Teaching Indigenous Languages

Although traditional indigenous stories are widely recognized for their artistic merits and their role in the linguistic and cultural continuity of indigenous peoples, they are seldom used in schools. This paper discusses the instructional uses of traditional coyote stories, with particular reference to bilingual revitalization programs involving the teaching of indigenous languages. Instructional uses fall into two broad areas of school-based language learning: the development of academic discourse proficiencies and the development of second-language proficiency (using original versions for indigenous language revitalization purposes and translations for students dominant in the indigenous language and learning the national language). Coyote stories vary widely in their structural complexity and themes. In this variability lies their power as a genre, from a pedagogical point of view. Two extended examples illustrate the features that, respectively, lend themselves to the two broad language learnin