Harlan McKosato: Jemez Pueblo working to preserve language

Here in New Mexico, one of the strongholds of tribal culture in North America, there is still concern about the tribal language slowly slipping away even though the Pueblo, Apache and Navajo languages are still very much alive.

“We conducted a survey at the pueblo and found that Jemez has a 75 to 80 percent fluency rate among our people when it comes to speaking our native language,” said Kevin Shendo, Education Director for the Pueblo of Jemez. “The older generations are at 85 to 90 percent, but our younger generations range between 50 to 70 percent so we can see that we are slowly losing our language.”

In response, Jemez has developed a SPARK team. SPARK is the acronym for “Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids.” It’s an early childhood development program for children 3 to 6 years old and is designed to increase family engagement and ease the transition from Head Start to kindergarten with a focus on language and early childhood development. Special emphasis is being made by the pueblo to sustain its Towa language.