Most North American Indigenous languages will be extinct by 2050

Evidence

Finally, at the center of WELRP’s cultural work is language. While most North American Indigenous languages are expected to be extinct by the year 2050, the Anishinaabeg language is one of approximately five expected to survive. That is because there are an estimated 50,000 speakers, most of whom live the process of reaffirming the traditional way of life and its ceremony, dances, songs, and prayers to which the elders refer. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 679

Categorization

• QUESTION: Worth chasing: why Anishinaabeg specifically among ~five survivors — speaker count alone, or active revitalization programs like WELRP’s?
• XREF: connects to: Language restoration is tied to on-the-land cultural practice and generational succession — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 680; Boarding school language bans nearly erased three hundred and fifty Indigenous American tongues — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 178; Language loss threatens biological diversity they encode — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 471 (+7 more)

Broader Connections

• Boarding school language bans nearly erased three hundred and fifty Indigenous American tongues #corroborates (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 178
• Sweetgrass and the Mohawk language vanished together from the Mohawk Valley #exemplifies (0.85) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 933
• Contemporary languages are newly conscious of their own possible disappearance #expands (0.82) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 349
• Language loss threatens biological diversity they encode #expands (0.80) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 471
• Languages lacking economic support are slowly disappearing #corroborates (0.80) — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 578
• Language death can narrow an entire people’s worldview to nine speakers #exemplifies (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 180
• Boarding school coercion directly caused an entire language’s near extinction #corroborates (0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 181
• Unwritten oral traditions can be destroyed more totally than literate cultures #exemplifies (0.78) — , The Rod and the Child, 1479
• Western literary forms replaced indigenous genres down to the level of language itself #corroborates (0.75) — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 1140