Resurrecting a lost language

David Costa has been studying the Myaamia language for years. Myaamia is the language of the Miami Nation, and very little record of the language has survived. When Costa first started working, there weren't any sound recordings or speakers of the language. But with some digging, he uncovered written documents spanning thousands of pages and hundreds of years.

Daryl Baldwin is a member of the Miami Nation. For him, the loss of Myaamia was a hole in his life. Baldwin grew up with knowledge of his cultural heritage, but nothing more significant linguistically, or in relation to the language. In the early 1990s, Baldwin went back to school for linguistics, which is the study of languages. It was good timing, as Costa's own research on the language was published in 1994.

Costa and Baldwin worked on recovering the Myaamia language. Costa has spent over 30 years of his life on it. He expects it'll be another 30 or 40 years before all the historical records of the language are translated, digitally assembled and made available to members of the Miami people.

Costa and Baldwin's work is part of a larger puzzle. Indigenous languages are at risk of dying out, especially after European colonization. This refers to the time period when European countries fought for control of the Americas. The process of creating colonies greatly altered, or changed, the Indigenous people's lives.

Around 90 percent of the 175 Indigenous languages that survived colonization have no child speakers. That is around 158 languages with no new native speakers. Linguists estimate that up to 90 percent of the world's 6,000 languages will end or become endangered within 100 years. That number could mean up to 5,400 languages will be gone or at risk.

Despite that threat, there's plenty of hope in this story. It's about making a language that has sunk well below the surface visible once more. This is the story of how a disappearing language could come back to life.

The Miami people lived in parts of Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin. In the mid-1600s, French missionaries, who spread Christianity groups, first encountered the Myaamia language. The Miami-Illinois was called Myaamia in the language itself. Miami-Illinois belongs to a larger group of native languages spoken across North America called Algonquian. Algonquian languages include Ojibwe, Cheyenne and Narragansett.

Languages usually tend to evolve, especially in relation to one another. Think of Algonquin as a family of languages, and Miami-Illinois is a member of that family. Miami-Illinois was once spoken by numerous tribes who each had their own dialects, or regional varieties. Today, only one dialect of the language is studied and it's generally referred to as Miami.

In 1840, the Miami people signed the Treaty of the Forks of the Wabash with the U.S. government. The Miami Tribe had to give up 500,000 acres in north-central Indiana, about half the size of Rhode Island. In exchange, the tribe would receive land of equal size in the Unorganized Indian Territory. This new land would soon become the state of Kansas. The last members of the tribe were forcibly removed in 1846. By 1867, the Miami were forced into yet another migration - this time to Oklahoma.

There, members spoke several different languages. Eventually, their language was barely used at all. Then, by the 1960s, there were no more speakers among the 10,000 people with Miami heritage. Today, the main population centers for Miami people are Indiana, Oklahoma and Kansas.

In 1840, the Miami people signed the Treaty of the Forks of the Wabash with the U.S. government. The Miami Tribe had to give up 500,000 acres in north-central Indiana, about half the size of Rhode Island. In exchange, the tribe would receive land of equal size in the Unorganized Indian Territory. This new land would soon become the state of Kansas. The last members of the tribe were forcibly removed in 1846. By 1867, the Miami were forced into yet another migration - this time to Oklahoma.

There, members spoke several different languages. Eventually, their language was barely used at all. Then, by the 1960s, there were no more speakers among the 10,000 people with Miami heritage. Today, the main population centers for Miami people are Indiana, Oklahoma and Kansas.

Baldwin and Costa have been able to work together and gather resources for other Miami members to learn the language. They also had the assistance of tribal leaders in Oklahoma and Miami University in southern Ohio. Baldwin first started as director of the Language Research Office at the Myaamia Center at Miami University in 2001. He organized a summer youth program that could be taught in Indiana and Oklahoma. Plus, he created a program at Miami University for tribal students to take classes together. Classes focus on language, cultural history and challenges for Native Americans in the world today.

Baldwin's children all speak the language and even teach it at summer camps. "When we speak Myaamia we're connecting to each other in a really unique way that strengthens our identity," Baldwin says.