The Study On The Native American Languages Act

In 1990, American President Bush has signed an very important law document—The Native American Languages Act. It is the first time for American Federal Government to promulgate the law document about Native American languages. It's unusual for America to change its attitudes from weakening and assimilating Native American languages to protecting these languages and establishing their peculiar position. This act marked a turning point for the U.S. government's fundamental attitude and position changes towards Native American languages. It has provided the law guarantee for protecting and developing Native American languages. Generalizing large amount of documents and former research achievements, this paper made some research on this language act from a historical and cultural perspective. The paper is divided into four parts:Part one, introduction about background of The Native American Languages Act. This part carries out analysis for background of Native American languages education and policies, Native American languages current situation and the social background. Any significant event has its unique historical background, therefore this part adopts historical approach to recollect evolution process of USA Native American languages education and policies from assimilating and destroying Native American languages to attaching importance to them. This part also gives commentary on Native American languages education and policy effects, in order to get a clear and complete idea of this act, to understand effect produced by it, to know problems appearing in enforcement process and to help appraise it all-round field. The most direct cause was that Native American languages were becoming extinct. The number of Native American languages had been decreasing, and fewer and fewer Native Americans used their own languages. In other words, more and more Native American languages were abandoned by people, and the more and more people switched over to speak English. USA is a multinational country that owns various languages .Since 1960's, the USA national minorities carried out dynamic moves for minority rights. Pluralism idea in USA society was deeply rooted among people. Native American languages and culture more and more caught people's attention. Purpose of The Native American Languages Act is to protect Native American languages and culture, to diversify languages and cultures. This purpose ran after pluralism in Democratic movements consistently, therefore, protecting national minority languages is the main cause of promulgating The Native American Languages Act.Part two, introduction about content of The Native American Languages Act, content of Replenished motion and amendments of it. Part two also analyzes impact of The Native American Languages Act. It was an important law document for Americans especially for Native Americans. It had ascertained Native American languages' peculiar position with the law form. It recognized severe situation that Native American languages faced, and it had brought forward the measures of protecting these languages, so impact produced by it is gigantic. Not only USA main current society had changed original Native American languages attitude, had known the value of Native American languages. And, states that Native Americans concentrates relatively has promulgated the local laws with echoing over The Native American Languages Act. These local laws were made according to their current situation. Promulgation of The Native American Languages Act has urged people to make use of varied ways to carry out jobs for protecting Native American languages, and these jobs have also got fine effect.Part three, analysis on main problems in implementation process of The Native American Languages Act. Because of historical and realistic reasons, there were a lot of problems when it was being put into practice. There were three big factors which affected the Act being put into effect smoothly. There were some problems that this Act oneself brought about: Promulgating this Act for Native American languages is too late; Status granted to Native American languages is too low; Chop and change of language policies influences this Act implementation. External resistance is great in the process of implementation of this Act. The powerful English language culture, Native Americans' negative attitude towards Native American languages and deficiency of fund and teachers prevents this Act being putting into effect.Part four, prospect forecast of Native American languages developing. The Native American Languages Act didn't change the status of Native American languages fundamentally. According to the backgrounds of this Act, effects produced by it and some problems that this Act oneself brought about, the author gives a prospect forecast of Native American languages developing. There may be two different developing directions: Native American languages may develop slowly or become extinct rapidly.