Census finds fewer than a half-million Native American language speakers; majority Navajo

More people speak Navajo at home than any other Native American language, a seemingly promising 169,000 people at a time when some tribes have lost their native tongue or are struggling to retain the words of their ancestors. Evangeline Parsons Yazzie, a Navajo professor at Northern Arizona University, said the figure recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau is no surprise, but can be misleading. The country’s population of Navajos is well over 300,000. For every one who speaks the language, one doesn’t — and those are likely younger Navajos, Yazzie said.The loss of Native languages is rooted in a history that includes the federal government’s attempt to eradicate Native American culture by sending children to boarding schools and punishing them for speaking their language. “That’s one thing all Indian nations suffer from,” Yazzie said. “Youth are ashamed of that because it caused a lot of harm. They internalized it. ... Now we’re trying to turn that around and say, ‘The languages are beautiful.’”

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