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In the 2020 United States census, about 3.7 million people — about 1 percent of the population — identified as American Indian or Alaska Native. Including those who also reported another race, the number reaches 9.7 million, or about 3 percent.
Dr Crystal Cavalier-Keck, a member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi tribe in North Carolina, traces her ancestors to one of the first villages to meet the English colonists who came to settle the land as their own.
He says that the surrounding areas still speak traditional languages. Haw River is named after the Sissipahaw people, and Hyco Creek means “turkey” in the language of his tribe. Yet even as these names continue to fall off the map, Cavalier-Keck says her people are still fighting for state recognition, despite decades of history and recognition by the state of North Carolina.
“The Trail of Tears that happened on the East Coast that sent tribes to the west… we (her tribe) escaped this by moving to the swamps and living in different areas where most colonists didn’t live,” Cavalier-Keck told Al Jazeera.
The Indian Removal Act of 1830 forced thousands of Native Americans from their lands west of the Mississippi, in present-day Oklahoma, where many were on reservations.
His tribe currently has about 2,000 members, and according to Cavalier-Keck, many more have left the area.
“We have a lot of people in the community who moved, who just left North Carolina because they were racial and very hostile. It’s true that being absorbed and growing was easier than naming your heritage. They chose to go that way,” he says.
Through forced assimilation, decolonization, forced conversion and the introduction of English, the influence of indigenous languages has been passed down from generation to generation.
He said: “It is in the last 10 years that I have fully understood the meaning of losing our language. “I always try to learn about our people, but little has been given.”
He also said that the elders of other tribes encouraged him to take back what was left of his ancestral language.
“The world remembers. Trees and stones are evidence of the violence that happened here,” he says. “But we’ve lost the language that helped us reconnect with the land, the trees and the water.”
The Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation shares the struggle that many Native Americans in the United States are facing. In the last 250 years, languages have become fragmented, and some are disappearing. About 300 native languages are spoken in 50 to 60 language families. Today, according to the US Census Bureau’s 2017-2021 American Community Survey, only five are spoken by more than a few thousand people. This includes:
- Navajo (Diné Bizaad): more than 161,000 speakers
- Cherokee (Tsalagi): about 10,440 speakers
- Zuni (Shiwi’ma): about 8,100 speakers
- Choctaw (Chahta’): about 7,260 speakers
- Hopi (Hopílavayi): about 7,100 speakers
