Native-speaking Northern Arapaho elders produced bilingual booklets for their reservation schools that, due to their ephemeral nature and local context, provided access to intimate information about their producers and contexts. These booklets provide the best example within the culture of how traditional practices of oral performance…

A study examined Spanish-speaking children's attitudes about being and staying bilingual. Classroom observations and interviews with 15 fifth-grade students, 12 parents, and 2 teachers at a Texas elementary school indicated that despite being in a supportive bilingual environment, students believed they would have to struggle to maintain their…

Examines the potential for autonomous learning programs to address the problems of first (minority) language loss. The article outlines personal, political, and practical arguments for preventing such loss during second-language acquisition; describes an autonomous program in Canada addressing these issues; and discusses the implications of these…

Examines the history of White-Indian relationships in Latin America and North America and the corresponding fluctuations in loanword borrowing into English from Native American languages. Explores 20th-century attitudes toward Native Americans and the impact of these attitudes on borrowing today, particularly in Alaska where Natives are resisting…

For the past four years, the American Indian Ambassadors Program has selected American Indians to participate in a year-long leadership training program. The program focuses on mentorship, personal inquiry into one's medicine or power, dialog with leading Native decision makers, community-based projects, and communication-skills training. Profiles…

Describes traditional Indian education and how it differs from the Euro-American model by utilizing example instead of indoctrination. Notes that experiential and service learning include many key elements of Native approaches. Describes programs developed by the National Indian Youth Leadership Project that combine these approaches with…

Older computer applications are often caught in cycles where maintenance and operation become increasingly expensive, yet replacement costs are prohibitive. Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a strategic approach toward enhancing an existing alumni/fund-raising/gifts system to extend its life and avoid the capital costs associated…

Three psycho-educational principles are outlined (additive bilingual enrichment principle, interdependence principle, and sufficient communicative interactive principle) to illustrate research on the maintenance of Frisian among native speakers and the development of Frisian fluency among native Dutch speakers. (Author/CB)

As teacher, musician, and performing artist, John Stokes has traveled widely in his efforts to promote awareness of the natural world and the integrity of indigenous peoples. In this interview, Stokes discusses life experiences that led him to establish the Tracking Project, a program that has taught traditional tracking and survival skills to…

A two-year holistic transition training program for persons with learning disabilities in Israel was carried out in a residential setting and included vocational training, activities of daily living, educational activities, and personal adjustment counseling. Follow-up two years after program completion indicated that trainees were generally…

An augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention to increase vocabulary acquisition by 5 children (ages 7-9) with mild to moderate mental disabilities was evaluated. The AAC communication procedure resulted in higher rates of vocabulary and sentence selection for each of the children; improvement persisted above baseline levels…

Presents findings from case studies of adult Canadians who successfully maintained the French second-language skills they first learned at school. Results suggested that higher initial proficiency and amount of second-language use were both positively related to the level of retained proficiency. Subjects were virtually unanimous on seeing regular…

Many American Indian students are alienated from schooling by the obvious disparities and conflicts between language usage in the oral tradition of their communities and that required in written academic discourse. A community-based language model used with Lakota college students empowers students by teaching critical writing that fuses…

Discusses the influences of mass media and other communication technologies on small linguistic communities using examples from the Catalan and Occitan/Aranes communities of Spain. Highlights include hardware, linguistic software, national character sets and sorting, spelling checkers, automatic translation, multilingual software, networking, and…

An independent activity engagement program, developed for institutionalized people with mental handicaps, included an adapted watch to provide auditory or visual cues at preset times, a box with pictorial cards representing familiar activities, and reinforcement. The program was suitable for the two adult participants but they continued to rely on…