Progress, Challenges, and Trajectories for Indigenous Language Content-Based Instruction in the United States and Canada

Abstract

Indigenous language content-based instruction in the United States and Canada is primarily known as Indigenous language medium or Indigenous language immersion (ILI) education. In spite of huge barriers, it has grown over the past decade. Programs have emerged from concerns about language loss and a desire for language revitalization. Language revitalization takes several generations since it seeks an outcome where the Indigenous language is primary with high, but secondary, proficiency in the nationally dominant language. To establish a trajectory to reach such an outcome, the majority of schooling until high school graduation should be through the Indigenous language. Indigenous language medium schooling also seeks to produce sufficient mastery of academics and English for access to English medium higher education. Where a sufficiently strong model has been implemented, as in Hawaiʻi, those results are beginning to be produced. At present, the models being implemented elsewhere in the two countries are at varying stages of development, with minimal government support.