By Geoffrey Shamah
Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized Indigenous tribes, each with its own unique set of customs, cultures and languages. As generations have gradually assimilated into U.S. culture, English has taken over as their dominant language, especially in tribes close to large metropolitan areas.
This assimilation was not by accident but by design and even force. Since the early 1800s, the U.S. government has enforced harsh and strict policies meant to “civilize” Native people and create a culturally and linguistically homogeneous America.
The effects of these policies are still felt today as the number of speakers of many Indigenous languages are hitting record lows.
For Sommer Lopez, president of the Young River People’s Council and a sophomore at Arizona State University, learning the language of her tribes means much more than speaking the same words as her ancestors. It is a way to reconnect with her Indigenous heritage.
It means “reclaiming my identity because it was taken from us, it was beaten out of us,” she said. “And I think that I owe that to my ancestors.”
While the number of native speakers of Indigenous languages has dwindled over the years, Gen Z tribal members are bringing new life to their traditional dialects and connecting with their Native roots by participating in language and cultural classes and encouraging others to do the same.
Lopez has family lineage in the Akimel O’odham, San Carlos Apache and Mandan Arikara Hidatsa tribes, but is the most involved with the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, where she went to school and still participates in the local government. The Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community is comprised of two distinct Native American tribes, each with a language of its own: the Akimel O’odham (Pima) and the Xalychidom Piipaash (Maricopa).
“The language is definitely dying. But I see that there are a lot of efforts nowadays to bring back the language and especially teach it in our youth, in the schools.” said Lopez.
While other tribes across the state have struggled to compete for opportunities in the English-speaking world, Salt River faces a unique struggle due to its location near the large metropolitan area of downtown Phoenix.
“I’m trying so hard to keep my culture but at the same time, I’m trying to survive in mainstream culture as well,” said Lopez, who works at her local library archiving documents that contain the language of her tribe.
Her tribe of around 10,000 lost over 300 members during the COVID-19 pandemic, many of whom were elders with deep understanding of tribal language and culture. In many Native cultures, elders are looked upon with utmost reverence: they are teachers, mentors, care givers and sources of knowledge that has been passed on from generation to generation.
The loss of elders in a tribe means a lost opportunity for young people to speak their Native language and to connect to their culture.
These strong family values and commitment to the community are often principles harbored within the Native languages themselves, with every tribe having its own distinct greetings and traditions that manifest through the modes of communication among community members.
For example, in a traditional Navajo greeting, “you lay out your family origin, you lay out your family line,” said EJ John, policy analyst at the American Indian Policy Institute, who himself is Navajo.
“That lays out obligations. If I talk to somebody who’s from the Tódich’ii’nii clan, that’s my father’s clan, I would interact with that person like I would with my father, and kind of treat them as how I would interact with him, the way that I would with my father, my grandfather’s family. So that really gives us a real sense of interconnection, a real sense of duties and responsibilities to our families and our family members and our loved ones,” he said.
Martin Harvier, president of the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, explains that the tribe “lost” some of its closeness with the deaths and social distancing of the pandemic.
“I think people feel that there’s been kind of a gloom over the community,” he said.
In an attempt to breathe new life into the language and culture, the Cultural Resource Department of the local library at Salt River started offering online immersion classes over Zoom to connect the elders with the rest of the community and teach more people tribal languages.
The library is not the only resource for tribal members to learn O’odham or Piipaash, the Salt River elementary school has language classes as well as cultural days meant to expose students to tribal culture.
“It made me feel proud that my little grandson was singing an O’odham song the other day,” said President Harvier, who himself was not taught the language growing up.
Language teaching in schools and community-based programs, such as Lopez’s youth group, are helping to keep the culture alive and giving young people early exposure to Native languages.
“The biggest focus for me is the youth, making them comfortable and not ashamed of their language and culture is what’s most important to me,” said Lopez.
The Young River Peoples’ Council has come up with creative ways to get more youth involved, as well. On its Instagram page, the group posts a word of the week in both native languages of the tribe, O’odham and Piipaash, and promotes cultural events with performances of traditional song and dance.
Lopez hopes that more youth will be engaged and see how empowering it can be to get in touch with one’s own roots, as this upcoming generation may be the languages’ last hope for survival.
“I feel like for Natives as a whole, learning your culture is a kind of spiritual healing process, in a way, it’s almost like religion. And I feel like doing as much as I can to become closer to my culture, whether it be through language, dance, history, or even clothing is a healing process for me.”