By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho, jayek (Hello, everyone),
It’s been a busy spring in the Language Department. We had an awesome turnout of around 70 people for our Winter Storytelling event. Everyone seemed to have a good time. Over a hundred people joined us online as well.
April 3 was the start of a new Beginner Language Class every Thursday from 5-7 p.m. This class will be taught by Shelly Watson and hosted at the Cultural Heritage Center. This will be a six-week course. We are also looking at hosting another family/children’s course in the near future.
We are currently having an online conversational course every Wednesday from 3:30-4:30 p.m. This course focuses on students getting used to hearing the language and becoming comfortable vocalizing the language. Often, students are a little shy when first speaking the language, but the more they hear and speak it, the easier it will become. If you are interested in the conversational course, send an email to [email protected] with Wednesday conversational course in the subject line. We originally planned on doing this for just six weeks, but due to the renewed interest, we are going to continue this course into the foreseeable future.
We also have an in-person conversational course every Thursday from 3-4:30 p.m. at the Cultural Heritage Center.
April 14 we will host a lunch and learn at the Cultural Heritage Center from 12:15-12:45 p.m. If you are interested in attending, let us know. We do a quarterly lunch and learn. Often this tends to be geared towards Tribal employees, but all are welcome. Just let us know you are attending so we can plan accordingly.
We recently applied for and received an Endangered Language Fund Grant, which allows us to host an eight-week immersion program where we speak and use the language all day and all week. If a person attends all eight weeks, they will have 320 hours of speaking and hearing the language. The grant allows us to pay two interns to be part of the program. In years past, we partnered with the Education Department to host one additional intern. This may be a possibility as well this year.
We welcome others who would like to join us in this endeavor. If you would like to come, let us know. The last two years we have had eight to nine Tribal members join us for the whole time. We also had one join us for three weeks. If you can only come for a day or two, we would consider allowing you to attend as long as it isn’t a distraction. I say distraction because we are going to be going fast. We will review many of the countless verbal combinations and then we will get right into speaking and using the language. That being said, someone could definitely get a lot from coming. This is our third year. We saw incredible growth from our students from the beginning of year one to the end and then year two at the beginning to the end. Some came in with limited to no knowledge scoring around 20% to 30% on our intro test and 75%-85% on the exit test.
April 29 we will be hosting a community game night at the Cultural Heritage Center at 5 p.m. We are asking members to bring a dish to share as we will do this potluck style. RSVP to [email protected] with the name of your dish and how many will be attending. For the first game night, we plan on playing dice and bowl. Come on out and join us for a fun evening.