Creating official language policy from local practice: the example of the Native American Languages Act 1990/1992

ORI GIN AL PA PER

Creating official language policy from local practice:the example of the Native American Languages Act1990/1992

Larisa Warhol

Received: 3 September 2010 / Accepted: 7 June 2012 / Published online: 4 July 2012

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract This research explores the development of landmark federal language

policy in the United States: the Native American Languages Act of 1990/1992

(NALA). Overturning more than two centuries of United States American Indian

policy, NALA established the federal role in preserving and protecting Native

American languages. Indigenous languages in the United States are currently

experiencing unprecedented language shift and NALA is a primary federal resource

for Native American language programs. This research examines the local and

national contexts and interests in which NALA developed from a grass-roots Native

American language movement in the 1980s. The story of NALA stands as a pow-

erful example of traditonally disenfranchised peoples transforming power rela-

tionships and creating language policy to support their language educaton practices

and goals.

Keywords Indigenous language policy � Critical ethnography �Language rights

Introduction

Recent critical research in language policy has explored language policies and

practices in dynamic social, historical and ideological contexts (Menken and Garcia

2010; Ricento and Hornberger 1996; McCarty 2011; Tollefson 2002). This trend has

included moving away from a focus on national, official, ‘‘top-down’’ policy to

instead analyze local agency and resistance as these official documents are

implemented in social practice. While there is a growing body of research on the

local processes of policy implementation, there has been scant work on how these

L. Warhol (&)

Arizona State University, P.O. Box 874902, Tempe, AZ 85287-4902, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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Lang Policy (2012) 11:235–252

DOI 10.1007/s10993-012-9248-5

localized social practices can also in turn impact and even become official policy.

This article examines the development of landmark federal policy in the United

States, the 1990/1992 Native American Languages Act (NALA) as it directly

emerged from social practice and power relationships throughout the 1980s. As a

policy that continues to be the primary resource, and often the only federal support,

for many Native American language revitalization programs throughout the United

States, the story of NALA provides a rich perspective for critical socio-cultural

language policy research, in particular on the development of language policy to

protect minority language rights.

This article focuses on the antecedents and the formation of NALA and the

importance of understanding the motivations behind its development. The main goal

of the paper is to explore and understand the local contexts and the local and

national ideologies and interests that produced arguably the only official and explicit

language policy of the United States federal government. The example of NALA as

a language education policy is also important since it was a huge departure from the

history of American Indian language and education policy that was largely

repressive and exclusionary. So although NALA is an official ‘‘top-down’’ federal

policy, those responsible for the formation of NALA were the local on-the-ground

actors that the policy would indeed directly affect. As such, NALA stands as a

powerful example of how local and historically disenfranchised groups can redefine

traditional power relationships, and develop and influence policy to support their

specific language education goals. NALA as a language education policy is not only

an important example for US contexts but also in the larger struggle for Indigenous

minority language and education rights worldwide.

The Native American Languages Act of 1990/1992

The Native American Languages Act was first passed by the United States Congress

in 1990 as a policy declaration on the part of the federal government in support of

the preservation of Native American languages. The policy was unprecedented for

various reasons. First, the majority of historic federal policy had tried to eradicate

these same languages; second, it recognized the connection between language and

education achievement and established an official, explicit federal stance on

language, which is still uncommon in federal policy. When NALA was passed, it

reaffirmed federal recognition regarding the status of Native languages in the United

States and its position towards those languages and their speakers. The statute also

reaffirmed the self-determination and sovereignty of Native communities as well as

the connection between language, culture and the academic achievement of

children. The policy states: ‘‘the status of the cultures and languages of Native

Americans is unique and the United States has the responsibility to act together with

Native Americans to ensure the survival of these unique cultures and languages’’

(Section 102.) The policy declaration continues with the recognition of the past

federal policy that tried to exterminate Native languages and the connection

between language and school achievement. The policy also established the United

States’ responsibility in ensuring the continuation of Native languages; called for

evaluation of current government programs in order to further utilize Native

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languages and encouraged states to support this policy declaration and the use of

Native languages in state institutions. Three of the eight policy declarations

‘‘encouraged’’ the use of Native language and culture curriculum in schools (See

Sections 104.3, 4 and 8) but did not require it nor have any provisions to enforce it.

The 1992 NALA, building from the policy-as-practice model established by

NALA in 1990, amended the Native American Programs Act (NAPA) of 1974 and

entailed appropriations and provisions for community language programs; training

programs; materials development and language documentation. These grant

programs are currently administered by the Administration for Native Americans

(ANA) within the US Department of Health and Human Services. Currently, ANA

has four grant areas for language revitalization programs: (1) language assessments;

(2) planning and program design; (3) program implementation; and (4) language

nest and language survival programs and immersion schools which is the most

recent area established in 2008 due to the Esther Martinez Native American

Languages Preservation Act of 2006 (another locally-initiated federal policy). On

average, the ANA funds 28 grants (27 % of grant applications submitted) for a total

of $2.9 million dollars per year (Warhol 2011).

Given NALA’s limited resources, there have been competing thoughts about the

import and impact of NALA. While the policy was unprecedented, many argue that

it has come too late and has been largely ineffectual (Schiffman 1996; Romaine

2002). Others claim that the importance of NALA goes beyond specific policy

outcomes and impacts; they emphasize NALA’s ideological impacts and its

connection to larger expressions of sovereignty and linguistic rights (Lomawaima

and McCarty 2006; Reyhner and Eder 2006). The present research suggests that the

importance and impact of NALA is found not only by evaluating how NALA has

been implemented as an official policy, but by investigating how and why such a

policy was established and has endured in a socio-cultural and political context

largely hostile to language diversity.

Socio-cultural perspectives on language policy

This research is situated in anthropological perspectives and definitions of language

planning and policy (McCarty and Warhol 2011). Traditional definitions of policy

have referred to official, overt acts and documents. In the field of language planning

and policy, policies were specifically connected to language planning activities for

the purposes of nation building (Fishman 1968; Wright 2004). As the field of

language policy study has developed, these definitions have been expanded to

include a combination of these official acts with implicit meanings and/or practices

associated with language. While it is easier to point to a specific act of legislation as

policy, it is often the institutional practices and pervasive ideologies about language

that in fact shape both de jure (law) and de facto (practice) language policies

(Schiffman 1996; Wiley 2004). As the field of language policy has expanded to

include a socio-cultural orientation, language policy has been defined as a ‘‘socio-

cultural process that includes official acts and documents as well as everyday

language practices that express normative claims about legitimate and illegitimate

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language forms and uses, and have implications for status, rights, roles, functions,

and access to languages and varieties within a given polity, organization, or

institution.’’ (Skutnabb-Kangas and McCarty 2007, p. 9). This expanded definition

of language policy addresses both implicit/covert and explicit/official components

of policy inherent in both official documents and everyday social practice.

Recent language policy research has embraced socio-cultural definitions of

language policies to provide a more complete and complex picture of the ongoing

process of policy formation and implementation both within government institutions

as well as ‘‘on-the-ground’’ local contexts (Davis 1994; Freeman 2004; Hornberger

and Hult 2008; Hornberger and Johnson 2007; Kroskrity and Field 2009; Jaffe 1999;

McCarty 2011; Sutton and Levinson 2001; Stritikus 2002; Stritikus and Wiese

2006). This research reveals the many socio-cultural and ideological factors that

contribute to the development and enactment of language policies and how official

policies are appropriated and interpreted by local actors. Ricento and Hornberger

(1996) have advocated using the metaphor of layers of an onion to account for the

activities that occur at many different levels in the policy cycle. Actors at different

policy layers negotiate, interpret and manipulate policies at different levels, thus

exercising agency and opening implementational and ideological spaces for practice

and policy making (Hornberger and Johnson 2007). Although LPP (language policy

and planning) research frequently positions policy as either top-down or bottom-up

(Kaplan and Baldauf 1997), by embracing a socio-cultural approach to language

policy research, policy instead becomes dynamic, interactive and process-oriented

(Menken and Garcia 2010; Hult 2010; McCarty 2011).

This research specifically draws on the policy-as-practice framework for

educational policy research (Levinson and Sutton 2001; also see: Levinson et al.

2009 for further discussion regarding the theoretical evolution of this framework).

The policy-as-practice framework also defines policy as ‘‘a complex social practice,

an ongoing process of normative cultural production constituted by diverse actors

across diverse social and institutional contexts’’ (Levinson and Sutton 2001, p. 1).

This includes examining policy as a practice of power and also the meaning of

policy in practice. The emphasis of their work, as well as that of Canagarajah

(2006), focuses on policy processes. In this way, policy research moves away from

focusing on how and why a certain policy was or was not implemented successfully

and instead turns the focus on how the policy develops, what the dominant socio-

cultural and political factors are that influence its development and then in turn how

the policy evolves and can turn into new policies as they emerge from social

practice. It also focuses on the social arena where the discourses of the power elite

can be normalized. Canagarajah calls this the ‘‘language policy cycle—the before,

during and after’’; Levinson et al. (2009) refer to it as the formation, negotiation and

subsequent appropriation of policy. Regardless of the specific terminology, the

focus here is on the ever-changing and dynamic, non-linear process of policy. A

focus on appropriation is also highlighted to demonstrate how policies can be used

to serve the interests and motivations of the people ‘‘on-the-ground’’ or those

directly affected by top-down policy.

In situating their discussion within a critical socio-cultural perspective, Levinson

et al. explore not only defining what policy is, but also who can do policy and what

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can policy do (Levinson et al., p. 769). In this way, the discussion around policy is

broadened to explore power relationships and advocating for a more democratic

form of policy formation and appropriation. This type of framework also explores

the unanticipated and sometimes unintended consequences and outcomes of a

policy. As NALA emerged from a grass-roots movement of specific Native

language practices, this framework informs and is essential for this research—it

situates the specific social, historical and political meanings and actions of the key

actors who were responsible for and have been most impacted by NALA. As such,

this current research that places language policy in a dynamic socio-cultural context

can contribute to and further our understanding of how traditionally disenfranchised

groups can in fact manipulate the power dynamics and create official policy that

directly serves their own interests and needs.

Methodology

This study draws methodologically from the growing body of research that since the

1990s has advocated examination of education and language policy through critical

ethnography (Canagarajah 2006; McCarty 2011). The focus of this approach is to

examine the language policy processes as well as apply social theory to policy

analysis (Canagarajah 2006). Specifically, I position this study, which is based on

part of my dissertation research, as ethnographically-informed language policy

research. My understanding of ethnographic methods includes long-term, holistic,

systematic, in situ participant observation, interviewing, survey and document

analysis that result in a ‘‘thick description’’ to provide a personal, relevant and emicperspective (Wolcott 2008). While this research did have hallmarks of ethnographic

research, it does not specifically examine a localized language revitalization

program but instead explores how NALA emerged within a variety of different

contexts and local interests.

My interest in an ethnographic policy analysis of NALA stemmed from my work

as a graduate student at Arizona State University (ASU). As a non-Native language

policy researcher, language advocate, and educator who has been directly involved

with language education efforts in Native American communities, this research

directly spoke to my own goals and interests in supporting Indigenous language

revitalization efforts and having local, state and national policies to support these

efforts as well as conducting critical language policy research from a decolonizing

and social justice perspective. The focus on federal policy occurred when the Esther

Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act was passed in December,

2006 as a result of local Native language activists directly developing the policy,

some of whom were my graduate school mentors at ASU. This further cemented my

interest in exploring and understanding how and why federal language policies in

support of Native languages have and can be developed by locally empowered

groups. Finally, while NALA is cited in literature about language and education

policy for Native Americans, the complete story of NALA was missing.

Research methods included ethnographic methods of interviews, document

analysis and participant observation. The development of NALA is based in the


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lived experiences of the language educators who drafted the legislation in the late

1980s so the presented research draws primarily from interviews I conducted with

some of the instigators of NALA. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were

conducted with 18 individuals involved with NALA who I designated as grass-roots

educators, university academics and government officials. Although each intervie-

wee had a primary designation to one of the three groups, the majority of them had

been at different times members of all three. The primary designation was eight (8)

grass-roots educators; eight (8) university academics and two (2) government

officials, twelve of whom were Indigenous. They represented 13 states with high

Native American populations and were either members or had long-term

relationships with over thirty tribal communities throughout the United States.

These interviewees were first identified as some of the known and key policy

makers of NALA. Referrals were given from this initial group that broadened the

scope to include other key people involved with the development of NALA. These

interviews were at the heart of my study and as such I remain cognizant that it is the

voices and the lived experiences of my participants dedicated to retaining Native

languages as living breathing vehicles for cultural survival that are presented in the

data.

Participant observation and extensive document analysis was also conducted.

Document analysis included: formal policy documents; transcripts of Congressional

hearings; policy briefs, newsletters, internal correspondence, project evaluation

reports, as well as secondary, archival sources about the policies and relevant actors.

Participant observation included participating in the American Indian Language

Development Institute in 2007; the Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium

and the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition Immersion

Conference in 2008 and being a grant reviewer for ANA language preservation

grants in 2009. Out of these experiences, field notes were written based on my

observations and interactions with attendees (many of whom were instrumental in

developing NALA). This participant observation was used to understand and situate

how NALA emerged from similar contexts in the late 1980s and then data were

triangulated and verified from these different sources. The guiding research question

for this study includes: What was the impetus for NALA? What was the process of

policy formation? And, what local, tribal, and national interests influenced the

policy’s development and passage?

Antecedents of NALA

The joint Native American Language Issues Institute (NALI)/American Indian

Language Development Institute (AILDI) conference in Tempe, AZ 1988 was the

context for the resolution that would eventually become P.L. 100-477, the Native

American Languages Act of 1990 (Arizona Department of Education 1988;

McCarty 1993). While that joint conference would produce a written official

document, that particular moment in the late 1980s would not have been possible

without a host of concurrent social and language policies and practices that

contributed to the need for developing a policy like NALA. An essential element in

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the story of NALA was the building of a larger social network of Native American

language educators and activists throughout the United States in the 1970s and

1980s. This larger network included organizations like the American Indian

Language Development Institute (AILDI) and the Native American Language

Issues Institute (NALI); the Hawaiian language revitalization movement and the

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (SCIA) which in the late 1980s was specifically

focused on the educational and language needs of tribal communities. The growing

‘English-only’ movement in the early 1980s would provide the final catalyst that

would spark this network into action and necessitate the need for official federal

policy to protect Native languages.

Official language education policies of the late 1960s and 1970s which also grew

out of grass-roots activism like the Bilingual Education Act and the Indian

Education Act provided the first opportunity to establish tribally-controlled schools

throughout Indian Country that offered instruction through Native American

languages (see Lomawaima and McCarty 2006; Reyhner and Eder 2006; Szasz

1999 for further discussion on these policies as well as other historical American

Indian language and education policy). Early bilingual education began first on the

Navajo reservation at Rough Rock and other tribally-controlled bilingual schools

spread out in tribal communities throughout the 1970s (Leap 1981; McCarty 2002;

McLaughlin 1992; St. Clair and Leap 1982; Watahomigie and Yamamoto 1992).

These bilingual efforts, which began the practice of using and maintaining Native

languages in schools as well as teaching Native children English, led to early

collaborations between both Native and non-Native linguists and Native educators.

It also led to the establishment and involvement of local institutes and national

organizations to support these collaborations and social networks. Key institutes and

organizations that were directly involved in the development of NALA include: the

American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI); the National Indian

Bilingual Center (NIBC) and the Native American Language Issues Institute

(NALI). One interviewee noted, ‘‘These types of institutes were essential because

there was no model for what we were doing, we were creating it’’ (Grass-roots

educator interview, January 12, 2009). A hallmark of these organizations that began

in the 1970s and 1980s was to support and train Native educators and linguists and

to produce and share professional and materials development (McCarty et al. 2001;

Native American Language Issues Institute 1988; Watahomigie and Yamamoto

1992). These organizations also became and still remain important sites for policy

development in support of Native language education.

While Native language bilingual education was flourishing in the United States, a

concurrent Native language project was growing in Hawai’i which focused on

language revitalization instead of bilingual education. The details of this revital-

ization effort have been well-documented and have long served as a model for many

other Native language revitalization efforts so they will not be repeated here

(Kamana and Wilson 1996, 2008; Warner 2001; Wilson 1997; Wilson and Kamana

2001). The key elements though from the Hawaiian language revitalization

movement for NALA include: the connection to the language activists on the

‘‘mainland’’ that began through visits to bilingual programs and incorporation into

the NALI/AILDI network by the mid-1980s; the forays and experiences of the


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Hawaiians to introduce and create local state policies as well as national federal

policies specifically intended for their revitalization efforts; and their strong

connections to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs (SCIA) which was led at the

time by a senator from Hawai’i, Senator Inouye and key SCIA staff members,

Lurline McGregor also from Hawai’i and Robert Arnold from Alaska. What is also

particularly powerful and important in the Hawaiian example is that for the

Hawaiians to successfully run their schools and get support from the state, they had

to overturn established state policies that legally prohibited their efforts so their

individual story in itself is an example of turning practice into policy.

As these Indigenous language movements were gaining momentum, there was

also a renewed interest in putting forth an English-only agenda at federal and state

levels. Although not the first iteration of a push for English as the official language

of the United States (see Moore 2008; Wiley 2004), this current movement, while

unsuccessful at the federal level, had succeeded passing state level English-only

laws. At the time of the 1988 NALI/AILDI conference, fourteen states had passed

English-only laws and there was a proposition on the ballots in Arizona, Florida and

Colorado for that fall. Some of the states that had passed English-only had

significant Native populations including California, North Dakota, South Dakota,

and Mississippi. This movement threatened many of the language efforts that Native

communities needed to maintain their languages, so when NALI/AILDI convened

in 1988, a salient concern was that Native peoples needed recognition of their

language rights at the state or federal level to directly combat against this growing

movement.

Turning practice into policy

So the shift you’re describing is a shift that decenters power from White

authority into the hands of Native activists. And so they are not consultants.

They are the power-brokers; they’re the people that set direction. (University

academic interview, January 14, 2009)

With these various tribal, local, state and national interests and practices at play

in the 1980s, NALI overlapped with AILDI from June 8 to 11 in 1988 in Tempe,

Arizona. Because of the many concurrent and overlapping Native language efforts,

many people involved with AILDI were also active NALI members. Arizona, along

with other states, was voting on English-only legislation that fall and that legislation

directly provoked developing NALA. According to one AILDI/NALI participant, a

long-time Native language teacher and activist since the 1970s:

That’s the reason NALA happened. The State Department and AILDI hosted a

conference in the Phoenix area and it was going to be that fall that Arizona

was going to vote on English-only. That’s why there were so many of us

[Native language activists and grass-roots educators] there in one place at one

time, at Arizona State University’s campus, in the Phoenix area for both

AILDI and NALI. One of the things that [the Hawaiians] really wanted the

conference to do was to take a strong position, first of all against English-only

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and then also to consider what states could do in revitalizing languages.

(Grass-roots educator interview, May 29, 2008)

The impetus of the joint conference itself had a focus on past and pending

English-only legislation in addition to the traditional topics of past meetings. The

1988 NALI proceedings document a variety of presentations reporting on

educational findings and practices from the field; policy issues effecting language

education; examples of unity and traditional teachings and sociolinguistic change.

The conference proceedings also detail the myriad local concerns that ranged from

teaching practices and maintaining them especially in the face of threatening state

and federal policies. The excerpt above also speaks to the lack of general awareness

about the impacts of potential state policies on Native language which was another

concern for the participants. The last day of the conference included roundtable

discussions on the salient conference topics. The discussions resulted in the

development and drafting of several resolutions.

Initially, roundtable discussions proposed developing a resolution for state laws

in support of Native languages. But in light of the many different Native languages

within most state boundaries, the resolution was changed to a national level policy

in support of Native languages. Another participant, a linguist and long-time

instructor at AILDI, discussed what their early hopes and goals for such a policy

resolution were:

Our hopes were, well, first of all, we wanted official recognition of the rights,

language rights, essentially. We wanted to see that the government officials

recognize that Native language speaking people have rights to maintain and

promote their native languages just as English people have the rights to the

English language. So we wanted that kind of first recognition, without denying

any other language rights or the rights of the native peoples. In that sense, I

think it was a little bit different from the English movement that we wanted to

be more inclusive in our scope. At the same time, I think we wanted the

general public and, in particular, tribal communities to realize the importance

of their languages. The resolution had that kind of appeal and voice to native

communities as well. (University academic interview, June 18, 2008)

On the one hand, there was the position to take a stance against English-only and

that stance also coincided with an official recognition of the importance of Native

languages and the rights of Native peoples. This recognition was important on

many different levels, including that Native communities themselves were

publically asserting the value of their languages. On June 11, 1988, four resolutions

were drafted and approved by the conference attendees including the resolution

known as Indigenous American Cultural Survival Act. This resolution would in fact

become NALA. Throughout the summer, copies of the resolution were sent around

to a number of different Native communities to garner support, approval and

changes. And finally in September 9, 1988, the signed and revised resolution

supporting the Indigenous American Cultural Survival Act was sent to Lurline

McGregor in the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs to be introduced into

Congress.


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When reflecting on the experience of developing the resolutions in the NALI/

AILDI conference, several of the participants stressed the importance of this

resolution really emerging from the people on the ground working in their

communities and the support given by the tribes themselves. One participant shares

her thoughts about the drafting process:

I think we were novices. We really were not that sophisticated in our analysis.

To do it professionally, I’m sure they would have done it completely

differently. The money would have been a bigger concern rather than just this

kind of philosophical statement that we took. So we were writing probably too

much from the heart and not from other directions. (Grass-roots educator

interview, May 29, 2008)

These sentiments are echoed by another participant who expressed the

importance of the local organizations, like AILDI, in comparison to some of the

other national organizations in support of Indian rights. The NALI/AILDI resolution

was directly in support of language education and that came from the actual

language teachers. This participant, a policy activist for Native languages since the

1970s, related:

Well it was a big deal in the sense that there was an opportunity for the rank-

and-file tribal constituencies to say something about the importance of

language. Prior to that this had all been done through [the national associations

in DC]. This was a time where tribal delegates who were parts of language

projects were able to say something. And that’s what I remember was the point

of that resolution was that here was the local teachers and elders who were

speaking about what was happening in their community, endorsing this

resolution, calling for the creation of this kind of legislation. (University

Academic interview, January 14, 2009)

Thus, the NALI/AILDI resolution was one that came directly from the people

most involved and concerned with Native language education, retention and

revitalization. The resolution that was sent to Lurline McGregor in September was

introduced into the Senate a week later by Senator Inouye as S.J. Res 379.

This resolution included all the interests and goals of the NALI/AILDI

participants: it was the joint responsibility of the federal government and Indigenous

peoples to ensure the survival of Native languages; past federal policies had

contributed to the current state of Native languages; Native peoples have a unique

identity and that was recognized through their sovereign status thus they have

specific language rights to preserve and use their languages. The policy declaration

included the specific interests of supporting the use of Native languages as the

medium of instruction vis-a-vis official English policy, including granting it college

credit and incorporating into state curriculum.

Although this resolution would pass in the Senate, it would not have a companion

bill in the House of Representatives because of issues around supporting languages

other than English (Government official interview, January 10, 2009). The grass-

roots individuals responsible for the resolution as well as the key people on the

Senate Committee on Indian Affairs though would continue to work tirelessly to

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gain federal recognition for Native languages. What was essential for the resolution

to become law was finding a way to combine the interests of Congress with those of

the Native language activists and tribal communities.

Policy development at the federal level 1989–1992

Once the initial NALI/AILDI resolution did not go through in 1988, Lurline

McGregor would work with Dr. William Wilson and Dr. Ofelia Zepeda to revise the

resolution to reintroduce it into Congress in 1989. Series of drafts were passed

among the three of them as well as within Indian country. Dr. Zepeda related:

‘‘There were different people that were working on it. We planned, we looked at

states who had high Indian populations. So all these faxes were going from one end

of Alaska to Arizona and then on to Kansas’’ (O. Zepeda, personal communication,

May 29, 2008). While changes were being made to the resolution throughout Indian

country, NALI members Dr. Zepeda, Dr. Wilson and Lucille Watahomigie were

also traveling to national academic conferences to gain wider support for the

resolution as well as encouraging people to appeal to their state’s senators and

representatives.

The resolution was again introduced into the Senate in October in 1989 by

Senator Inouye (D) with nine cosponsors this time as Senate bill S.1781. Both

Senator Inouye and Senator McCain (R) from Arizona spoke in support of this bill

when it was introduced into the Senate. Senator Inouye maintained his stance on

supporting policy that originated within Native communities. For him, this policy

would be upholding the commitment already stated by the federal government to

support Native American self-determination. Senator Inouye stated:

It is consistent with my policy in dealing with Native American issues to have

the solutions come from native peoples. Clearly the initiative for developing

and implement native language use will continue to come from the people who

speak their native languages. With the explicit support of the US government

for these efforts, we will ensure that the self-determination policy of the

government is carried out and that we in Congress and the federal government

are continuing to fulfill our responsibility to the native peoples of this country.

(Congressional Record - Senate, 1989, p. 25433)

This position aligned the interests of the Senate Committee on Indians Affairs

and by extension the federal government with the interests of the grass-roots Native

language activists by stressing past policies that the federal government already had.

The bill was sent to the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs who evaluated the bill.

The only extensive changes made by the SCIA were to the section detailing

language restrictions pertaining to states. The initial section was written as a

response to the state-level English-only laws but the Senate Committee on Indian

Affairs was reluctant to include directives in the policy that placed restrictions on

state policies. The Senate passed the bill with the changes on April 3, 1990 but it

again would not pass through the House of Representatives.

According to both Lurline McGregor and Robert Arnold (2001), members in the

House of Representatives were fearful of the ongoing sentiment against languages


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other English that their constituents had. Ms. McGregor related, ‘‘Once the Senate

passed the bill, there became the issue of expediting it and avoiding the House

committees where it might languish. We needed to find a bill that had already

passed out of the committee in conference with both houses. We also wanted to fly

under the radar because the bill was about language’’ (L. McGregor, personal

communication, January 10, 2009). Avoiding anything with language in the title,

Ms. McGregor found an Indian education bill about tribal colleges that Mr. Arnold

was administering for Senator Inouye. Senator Inouye was able to offer an

amendment to S. 2167, the reauthorization of the Tribally Controlled Community

College Assistance Act of 1978 that was the entire text of NALA. When introducing

this amendment, Senator Inouye made clear his support for the bill because of the

grass-roots community members who had pressed for the bill to be passed.

His amendment was approved with slight additions to the bill including the

addition of the requirement of all federal agencies to review and report their policies

and procedures regarding the use of the Native languages. A final section was added

regarding the use of English. It reads as: ‘Nothing in this title shall be construed as

precluding the use of Federal funds to teach English to Native Americans’ (P.L.

101-477, Section 107), thus demonstrating that policy makers in Congress wanted

to maintain a position that promoted English even as they agreed to support and

maintain Native languages. Both the House and Senate passed S. 2167 on October

11th and 12th, respectively and it was sent to then President Bush to be signed into

law.

The findings and policy declarations of NALA mirror the original NALI/AILDI

resolution that sought the official recognition of Native American languages and the

government’s commitment to preserve and protect those languages. Other local

interests in NALA included encouraging state agencies and educational institutions

to count Native languages for academic credit as well as waiving or allowing for

special teaching certification for teachers of Native languages in federal schools. At

the government level, a directive was included that details the ways in which the

federal government could actively uphold the law through review, reporting and

amending of its own agency and department policies regarding Native languages.

The policy itself, though, offers few directives or enforcements, although

according to its drafters, that was not its intended goal. The main goal of NALA was

for state and federal governments to recognize and protect the Native language

education that had already been established and that was then being threatened by

the English-only movement. The power of the English-only movement can be seen

in the removal of the section restricting states from passing laws that may prevent

the use of Native language as well as the final addition which maintains the teaching

of English alongside the Native languages. Thus, finally on October 30, 1990,

President George Bush signed into law P.L. 101-477, the Tribally Controlled and

Navajo Community College Reauthorizations, with Title I of that law known as the

Native American Languages Act of 1990.

After successfully passing NALA 1990, a similar strategy was used to establish

financial support from the federal government in support of Native language

programs. Lurline McGregor was no longer with the Senate Committee on Indian

Affairs so this particular piece of legislation was guided by Robert Arnold. Because

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NALA did pass in 1990, they already had the foundation of federal support to build

from. NALA 1992 initially also had difficulty getting through Congress. The bill

had support in the Senate but not the House of Representatives. Senator Inouye

would introduce S. 2044 in November of 1991 as an amendment to the Native

American Programs Act that would authorize an additional $5 million dollars to the

Administration for Native Americans grant programs to include a program for

language revitalization. This bill was also sent out into Indian Country for feedback

and support. Unlike NALA 1990, Congressional hearings for the bill were

scheduled in June, 1992. The hearings brought together local language activists and

linguists with federal government officials (To Assist Native Americans, 1992). The

hearings brought to the forefront many of the salient issues affecting Native

languages, the rationale behind NALA 1992 and the importance of establishing

monetary support for programs already in existence and for new language

revitalization programs. Linguist Dr. Michael Krauss in particular was able to

provide statistics on the state of Native languages in the United States and their

estimated stages of language shift. According to Krauss (1998), that information

was specifically put together for the testimony in support of NALA 1992.

Testimony also merged larger national interests with that of Native peoples. Two

things in particular were mentioned. First, Carl Downing, the then-director of NALI,

called upon the larger ideology in the United States that embraced diversity. He

said, ‘‘In our pluralistic society, the loss of one culture is a loss to the rest. And it is

this diversity that makes our country what it is. And it is through bills such as this

[bills that support the preservation and teaching of Native language] that this

diversity can be maintained’’ (SCIA Hearings, p. 23). Michael Anderson from the

National Congress of American Indian further quoted recent initiatives by President

Bush to promote community values. He stated:

Finally, we also note in our testimony that President Bush and Vice President

Quayle have both strongly endorsed and believe that we can remedy many of

our social and economic ills through the reinforcement of strong community

values and family values. NCAI basically is in support of this as a theory, but

again notes that for Indian tribes and people, these community values can be

reinforced and transmitted through native languages. (To Assist NativeAmericans, 1992, p. 34)

By connecting Native interests with larger national interests, support for NALA

1992 could be widespread. It also exemplified understanding the current and

dominant ideologies of the country at that time to promote an agenda that would be

acceptable to all.

Thus, the NALA 1992 testimony established the shared positions of Native

language activists and the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs. It placed on the

record the issues and concerns that had come out of the NALI/AILDI 1988

conference and that were still salient. NALA 1990 had laid the groundwork to build

support for further legislation and there was a clear merging of local, state and

national interests with regards to maintaining Native languages at the local level,

adapting state education policies and providing financial resources to build upon

programs already in existence. This testimony was significant because according to


123

one interviewee, ‘‘I remember after the testimony, those who were there talking

about how the Congressional leaders really have no clue about Indian people or

Indian languages. A lot of them thought that the languages were no longer spoken.

So there was a lot of educating that needed to be done, we came to find out’’ (Grass-

roots educator interview, May 29, 2008).

According to Arnold (2001), based on the hearings as well as suggestions from

around Indian Country, Senator Inouye presented a substitute bill for S. 2044 in

June, 1992. The bill passed the Senate but was then delayed in the House of

Representatives. Arnold (2001) writes, ‘‘The ranking minority member of the

committee was opposed to the passage of the bill. Harris Fawell from Chicago saw

no reason to appropriate federal funds to help tribes preserve their languages’’ (p.

48). Over the next 2 months, Arnold met with staffers on the Committee of

Education and Labor, Alan Lovesee and Lee Cowan, to revise the bill so Fawell

would allow it to move forward. They lowered appropriations from $5 million to $2

million and increase matching funds to 20 % from 10 %. Fawell was still unwilling

to let the bill move forward and as the Congress was adjourning soon, they feared

the bill would die. A call was put out to NALI, the Hawaiians and all the other

language activists who in turn spread the word. Arnold (2001) writes, ‘‘How many

people placed telephone calls to Fawell’s office, I do not know, but they were many.

Only a few days passed before Cowan called me. ‘Please call off the troops, we’ll

let the bill move’’’ (p.48). Again the efforts and determination of local and Native

activists pushed the bill through. The bill passed through Congress in early October

just before Congress adjourned and was signed into law by President Bush on

October 26, 1992 as P.L. 102-524 To Help Assist the Survival and Continuing

Vitality of Native American Languages, otherwise known as the Native American

Languages Act of 1992.

Conclusions

This exploration into the formation of NALA through ethnographic research has

demonstrated how official policy can emerge from social practice even in the face of

strong opposition to languages other than English. In this particular example, Native

language communities and activists were able to appropriate the bilingual and

Indian education policy of the late 1960s and 1970s and as one participant said,

‘‘become the power-brokers’’ and set a new course. The creators of NALA were

able to manipulate and transform traditional power relationships in a way that best

served their interests. These new paths have had a lasting impact as seen in the more

recent passing of the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act

in 2006 which builds on NALA and specifically provides funding for the growing

number of Indigenous immersion and language survival schools. This research

though also demonstrates the continued need for critical ethnographic research on

language policies.

The story of the development of NALA stands as a conceptual and methodo-

logical example of the benefits of a critical socio-cultural approach to language

policy research. This story also has direct praxis-orientated implications. This

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research sheds light on crucial untold elements in the development of an ‘‘official’’

policy that traditional policy analysis would have excluded including how it is

possible to develop policies that support minority language efforts even in a

political climate that advocates English-only and the ability of the local language

advocates to draft their own policies that in turn become official policies. As

ethnographic language policy research emphasizes the renegotiation and agency of

local agents to affect how policies are implemented, the story of NALA goes a step

further as an example of an official policy that begins in and directly emerges from

social practice. Minority language communities should remain cognizant that it is

possible to achieve, change and/or develop official policies that support their efforts.

As minority languages continue to be assailed by the ongoing dominant English-

only in the United States, NALA also stands as an example of how understanding

political processes can impact official policy development. Typically, a hallmark of

successful Native language revitalization programs is their community-based, grass-

roots and ‘‘bottom-up’’ quality (Hinton and Hale 2001; Hornberger 1997). In fact, in

juxtaposition to the need for official policy, many of the participants in this study

attributed the initial success of their language education programs to their ability to

‘‘fly under the radar’’—in much the same way the SCIA was initially able to push

NALA through Congress by attaching it on to an Indian education bill that didn’t

have language in the title. Many Native language revitalization programs have been

able to grow either on the meager appropriations provided by NALA, other local,

state, private and non-profit organizations or through their own tribal resources.

While these programs are still too few, school-based Native language immersion

programs have also figured out creative ways to get around state-level English-only

policies (Johnson and Legatz 2006). Yet NALA clearly emerged because these same

groups of Native language activists who felt the need to fight the growing threat of

the official English-only policy with one of their own despite the ongoing success

and development of their bilingual programs. That NALA emerged and passed from

implicit or covert practice—a common feature of United States policy making

(Schiffman 1996)—demonstrates and reinforces the possibilities for the policy

process. It also further advocates for blurring the lines of the ‘‘top-down’’ and

‘‘bottom-up’’ language policy dichotomy to advocate for understanding policy as a

dynamic process that includes overt/covert and top-down/bottom-up components.

While this is not a surprising conclusion, this research makes clears that the need

for official policy is frequently an ideological one that is necessary for establishing or

maintaining specific power relationships and also legitimizing or protecting practices

already in place. NALA as a policy is important because it not only creates resources

and support for ongoing Indigenous language revitalization efforts, but it clearly

establishes the rights of Native people to direct and control these efforts and

contributes to changing long-held attitudes and beliefs about the importance of

Native languages. These particular issues of linguistic human rights and sovereignty

are not unique only to Native Americans but impact Indigenous peoples

worldwide (Skutnabb-Kangas 2000). For example, the history of the United Nations

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2007 provides an international

example of the alignment of Indigenous and non-Indigenous interests on a global

scale that also was the result of Indigenous grass-roots advocates working directly


123

with international state and civil-society representatives (Charters and Stavenhagen

2009). These are examples that need to continually be put forth and utilized in support

of Indigenous communities worldwide that still are in linguistic-oppression contexts.

The history of Native American education and language policy has demonstrated

the overall system’s detrimental effects on the education achievement of Native

students, but it has also shown the positives and possibilities that can occur when

Native peoples are directly involved in policies that profoundly affect them

(Lomawaima and McCarty 2006; Szasz 1999). NALA is clearly a prime example of

this. Closely examining who actually makes policy in the context of transforming

existing power relationships, this research also has demonstrated how social

practices and social networks can profoundly alter the policy formation process.

Understanding policy processes within larger socio-cultural, historical, economic

and political contexts is essential for recognizing both constraints and possibilities

within Indigenous and minority language policy and planning. Utilizing ethnogra-

phy for language policy research also entails understanding policy from process-

based transformative and praxis-oriented perspectives. The story of NALA is one

that needs continued recognition for its critical contribution to the Native language

revitalization movement, to ethnographic research on language policy and for

language minority rights both in the United State and worldwide.

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Author Biography

Larisa Warhol is an associate research professor with the Center for Indian Education and a graduate of

the Ph.D. program in Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at Arizona State University. She is also

the Associate Editor of the Journal of American Indian Education. Her research encompasses language

education policy; American Indian education policy; international and comparative education; language

and gender; Indigenous language revitalization efforts; nonformal education programs and urban

education policy contexts. Current projects include exploring the intersection of federal, state and local

language education policies; the impacts of international development and education discourses on

Maasai youth in Kenya; and language documentation efforts with local tribal communities in Arizona.

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Documents

Creating official language policy from local practice: the example of the Native American Languages Act 1990/1992