How come
NAD has never publicly apologized to the Indian tribes in America when their mostly-white dominated Deaf culture at the time unwittingly
helped with eradication process of some of the tribes' Native American Indian Sign Language by
forcing them to choose between ASL and ISL?
Both KPISL and PISL have become endangered languages.
KPISL is not much used among the pueblo’s younger generation owing to
their learning school English, ASL, or signs that follow the spoken
English word order. Before the 1990s, American Indian
Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing tribal members usually left home to attend a
residential school for the deaf located far away (Baker, 1997; Lane,
Hoffmeister, & Bahan, 1996).
At the school, there was usually no
formal instruction of American Indian or American Indian culture and
signs; only Deaf culture and ASL were taught, leading many American
Indian students to join the “Deaf World.” After graduation, the students
had to make difficult decisions about where and how to establish
themselves: on the pueblos with hearing families and friends, in urban
areas with other Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing people, or in border towns with
limited access to both groups.
How come there were no efforts by Deaf educators at the time to help deaf Indians in deaf schools on helping preserve their Indian Sign Language heritage in the process and encourage them to maintain that contact and relationship with their Indian elders on ISL? How come no public apologies by those schools? No apologies from NAD on behalf of the schools across the United States, including Gallaudet University? Maybe it's time that NAD and other deaf institutions make the effort to apologize for helping with some of the eradication of deaf Indians' own ISL when they were forced to choose and with no effort to help them preserve and maintain their own ISL identity? Perhaps NAD does not need to apologize? Should any apology be needed at all? After all, there are some culpability involved here and not exclusively just the "government" of which I agree played an almost exclusive role in helping ISL and its signing heritage disappear. Regardless, should an apology be in order from NAD on behalf of deaf schools who may have played a part of the role?
6 comments:
I not suprised about NAD issues. They never apologized because The members of NAD themeselves are mostly of the WHITE people. NAD just elected voters for a new candidates board of NAD which a very ignorance people than previously NAD board.
It is an cruel conundrum in that ASL users in their drive to protect what they have eliminate other sign forms. A sort of linguistic genocide to protect the status quo, but, indefensible.
I also ask if whether or not groups that focus mainly on oral/aural approach in deaf education should be expected to apologize for Alexander Graham Bell and oral/aural programs supposedly playing a major part in trying to eradicate ASL or signed languages.
I don't think anyone should apologize. This is the past. Times were different then. There is nothing we can do to change the past. It is better to move on and focus on today; taking advantage of the knowledge, talents, and tools available to help us progress.
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It's a really simple process even if deaf schools weren't trying, knowingly so, to eradicate some of the ISL away from deaf Indians at the time by apologizing as the first to take that step forward. And perhaps begin acknowledging how some of ISL have helped contribute to the signs that we see in ASL today. What better way to start the process through acknowledgement of their existence? Everybody else wants to be defensive about it instead of seeing the bigger picture. You see, deaf Indians already had a language to begin with and that was ISL. With AGBell there was no language to be eradicated but rather denied another kind of language (the spoken language but not provided the visual language).
Your points are well taken. Thank you!
“I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone else. Anyone who oppressed Indian Sign Language users 150 years ago would have to be *much* older than I.”
Actually, trying to eradicate a language was *exactly* what AGBell wanted to do. You eradicate a language in two ways, either by killing all users or by preventing users from passing their language on to the next generation. The latter is mostly what AGB advocated, although he also wanted to use eugenics practices to eradicate deaf people, too.
Your “no language” comment is arrogant and very condescending. ASL is not visual English.
V-
The no language comment I said was in reference to the English language (written and spoken). Nothing arrogant about it except your misunderstanding. I never said anything about ASL being a visual English. That'd be entirely incorrect. SEE would fit that category.
There is no doubt that Deaf Indian culture was harmed by denying their culture and ISL who was forced to choose between ASL and its culture, and ISL and its Indian culture. The bigger question I left at the end of my blog is that should they apologize?
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