the linguistmay... evolve some new mode of thinkingthat could help to deal with problems inthe modern world (1997, p.116)... Everylanguage encapsulates the world-view ofits speakers - how they think, what theyvalue, what they believe in, how they clas-sify the world around them, how they or-der their lives. Once a language dies, a partof human culture is lost forever.” (p.144) According to Zepeda and Hill, “Eachlanguage still spoken is fundamental to thepersonal, social, and - a key word in thediscourse of indigenous peoples - spiritualidentity of its speakers. They know thatwithout these languages they would be lessthan they are, and they are encouraged inthe most urgent struggles to protect theirlinguistic heritage.” (1991, p.135) As I traveled on dirt tracks around theAkha villages of Muang Sing District by bicycleand on foot I especially noted the cultural expres-sions still kept fully alive: village swings, gates,women spinning cotton thread by hand and weav-ing cloth on manual looms. However, foreign manu-factured building materials, packaged food prod-ucts and clothes are bought by the Akha when theyhave sufficent money. There is the pull of desire - children and parents

are eager to have the Akha books, writing materi-als, clothes, coins for the women’s headdresses andmoney to buy things at Muang Sing’s market, whichis full of cheap products from across the border inChina. There is also the push of reason - to clearmore jungle for sugar cane plantations to earnmoney, to cut more trees for firewood and charcoalproduction, which the Chinese have interests in too. Akha villages in Northern Laos are being pulledand pushed by these materialistic, economic forces

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so alien to their traditional, self-sufficient way oflife. However, their lofty swings, guardian gates,Akha zauh law, and language give the Akha peoplea distinctive way of seeing their place in the world,as well as to understand what temptations threatento cut their life’s thread and tear the fabric of theirculture apart. As external pressures push at their mountain vil-lages and temptations pull at their traditional roots,so the spirit of freewill needs to be kindled to givelight to see what is at stakehere. One seeks the light ofgrace and revelation of law,not a UN, state, NGO, busi-ness or missionary dictatefrom selfish frames of refer-ence, which attempt to leadthe unwary into foreign, aliencaptivity and enslaved bond-age to masters of grand delu-sions. Could it be that Cain is kill-ing Abel again in an attemptto enter Eden’s gate by force?Can officials stomache thefact that a peaple can live freeof, and better off without,their riddled arguments andfaulty environmental man-agement systems of control? In the five-year strategicframework for the WorldConservation Union’sProgramme in Lao PDR,2001-2006, entitled “Conser-vation for Sustainable Live-lihoods”, it states: “Lao PDRhas a wealth of natural re-sources - particularly forests,fresh water, and wildlife. Ona per capita basis, water re-sources are the most abundantin Asia. Forest cover remainsextensive, and is subsantiallyhigher than in surroundingcountries. In terms ofbiodiversity, many habitatsand ecosystems are of re-gional and global signifi-cance.” Yet on the same page(p.3) it states: “Lao PDR remains one of

the poorest countries in the world. In 1999, it wasranked 140th out of 170 countries on the UNDP’sHuman Development Index.” Could it be that western measures are to blamefor disrupting indigenous people’s livelihoods, andthe rich environments they have traditionally takencare of because of their intimate reliance on them?However, there’s no funding or prestigious officewithout an argument and framework for a “devel-opment project”, is there?

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Lao government represen-tatives, and other officials,have “expressed particularconcern about the role of shift-ing cultivation in deforesta-tion, and emphasised the needto stabilise land-use patterns.”(p.17) Such erroneous argumentslead to village relocation anddisruption, which cause prob-lems and poverty for the Akhamoved to lower lands. Yet theofficial argument tries toblame the Akha by linkingpoverty to environmental deg-radation due to over-extractionof natural resources. It is rather ironic that thesame officials don’t show asmuch concern about large-scale plantation cultivation,forestry monocultivation, damand road building projects,which destroy and clear farvaster areas of natural junglemuch faster and more perma-nently than Akha villages havedone over many generations! Who is causing the over-ex-traction and village poverty?Where is the hypocrisy? Who is shifting blame? Isnot small-scale, varied crop rotation, and letting thejungle regenerate proven to have kept Akha hillcountry a richly diverse environment? Who needsofficially sanctioned “development projects”? Is itnot the resource-hungry, global-consumerism,greed cult with its fat priests of environmental con-trol and sustainable growth who need to sustain theirunsustainable, bad habits?Cane Driven Out The closely neighbouring Akha villages of Puko,Pakha and Lakham are located on the lower slopesof jungle-covered mountains now demarcated asthe Nam Ha National Protected Area. Only a fewAkha villages now remain within the “protectedarea”, and these are being incorporated into theUNESCO Nam Ha Ecotourism Project. On a visit to Puko, Pakha and Lakham, on 28December 2002, I was surprised to find large fieldsof sugar cane covering much of the land aroundthese villages. The cane was being cut by Akha vil-

lagers, while others were clearing large swathes ofvirgin jungle higher up the slopes, presumably togrow more cane. It is obvious that these villagesare being exploited for their land and labour inuntraditional, unwise plantation cultivation. Pres-sure to grow cash crops is causing far greater andfaster environmental destruction than wiser Akhatradition would allow. Their traditional slash-and-burn practices, often falsely criticised, clear smallareas for self-sufficient food needs and allow jungleregeneration. Who benefits from cash-crop, plantation culti-vation? The villagers see meagre rewards for theirhard labour, loss of land to grow the food they need,large-scale destruction of their environment, andloss of control over their own decision-making!Truck loads of sugar cane were being driven acrossthe border into China. Business concerns and de-velopment officials no doubt are happy with this“development” - after all they are the exploiters,and not the exploited! Sustainable? Well, the NGOs

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now have a piece of the action in making a “study”of this question. Of course, the resource-starvedbusinessman and sustainable-growth official needtheir sustenance. Meanwhile the Akha are divestedof land, labour, livelihood and Life! On 25 December 2002, I visited the Akha vil-lages of Nam Ded Mai and Nam Ded Kauw withintwo kilometers of the Chinese border. In the highervillage of Nam Ded Kauw, located on a steep slopein the jungle-covered mountains, I was surprisedto meet a large, official Chinese delegation to thevillage. In all of the other 15 Akha villages I visited inMuang Sing District, wedged between China andBurma in Northern Laos, I was given a friendlywelcome by villagers. However, the Chinese offi-cials were less than pleased that a westerner hadfound them in this Akha village just outside theirChinese border! I was told and shown the way outof the village in no uncertain terms! The delega-tion came down the dirt track in several, new, 4WDvehicles about 15 minutes later. There is much sensitivity and touchiness alongthe boundaries where states, organisations and in-terests practice the dark arts of covetousness. Butcan a gentle, free, hill people guard their gatesagainst such Tojan horses? Can they find strengthof spirit to turn down the gift horse? Can they seewhat is at stake and make a stand for their free-dom, rather than succumbing to the captivity andbondage of foreign masters of deceit? Can theydrive plantation slavery off their land and see togrowing their own crops?Heaven’s Balance Indigenous, ethnic minorities have woven acolourful pattern of peoples perhaps nowhere richerthan in Laos. Lao PDR emerged as a socialist statein 1975, following decades of turmoil as ideolo-gies sought to control the minds of people. How-ever, the swing from local, traditional village deci-sion-making to state management and control hasgone too far for many, especially the Akha, people’sgood. The Regional Environmental Technical Assis-tance (RETA 5771) report, entitled “Poverty Re-duction & Environmental Management in RemoteGreater Mekong Subregion Watersheds (Phase I)”,admits that the argument linking poverty allevia-tion to environmental mitigation is unproven inpractice! Concerning land tenure it states, “There is a gen-eral trend in the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS)

area to move away from state ownership of land tovarying forms of communal or private tenure... Thefavoured option of all GMS governments has beenhousehold-based tenure.” The focus of debate on forest land has been themerits of state versus non-state tenure, and house-hold versus community tenure. The community, orvillage, is the traditional base of the Akha way oflife. Whereas private household tenure is more opento exploitation, disintegration of village communi-ties, and cultural disruption. It is no surprise thatofficials and business interests favour private ratherthan communal land tenure. Although official reports try to justify their petprojects, they do sometimes recognise the sensi-tivities their planned actions arouse in others. Lipservice or handouts are thus given to placate con-cerns about disruption of ethnic minorities’ culturaltraditions, land tenure practices and livelihoodsintimately harmonised with their envirnment. UN, EU, state, NGO and business interests areworking on a plethora of projects purporting to helppoor villagers in Laos. Official reports and docu-ments concerning the problems and methods fes-toon air-conditioned offices, while expensive ve-hicles emblazoned with UNDP, EU, state and NGOlogos are seen on the streets of Vientiane and othermain centers. Yet conditions in Akha villages gen-erally go from worse to abysmal due to very insen-sitive implementation of “projects”.Resettlement of villages must be voluntary, not dis-ruptive, and must consider the Akha people’s de-pendence on the land and natural environment fortheir livelihood. Such is recognised in UN HumanRights provisions. However, in the villages the re-alities are different. Perhaps this is partly due tothe Akha, and other ethnic minorities, not under-standing terms, such as “land tenure” and “rights”,which have their meanings couched within the in-vading cultural framework - like a Trojan horse.But do the global-agenda invaders stand to gain byexplaining their terms to those they seek to displaceand control? The Akha population of Laos is about the sameas that of Thailand at 70,000. However, there aredifferences in the Akha situation between thesestates. The Akha in Laos are issued with ID cardsentitling them to state benefits such as basic medi-cal treatment, whereas this is cause for concern inThailand. Lao PDR put an end to missionary ac-tivities in the villages after 1975. Thus there is notthe problem of village disruption and removal of

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“orphan” children by overzealous missions as thereis in Thailand. Military activity in the border re-gions is also generally absent in Laos, whereas onthe Thai-Burma border it is a constant worry forAkha villages. Although the situation appears rather betterfor the Akha in Laos than in Thailand, Laos is apoorer, weaker state and is prey to such Trojanhorses as Chinese business interests, UNDP, EUand NGO projects, which take up as much of theslack as they can in pressuring and exploiting eth-nic minorities.

We exhort the Akha in Laos, as well as inneighbouring states, to guard their own decision-making at their gates, keep their wise law, stay inbalance on their swings of fortune, and continue tobreathe life in their own language - in the spirit offreedom.

Assistance WithoutStrings Attached

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Village Gates in LaosNO missionaries are allowedin Laos

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Village Swing

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Folklore For The TravelerThe Landlord’s Dream

The Keng Tung night was freezing cold, I gotthere late and the gate to the old western guest housewas closed so I climbed the rickety picket gate asusual to wake the maid and get a room. I knockedon her window, glad they didn’t have a big dog.The maid turned like she heard something, lookedup, then rolled over and went back to sleep. Iknocked again. She reluctantly got up into thefreezing night and gave me the key to a creakingwooden room in the place.

In the morning when I came out into the lobbyno other than my old Chinese landlord from Maesaisat there, welcoming and friendly. We talked brieflyand I headed off for the market. Usually he wasgruff, this time he had been kind and pleasant.

At the end of the day when I came in he wasvisible inside the lobby when I got there. This timethe maid got up and I didn’t have to climb the gate.

The landlord had a Chinese friend there and in-vited me to talk. As the evening rolled on his story,so very interesting, unveiled itself. He was born inChiang Rai Thailand but in those years of the twen-ties the opium that the British had brought was stillvery big social business in Keng Tung. So his par-ents moved to Keng tung which was still full ofopium dens for smoking.

Though the British had brought it, the Akha andmany other tribes had learned to cultivate aggres-sively in the mountains of Shan State. At that timeit was a Shan Kingdom. Yah fin, they called it.Best medicine going. Black, as many varieties andgrades as any liquer, it got exported to Thailand,Malaysia to the rubber plantations where the work-ers required it, Singapore and further on to the US.Great stuff.

This now explained to me a great missing linkin my work with the Akha. For years I had noticedthat the old Chinaman’s wife knew many of theAkha old men and women. I wondered why? NowI knew. It also explained why he had compassionon their children, taking in orphans. Never give upon life. The greatest next treasure is just aroundthe corner. Bury your heartbreak. It happens andis there. Sometimes it is like making a bridge andthen everything changes and we can not use it.

But then the the Japanese invaded Thailand andBurma from one side and parts of China from theother. So the old Chinaman moved to China’sYunnan province for six years where he went toChinese school and learned to write Chinese.

“A great event occurred when the US droppedtwo nuclear bombs on Japan. It was a moment ofjoy for many under the brutal japanese occupation,himself, because the japanese military presenceevaporated over night, troops just lucky to find theirway home,” the Chinaman told us.

And so did he, returning to Keng Tung. At thattime the area was ruled by five Shan Princes. Notfor long. As a part of Burma, Shan state was soonruled from Yangon and the missionaries were madeto leave. The United States had wanted to use ShanState as a proxy state for its problems with China.This was not to be. The drug running KMT wasalso asked to leave.

The Shan Prince of Keng Tung took his wealthand fled to Chiang Mai. One of the royal family,stayed and his son owned this guest house. Theytoo had paid money to move their wealth fromChina to Burma.

Then Mao Tse Tung had come and many moreof the Thai Yais in China fled to Burma also. Thenthey kept on going all the way down to Maesai andThailand.

With the changes in Burma, the Landlord movedagain, this time back to Maesai, Thailand. Whichwas peaceful, where he had lived for so many yearswhen I finally came there and rented a room in hisguest house. Room 28 and then room 61.

He felt that Americans were ignorant of whattheir government was or was not doing. Commonknowledge it was to him that the US Governmentwas really pissed off. But China with bigger plansheld them back, “hands off”. He chuckled aboutthat.

Warring BeetlesAkha kids collect these horned beetles andhavebeetle fights over the attetative female at hand.

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NutritionWhat its like to live with not enough food? When you ask an Akha family what they gener-ally eat each day when it would appear that theyhave nothing to eat, they claim they live fine onchili peppers, salt and rice. And they are not jok-ing. Many a house has not an egg in one month.Relocations and brute force on the part of the RoyalThai Forestry Department (read SS) have impov-erished them down to the lowest level of survivalthat one could imagine. I go farming with the Akha often. I was initiallyfrustrated with the fact that the girls first left thewater behind, then the next day the pot, then thenext day the food. They to a person howeverthougth it was funny. And this was because nothaving any food was something that was common,not something that you got upset about. Not tak-ing your food to the field was the same to them ashaving forgot and left your comb home or some-thing like that. Day after day they eat greens andhandfulls of rice if they have enough of that. Andthen when they don’t they ration the rice to the chil-dren. Relocated villages also lack in fruit trees and live-

stock. One way that the Ampur took care of thiswas that after relocating Akha villages into tiny littleholes in the bottom lands they would then tellpeople that they could kill anyone else’s livestockif they wandered. Course, since they compiled avillage out of Lisu, Akha and Lahu, it wasn’t hardto capitalize on these hard feelings, one tribe kill-ing another person’s livestock. The cristian villag-ers by far killing the most livestock. A few days and eight water buffalo were dead,then a large sow, and so it went on. To make matters worse there weren’t enoughvegetable seeds. And with garden patches far fromthe huts the vegetables were either plundered oreaten by animals before the owner could tend tothem. Once the harmony of the village has been de-stroyed rebuilding it artificially doesn’t work sogood. In the communities I had been to the govern-ment aid was nearly non existent, with the onlything in evidence being a strip of concrete road hereor there in the last years. Pictured below, mustard greens, rice, rice soupand chilli powder mixed with salt. A meal for ten.

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Vegetables Mah Hkurh grows excellently between coffeeon the ground or up into the trees on vines. Theyare an excellent vegetable cut up and boiled insoups, hard and green, with tiny soft spines. Many fruits and foods that the Akha do havethey can not afford to eat themselves but rather sellthem to get the money they need for other necessi-ties. The Thai school system for one, imposed onthe Akha in many villages, requires all kinds ofschool uniforms, costing hundreds of baht per child,and often one set is not enough. The teachers wantthe parents to buy a couple different color sets fordifferent days of the week, so that their buddies inthe local garment industry can make out, totallywithout regard for the incredible burden this putson the parents. The Akha collect many different kinds of mush-rooms, some they eat, some only the Thais eat.Road side stands in season will be covered with acolorful variety of mushrooms of all sizes andshapes. Mushrooms alone are testimony to the carethe Akha take in protecting their forests.

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Collectable Food Forest nuts called “dturh seeh” arecollected in the high mountains. Coveredin a spiny husk that pierces the fingerspainfully, they must be cleaned and thenhauled back to the village. Many moun-tain locations were close to the borderwhere the Akha had to be careful to col-lect quietly in order to avoid waywardsoldiers from stealing their crop andmore. Mah deh is a squash with tough skinand meat which is chopped up and boiled.Adding sugar makes it into a sweet con-fection for all. Hoh bauh is the rice pot made fromwood that the Akha steam rice in eachmorning very early before the chickenseven get up. Before dawn the bright coalscooking rice can be seen through the hutwalls, smoke curling from the roof.These wooden rice pots have a hole inthe bottom over which a bamboo screenis placed, allowing the heat and steam tocome up through the rice but not allow-ing a grain of rice to escape. This largehoh bauh is for a very big family. Heavy,large grain Akha mountain rice is verynutritious.

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Publishing

Books Delivered 20,000 Akha Children’s alphabet books were de-livered to 189 villages and additional locations. Wewere approximately 20,000 books short even then.In addition to delivering children’s books we de-livered copies of the Akha Journal so that the Akhacould see the pictures. Ah Baw Leeh Gaw from the Akha village SeehLang at Doi Tung, is a major cnotributor of oralhistory and editing. Our next project is publishig of a book on AkhaGeneologies, An Akha Reader that we are re-pub-lishing, a children’s work book, an Akha to Englishand English to Akha handbook as well as a bookon Akha Traditional Medicine. All books printed are also having a portion sentto the Akha men and women who are detained innumerous prisons throughout Thailand

After many repairs and adjustments we were ableto print two Akha books on an old press before itgave out. However we were able to show the po-tential for in house publishing and cost savings.Numerous Akha learned part of the process whichwe will continue with a replacement press that weare now raising money for. If you would like to donate for this new high

speed press to help our publishing work, then pleasecontact us. Thus far we have distributed over 20,000 booksto the Akha villages, from the Akha Journal to analphabet book in Akha language. We have numer-ous other books to publish in Akha language on aregular basis. You may see part of our Akha Tradi-tional Text Preservation Project on line atwww.akha.org under the education section

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Children’s Books

20,000 Alphabet BooksGo Out to 189 villages For a month we just drove, to village af-ter village, explaining how to use and dis-tributing thousands of Akha Alphabet books.The enthusiasm was great to see, kids whohad never before gotten anything getting abook of their own, in their own language, anon partisan script, no conversion necessary!

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Many Books Children and adultsalike from many vil-lages enjoy the Akhabooks and pictures.With some of the bookswe were able to supplypencils as well, a rareitem in an Akha village. For sure not the lastword on books, this firstdelivery gave us a goodidea of what the de-mand was in the vil-lages and how long itwould take. As it waswe ran short of booksand pencils.

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More Books and Teachers Many more books in Akhalanguage are needed, as wellas the training of Akha teach-ers. We seek donors both tohelp with printing press needs,fuel, paper, pencils and teachertraining. We also welcomepeople to ride along and helpus distribute books in the vil-lages. For the Akha alphabet bookwe were lacking 20,000 cop-ies. An Akha reader, children’swork book are to follow, withstory and history books beingworked on as well.

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ity, wisdom, and some kind of recognition that onehas a purpose in life? What is lost to a country thatencourages people to lose their direction in life? Today, I would like to just talk about languageloss from only one of these perspectives, the per-spective of the culture. Because losing your lan-guage is, technically, an issue in the relationshipbetween language and culture. What is the rela-tionship between language and culture? Is it likethe relationship of my handkerchief and my trou-sers: you can take it out and throw it away and putanother handkerchief in? Or is there some kind ofmore substantive relationship between a languageand culture? Even there, there are various perspec-tives. There is an “outsider,” often disciplinary, per-spective as we anthropologists and linguists sit andthink about it. When we consider the relationshipbetween language and culture, it occurs to us asoutsiders, not being members of those cultures,what the relationship might be and then we try togather insightful comments, even from the outside.There is a kind of lexical or, I would say, an in-dexical relationship between language and culture.A language long associated with the culture is bestable to express most easily, most exactly, mostrichly, with more appropriate over-tones, the con-cerns, artifacts, values, and interests of that cul-ture. That is an important characteristic of the rela-tionship between language and culture, the indexi-cal relationship. It is not a perfect relationship. Every languagegrows; every culture changes. Some words hangon after they are no longer culturally active. “LittleMiss Muffet sat on a tuffet eating her curds andwhey.” Well, who knows what a tuffet is any more,and you can not find anybody who knows whatcurds and whey are any more without doing re-search. Those are frozen traces. Even if there isoften a good relationship between the words of thelanguage and the concerns of the culture, there aremore important relationships between language andculture than the indexical one. The most important relationship between lan-guage and culture that gets to the heart of what islost when you lose a language is that most of theculture is in the language and is expressed in thelanguage. Take it away from the culture, and youtake away its greetings, its curses, its praises, itslaws, its literature, its songs, its riddles, its prov-erbs, its cures, its wisdom, its prayers. The culturecould not be expressed and handed on in any otherway. What would be left?

What Do You Lose When You Lose YourLanguage?

Joshua Fishman The first paper that I wrote in 1948 on nativelanguages had to do with what is the impact of bi-lingualism on students. There were still parents thenwho were concerned that if their children learnedanother language it would ruin their English ac-cent. If you would hear the tones of another lan-guages every time they spoke English, how wouldthey get a job and what would people think of them?Today, forty-five years later, we are still not “home”at convincing public opinion and the authorities thatit is worth having all the languages we have today.Therefore, I want to start with this question, “Whatis lost when a language is lost?” It is amazing howpeople are uncomfortable about answering thatquestion. I remember my mother always telling me,“When you start off a talk, make sure people knowwhat the question is and ask a good question. Agood question is worth everything.” And I wouldsay to her, “Ma, you know, Americans, they startoff a conference with a joke. You have to tell a jokefor people to know that you’re about to speak?”She said, “Jokes? Ask a good question” That is anold Jewish tradition, if you have a good question,you have something worthwhile to worry about. Attitudes toward language-loss depend on yourperspective. When a language is lost, you mightlook at that from the perspective of the individual.Many individuals suppressed their language andpaid the price for it in one way or another — thatremaining, fumbling insecurity when you are notquite sure whether you have the metaphor right inthe expression that you are going to use and youknow the one that comes to mind is not from thelanguage that you are speaking at the moment. So,there is an individual price, in every sense. You can also speak from the point of view ofthe culture lost. The culture has lost its language.What is lost when the culture is so dislocated thatit loses the language which is traditionally associ-ated with it? That is a serious issue for NativeAmericans. We can ask it from the national pointof view. What is lost by the country when the coun-try loses its languages? We have had this very hap-hazard linguistic book-keeping where you pretendnothing is lost — except the language. It is just alittle language. But, after all, a country is just thesum of all of its creative potential. What does thecountry lose when it loses individuals who are com-fortable with themselves, cultures that are authen-tic to themselves, the capacity to pursue sensitiv-60

The Akha Journal

When you are talking about the language, mostof what you are talking about is the culture. Thatis, you are losing all those things that essentiallyare the way of life, the way of thought, the way ofvaluing, and the human reality that you are talkingabout. There is another deep relationship between lan-guage and culture, the symbolic relationship. Thatis, the language stands for that whole culture. Itrepresents it in the minds of the speakers and theminds of outsiders. It just stands for it and sums itup for them — the whole economy, religion, healthcare system, philosophy, all of that together is rep-resented by the language. And, therefore, any timewhen we are at outs with some other culture, webegin to say snide things about the language. “Oh,it sounds so harsh. And it sounds so cruel” becausewe think its speakers are cruel or it sounds so pooror it sounds so primitive because we think they areprimitive. The language symbolizes for us the wholerelationship. Actually I do not care much for this presentationof the outside view that I have made to you. It is ahighly intellectualized abstraction. If you talk topeople about what the language means to them, ifyou talk to members of the culture, they do notmention indexicality. They do not say anythingabout its symbolism for the whole ball of wax. Theytalk in totally different terms. And this tells youwhat they think they lose. They tell you some thingsabout the sanctity of the language. Sanctity is not alittle thing to throw around. At least, I have neverfelt so. Now sometimes you do not exactly mean holy— holy, holy, holy. But nevertheless, when peopletell you that there is a cultural view of how thatlanguage came about, that it came to be when theearth was created, when the worlds were created,when heaven and earth was created, when human-ity was created, they are giving you what you mightthink of as a myth, but the importance of it is be-yond its truth value. That is actually the definitionof a myth — something that is so important thatyou hold on to it because it has an importance be-yond its truth. They may have the view that it wascreated before the creation of the world, as whitefire or black fire. Every time the Lord spoke out, itcame out as white fire or black fire in their ownethnocultural letters. That may sound ridiculous toyou, but it is a sense of sanctity. People tell youthings like that; ordinary people in ordinary NativeAmerican groups will tell you things like that. They

will tell you things that have to do with the greatCreator. They will tell you about the morality thatis in the language. Morality is, after all, just sanc-tity in operation. The things you have to do to begood, to be a member in good standing, to meetyour commitments to the creator. Some languagesthat are holy in themselves, and other languageshave brought holy thoughts and holy dictums andholy commandments. People tell you metaphors ofholiness. This is the most common thing, the mostcommon expression of holiness that people tell youabout their language. And that means they are go-ing to lose the metaphor about the language beingthe soul of the people The language being the mindof the people. The language being the spirit of thepeople. Those are just metaphors, but they are notinnocent metaphors. There is something deeply holyimplied, thereby, and that is what would be lost.That sense of a holy, a component of holiness thatpervades people’s life the way the culture pervadestheir life, through the language. Another dimension of what people tell you aboutwhen they tell you about language and culture iswhy they like their language, why they say it isimportant to them. They tell you about kinship.They tell you that their mother spoke the languageto them, their father spoke the language, their broth-ers, the sisters, the uncles, the aunts, the whole com-munity. All the ones who loved them spoke the lan-guage to them when they were children. Just be-fore their mother died she spoke the language tothem. All the endearments, all the nurturing, that iskinship is tied into a living organism of a commu-nity by people who know each other, and they knowthey belong together. That is what the old sociolo-gists call “gemeinschaft.” We belong together. Wehave something in common. We are tied to eachother through the language. That precious sense ofcommunity is not a thing to lose just as is the senseof holiness. Woe to the people who have lost thesense of holiness, where nothing matters, and woeto the people who have lost a commitment one tothe other. And that is what people tell you aboutwhen they tell you about their language, and that isneither the anthropological nor any other exteriorview of the relationship between language and cul-ture. It is not an intellectualization, because it is soemotionally suffused and focused on the internalexperience. Another thing people tell you about their lan-guage is that they have a sense of responsibility for

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it. They should do something for it. That is a rarer,but not altogether rare, aspect of what people tellyou about their language. “I should do something.I should do more for it. I haven’t done the rightthing by it. I’m glad I’m working for it,” as if therewere a kind of a moral commitment here and amoral imperative. It is a value. It is kinship-related.And, if I am a decent person, I owe something to itfor what it has given me — love and nurturance,connection. These three things taken together, this sense ofsanctity, this sense of kinship, and this sense ofmoral imperative, are not a bad componential analy-sis of positive ethnolinguistic consciousness. Peopleare positively conscious of their language, withouthaving taken a course in linguistics to spoil it forthem, to intellectualize it for them. When they arepositively ethnolinguistically conscious, they tellyou deeply meaningful things to them. That is whatthey would lose if they lost the language. Theywould lose a member of the family, an article offaith, and a commitment in life. Those are not littlethings for people to lose or for a culture to lose. And so, therefore, it is no surprise that the gen-eralized topic of this conference, “reversing lan-guage shift” or “stabilizing indigenous languages,”represents an ideal for literally millions of peopleon all continents. That is a good thing to realize.Small Native American communities might thinkthat they are the only ones out there in the cold thathave to worry about this. That is not so. There aremillions upon millions of people around the worldthat are working for their language on all conti-nents. In Europe, Irish, Basque, Catalan, andFrisian, just to name obvious cases, are threatened. I remember when I was in Egypt, a Copt com-ing up to me and, realizing what I was interested in(people have to feel you are sympathetic before theytell you deeply painful things), told me how theywere working on reviving Coptic and had madelittle books for their children in Coptic. He won-dered if I wanted to see them. Coptic has not beenspoken vernacularly for thousands of years and theywere trying to revive it. I also had conversationsrecently with Afrikaans speakers. Now that SouthAfrica has set apartheid aside, the language mostlikely to suffer is Afrikaans. English is going to bethe link language. Nine or ten other African lan-guages are going to be declared as national lan-guages. The language that will probably come outholding the short end of the stick is the language ofthe previous regime, the language that has a sym-bolic association with apartheid. That is not the only

symbolic association you should have with it; how-ever, Afrikaans is already losing status at all levels.In Asia and the Pacific those aboriginal and Aus-tralian languages that have survived are now hav-ing much “rescue work” being done on them. Oneexample is Maori, an indigenous language of NewZealand. I recently met with a visitor from therewho told me that there are now six hundred schoolsof a nursery-kindergarten, child-care nature to getchildren who are not Maori-speaking to be takencare of day after day by Maori-speaking older folks.There are now an increasing number of elemen-tary schools where they are continuing Maori lan-guage instruction. So on every inhabited continent, not just immi-grant North America, people share concerns overindigenous languages. You can meet with repre-sentatives of the Greek church and of the Arme-nian church in the United States, and they will tellyou about their efforts. They ask “Can you be GreekOrthodox without knowing Greek?” To them thisis an American aberration; it never happened be-fore in Greek history. “Can you be Armenian Or-thodox without knowing Armenian?” Armenianshave a saint associated with their language. That ishow holy they feel Armenian is. The alphabet is ofsaintly, sanctified origin. But in America the ques-tion has arisen “Can you be Armenian without thelanguage?” Spanish, which is a colonial language,has had much language loss associated with it, par-ticularly in New York City. There is now an inter-generational study that confirms it, following upthe same people and their children. “Can you be Hispanic without speaking Span-ish?” It is a new question to ask, and the truth isthat everybody now has a nephew or a niece whodoes not speak any Spanish. Something is felt tobe deeply wrong there, and the sense of loss is verydeep. So members of indigenous language communi-ties wanting to revive languages, wanting tostrengthen languages, wanting to further languages,are in good company. They are in the company ofmany people who have tried very hard to do some-what similar and sometimes very similar things, andthere are some successes to talk about, although onthe whole, relatively speaking, it is not a good busi-ness to be in. It is never good, my mother told me,to be poor and old and sick. And it is never good tobe a member of a small, weak, and economicallypoor culture. But we really cannot pick our moth-ers, and we cannot pick our cultures. If you workfor your culture, you have a sense of gratification

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that is at least a partial compensation. And this isbeing done to such an extent all over the world thatI think it is high time we got together to share ex-periences, to share failures, because it is importantto know about failures and to share successes. Thesuccesses keep us from burning out. And it is im-portant to know the failures because if you do notknow the failures then you repeat them. If you donot know that something has been tried time andtime again and has not worked out, then you do ityourself because you do not know it has failed andit sounds good to you. There are a number of rea-sons I think it is important for us to start out realiz-ing that language restoration is, at best, a very hardjob. There are many reasons why there are so manymore failures than successes in stabilizing weaklanguages. First of all, whenever a weak culture isin competition with a strong culture, it is an unfairmatch. The odds are not encouraging for the weak. They never are. Whatever mistakes are made,there is not enough margin for error to recover fromthem. It is like a poor man investing on the stockmarket. If you do not hit it off, you do not haveanything to fall back on. Small weak cultures, sur-rounded by dominant cultures, dependent on adominant culture, and dislocated by those very cul-tures, and yet needing those cultures, are not to beenvied. They have undertaken to resist the biggestthing around, and frequently, they begin to do sowhen it is too late. There is a kind of resistance to the very ideathat something is happening to their language. “Oh,it’ll pick up. Oh, it happened before. Oh, theyounger generation will come around. When theyget older, they’ll start talking it.” Doing it too late,can be too late in several ways. First of all, it canbe too late biologically. That is, sometimes cultures“catch on” to that something should be done whenthere are no longer people around of child-bearingage. The older people around may even be talkingthe language, and enjoying it, and joking in it, tell-ing stories in it, and doing all the traditional thingsin it, but they are not likely to have any more chil-dren. In terms of a kind of self-sustaining, inter-generational link, it is now too late for the usualthings. You might still try something, but it is likefreezing an embryo and then trying to bring it backa hundred years later. There are some unusual things one can still tryto do for a language that no longer has a naturalgenerational flow, but, in most cases, it is too late

because those unusual things are really very un-usual and really hard to do. It is usually too late ideologically or, if you like,culturally, by then, because a new modus vivendihas been worked out. When languages die, peopledo not stop talking. Cultures do not fold up andsilently steal off into the night. They go on and theytalk the new language. They go on in the other lan-guage; they work out a new relationship betweenlanguage and culture. The relationship is detach-able; it is dislocated; it takes a lot of time; and ittakes a lot of doing to once more have a tradition-ally associated language, having once lost one.Meanwhile, you have another language that hasalready entered the tent. People have said, “Well,we can be, whatever, Chippewa, Seneca, Blackfoot,whatever, we can be it in English.” That is anotherlanguage-culture relationship, and, because of thatnew relationship, it becomes very difficult to bringback and to strengthen the old language, which isalready undergoing so many stresses. Another reason why language restoration is rela-tively unsuccessful, with all the commitment that Ihave mentioned to you, despite all the sense of ho-liness, despite all the sense of kinship, despite allthe sense of commitment, is because people do notknow what to do. It is like fighting a disease with-out having an idea of what to do. People generallydo not understand the difference between, for ex-ample, mother tongue acquisition, mother tongueuse, and mother tongue transmission. They are notthe same thing. So, they frequently settle for ac-quiring the language not as a mother tongue, butduring the school experience. By then it is not themother tongue, because they already have anothermother tongue. And schools are not inter-genera-tional language transmission agencies. Schools just last a certain number of hours anda certain number of years and then, after that, theyare over. How is the language learned there goingto be transmitted to the next generation? So becauseof this confusion, having devoted a number of hoursper week, per year, at school for a certain numberof years, people frequently conclude, because thechildren are bright and pick up language, that theyhave done their bit. But they have not started a system going that isself-renewing, which is self-replenishing becauseafter school there are many years until that childhas his or her children and could pass the languageon. That is really a terribly important issue, to real-ize that the school itself is not going to transmit it

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to the next generation because the society has notset up a transmission mechanism that picks up af-ter school. School is a wonderful agency, and a cru-cial agency for particular aspects of language use,like literacy, versatility, or formality. But that isneither acquisition of the mother tongue nor trans-mission of the mother tongue. Finally, not know-ing what to do and not having things like this clari-fied for them, people start altering all kinds of thingssimultaneously and that is about as desirable as tak-ing all kinds of medicines simultaneously becauseyou might hit upon one that might help you. Butthink about all the other things that are going onthere that are expensive to do, which are disappoint-ing when they do not work out. So what to do is really a terribly important issueand what to do when is a very important issue. Forexample, you might have someone suggest, Lis-ten, the most important newspaper in this countryis The New York Times. Why do not we take outfull-page ads in Navajo in The New York Timesand that will show everybody that we’ve got a verydecent language here. That should really clinch it.We are always using their language. Let them seeour language when they open up their newspaper. Well, it is just not the right thing to do. It is nota productive thing to do. The most productive thingto do really depends on the stage that you are at.Or the nature of the impairment or, if you like, thenature of the threat or the seriousness of the dan-ger. Is the problem, for example, which is currentlyworrisome, that the mother tongue does not haverecognition in the inter-ethnic work sphere? Thatis a problem among the Pennsylvania German(Pennsylvania Dutch) today. There is no more landto buy in Lancaster County. A good proportion ofthe youngsters marry and must go off to Kansas orsome other place where there is still land, or theygo to work in some factory in town. When theywork at the factory in town, since they all knowEnglish anyway, they talk English to each other,not only to others working in the factory, and theelders are very concerned. If that is the problem with the language, thenyou are in a certain stage of dislocation that is notvery far from the transmission stage. Everybodymay still be acquiring the language in the orthodoxcommunity as their mother tongue and using it intheir regular services, but of the maybe four to fivethousand languages in the world, the majority arenot being used in the inter-ethnic work force. Themajority even of those that are hale and hearty, so

you have to see that problem in perspective. Is the problem that the mother tongue is neitherused in the school nor in classroom education norin literacy? Well, that is a more serious problembecause literacy provides a community or it cre-ates access to communication across time andspace. It creates a community over time and space.We can talk to people who are no longer alivethrough literacy. We can talk to people not yet aliveand far, far away through literacy. There is also aprestige factor when non-literate languages are intouch with literate languages, and the school is theliteracy-conveying agency of this era. It was notalways; it was not everywhere, but again I wouldlike to assure you that most of the healthy languagesof this world today are not (or not strongly) relatedto literacy and are not considered exceptionallyschool-worthy. That does not mean it is no prob-lem because maybe it is a problem wherever youare. It definitely means there is support for acquir-ing literacy in some other language and that meansyou have got to be able to bear the strain betweenthe language of literacy and the language of home,intimacy, love, and sanctity. You have to be able tobear that strain, that this one language, which isnot yours, is the one of literacy and that one, whichis yours, is not the language of literacy. It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintainminority languages when the print and non-printmedia are impinging on them more than ever be-fore. If the lack of literacy in your language is aparticular weakening factor, then literacy must bedeveloped in your language. But it will not be trans-mitted to the next generation automatically. Thefunny thing about literacy, even in languages ofgreat literacy, is that every generation starts off withzero literacy. Even though their parents are liter-ate. I know there are two percent of parents whocome from Harvard graduate schools, whose chil-dren start off literate even before kindergarten, butthat is not yet a wide-spread phenomenon. Everygeneration as a rule starts off illiterate and has tobe made literate from ground zero. That is not theway mother tongues work. Mother tongues are self-sustaining and a new generation does not wait un-til it goes to school to get its mother tongue. It usu-ally gets its mother tongue at home in the commu-nity, in the neighborhood, among the loved ones— the ones shaping the identity of the child. And ifthat is what your language lacks, then that is a veryserious problem indeed if you want to hand it on toanother generation as a vernacular. But something

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