O'odham, like many other tribes,
when they talk about language and how they got language,
they talk about their origin,
how the people came to be.
[O'odham music]
When people were created,
they were given different things by the creator
and things like thoughtfulness, you know, to be able
to think and your other senses and so forth.
And then one of the things that people were given
as they were created was language.
And so all these things that we were given, it's
where we get the understanding that they were gifts
and so O'odham like other tribes,
think of language in that way.
You know, that is something sacred
and that you take care of it and
you have a responsibility to it
in a lot of different ways.
My name is Ofelia Zepeda
and I'm a Regents Professor
in the Department of Linguistics.
And I'm also the Director of the American Indian
Language Development Institute,
also here at the University.
You know, most people think of languages,
you know, just to use for communication.
So of course, that's very important.
But for tribal communities, you know, there's so many,
so much that is embedded
in the language.
[Native American drumming]
It sort of holds
a lot of the traditional knowledge
that is simply still passed
down or around orally.
You know, so you don't have the luxury of
going to go find it in some reference book or whatever,
you have to talk to someone,
someone who knows that knowledge.
[Speaking American Indian tribal language]
Language
is always in there, even if it's in the form of
songs and
speeches, orations, or prayers.
So there's a lot you know that that the language
is sort of responsible for in a community.
Situation that you look at
when a language is labeled endangered
is when there are
no speakers coming up.
And so O'odham is in this situation.
We don't have children or young people.
speaking O'odham or learning O'odham
in the home.
And many,
if not all, you know, indigenous languages
in the United States fall
in that category.
The other question, though, is like
why, you know, that is occurring?
and we just look at societal change
within native communities.
Some, you know, within the family, some within society,
a social organization of a tribe.
And then, of course, big institutions like schools
are big factors in
in language loss and for for language communities
and tribes to be on that endangered
language list.
[Speaking O■odham tribal language]
Jonathan Rios,
we are the Rios family.
So my father is Tohono O'odham
and my mother is Navajo.
I grew up on the Navajo Nation with my mom's parents,
which are my grandparents who rarely spoke English.
Little if they did.
So the household, we spoke Navajo every day.
I really wasn't exposed to the Tohono O'odham language,
and it wasn't till later on in college
and I started working for the tribe that I started,
I guess, being more in contact with the language.
But I want to take that to the next level and
and really show and teach my kids
Tohono O'odham, because that's part of who they are as well.
This past year, our community college
with the Tohono O'odham nation they're offering classes
and I started taking those classes.
I will say it's harder trying to learn a language
later on in life rather than you learning
your language from the beginning at such a young age.
I think what worries me
most about languages being endangered.
I think it's all indigenous language
is just to be able to speak
with our loved ones.
I grew up in a family that spoke Navajo.
And to this day, when I go home,
I mainly speak Navajo because that's what my mother speaks.
My grandparents speak,
my aunts and my uncles
and even the little kids.
We're very fortunate to be homeschooling.
I know that not all families are able to do that,
but for us, we're able to, and I think that's one
advantage that we have is that our kids are at home with us.
And so my husband and I really take it seriously
to speak our Navajo
and Tohono O'odham languages within our home.
We also do an online
class with our boys
where they're exposed to other kids
and the and the teacher leads in the O'odham language.
What I like about taking the O'odham class was because
I got to see a lot of other kids and I got to learn
the language and our teacher made it really fun.
My favorite word in Tohono O'odham was 'S-ke:g Tash'
[interviewer] And what does that mean?
uh, "good day".
The fun thing was about her reading
Tohono O'odham books.
[inaudible]
As a child,
my first language was Tohono O'odham.
I grew up in a generation when
that was much more common.
Myself and all my siblings
learned English once we attended school,
and most of us attended school fairly
late, that is, we were older
before we ever went to school.
I went to a junior college first.
And from there, I transferred to Arizona State University
just for one year before coming here.
But one thing that I was really interested in
at that time as a young person
was to know how to read and write the language.
I'm not sure why I wanted to do that,
but I know that was something I wanted to do.
And there were actually like only two or three books.
one was a dictionary, one was a collection
of traditional stories that were written in O'odham.
And I had those books and I would look at the O'odham
and stare at it for, you know, long periods of time.
And I couldn't figure it out.
I didn't know why I couldn't read it.
I just assumed that I could read it because I can speak it.
But then I figured out,
you have to be taught how to read and write,
just like you were taught, how to read and write English.
Well early on of course, some of the barriers
which we still have now, actually
and not just for O'odham but other indigenous languages,
is that we still don't have a lot of materials
and resources for the classroom.
The O'odham nation now
has an O'odham Language Center
where a lot of that work
is happening and will continue to happen
because that center serves
the whole nation,
the whole O'odham Nation.
I'm so appreciative of the staff at the community college
because they're understanding and they
they're really taking this step by step to teach us
as as a beginners, you know, to really know and understand
the language and making it an easy transition.
[Tohono O'odham music]
In recent years,
there has been more interest by young adults
to study O'odham and learn O'odham.
It's sort of like young people
who want to affirm who they are, acknowledging
their background, their culture and their history and so forth.
We have a lot of
generations and our ancestors that worked hard
to preserve that language and, you know,
we want to do what we can to help preserve this language
as well for the future generations.