Language Healers - Native Americans Revitalizing Native Languages

Streaming video - 2014

Heenetiineyoo3eihiiho' (Language Healers) is a documentary that tells the story of Native Americans who are striving to revitalize their languages. From Alaska to Oklahoma and Wisconsin to Montana, we witness stories about the importance of saving Native American languages and meet some of the people who are working hard to heal these national treasures. Language Healers is one of the first films to focus upon the work the broader Native community is doing now to revitalize their languages.. We learn about the importance of Native languages and cultures in Alaska from a Yup’ik dog musher and a Tlingit carver of wood and metal. The film then takes us to a school in Wisconsin where we hear the story of a seventh grade girl who was rece...ntly punished for speaking a few words of the Menominee language. We learn more about the fight against language loss through visiting a Euchee (Yuchi) immersion school in Oklahoma where only four fluent elder speakers remain. We also meet National Geographic Fellow and Swarthmore College linguistics professor K. David Harrison who introduces us to his innovative online talking dictionaries project for Indigenous languages. Finally, we travel to Montana where an inventive Arapaho professor, Neyooxet Greymorning, has been perfecting a method to quickly save Native languages.. more