by Rita Price

Oxford, Ohio (AP)

When war and relocation couldn’t finish off the Native culture, the Bureau of Indian Affairs turned to linguistic genocide.

The brutal “English Only” campaign, combined with poverty and forced assimilation, succeeded in helping to destroy a way of life.

Yet sometimes, when Daryl Baldwin walks into the bedrooms of his sleeping children, he witnesses the slim, stubborn promise that remains: young lips moving in dreams, mouthing a language not heard in 40 years

“Miami,” he says proudly.

How well his sons and daughters learn – and whether they, and others, teach their children – will determine the fate of the Miami-Peoria language, Baldwin thinks.

In the meantime, piecing together all he can, he cobbles the fabric of a language whose last fluent speakers died in the 1960s.

Soon, at least a partial written account will exist: The first Miami-Peoria dictionary is to be published this month.

Baldwin joined co-editor David Costa, another linguist, in developing the book through the Myaamia Project at Miami University. The Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and its namesake university in Ohio have a relationship – including scholarships and academic and cultural projects – that began during the 1970s.

Baldwin said hundreds of tribes consider language reclamation a critical human-rights issue. Congress finally responded in 1990 with the Native American Languages Act, which calls for protection of Indigenous languages and sets up a grant program to assist.

For the Miami, the road to restoring a living language is long. Scattered and devastated after the Treaty of Greenville in 1795, the tribe was forced from its Midwestern homelands, sent first to Kansas and then to Oklahoma, said Phillip Shriver, a historian and former Miami University president.

Shriver said many of those who remained in Indiana intermarried with whites, and the Miami Nation of Indians of Indiana has been unsuccessful in obtaining federal tribal recognition.

The Miami Nation of Oklahoma is recog-nized but still in the early stages of revitalization, Baldwin and others say.

“Most of us grew up removed from our cultural heritage,” said Baldwin, 42, a northwestern Ohio native and member of the Miami of Oklahoma.

“We began to ask, ‘What is Miami?’ Without speakers of the language, it’s hard to get a glimpse of what that means. Language is culture.”

Baldwin’s father danced in pow wow circuits, but that taught the son little about his ancestral way of life. After years of tribal disintegration, even some headdresses had become generic.

Joshua Sutterfield studies language at Miami, which he attends on a tribal scholarship. Now 31, he also grew up without a strong sense of identity. “Oklahoma was more Pan-Indian then,” he said. “My mother is Miami, and I don’t know that she ever heard it spoken.”

After four years of language classes, he said, “I’m starting to recognize the language. My greetings and phrases are coming along nicely, and when I call my mother, I feel a connection 800 miles away.”

She, too, is learning, Sutterfield said. And endearments mean more when both mother and son say them in Miami. “I can tell her I love her. It’s very emotional.”

Experts say language loss, while common throughout the world, has been particularly severe in North America. Of the 175 or so Native languages still spoken in the United States, “Ninety percent are no longer taught as a fluent language to children,” Baldwin said. They’re considered moribund, or all but extinct.

The loss affects more than words. When language disappears, so do ideas inherent to a culture. English doesn’t possess an equivalent for all notions important to the Miami.

When parting company, for example, the Miami say, “Nipwaahkaalo.” The closest English comes to a translation is “take care,” but the phrase means much more, Baldwin said. Nipwaahkaalo also instructs the departee to “have wisdom” and “be conscious,” reflections of the culture’s emphasis on seeking knowledge.

Conversely, the Miami have no word for English categorizations such as Indians or tribe.

“There’s no subspecies,” Baldwin said with a smile. “We’re all just humans.”

Baldwin estimates that he and Costa have documented roughly 10 percent to 20 percent of the material available in recording the language – from writings, songs, prayers and memory.

Much work remains. But he isn’t discouraged.

“My children have been exposed to the language since infancy, and now they are the first generation. We just hope that the bottom has been reached. And maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to climb up.”