School seeks to keep Cayuga language alive

A school on the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve in Ontario is keeping the Cayuga language alive.

The Gaweni:yo High School offers a language immersion program that starts with kindergarten students. About 35 students use Cayuga almost exclusively.

"I think the language speaks to their spirit," teacher Elva Jamieson told Reuters. "They're able to grasp it and go with it."

The number of fluent Cayuga speakers has dropped from 376 in the 1970s to 79 today. The related Seneca-Cayuga language has no fluent speakers.

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School fights to revive native Canadian language (Reuters 2/14)