More than a century after U.S. Indian boarding schools attempted to erase Indigenous cultures and languages, tribal nations in Oklahoma are working to reclaim and teach their languages to the youth. Despite research showing how language learning can improve mental health outcomes, world language credits are not required for graduation following recent state legislation.
In a public school district in Lawton, a city of about 90,000 residents situated on the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation, high school students have the option to enroll in three Native American language courses relevant to the nearby tribes: Comanche I, Comanche II and Kiowa I.
Dry plains and rolling hills make up most of the land in Lawton, located in southwest Oklahoma, and the history of that land is complicated. A Comanche County District judge recently ruled that the reservation, also referred to as the KCA, was disestablished in 2021; however, all the tribes affiliated with the KCA recognize the reservation as still intact due to a violation of a key treaty and the federal government’s broken promises.
The languages, much like the area’s jurisdiction, carry a story of desecration and a community fight to reclaim what was once rightfully theirs.
Inside a Comanche language course at the Lawton Public Schools’ Life Ready Center, more than a half a dozen Lawton high school students sit in a circle, repeating after their teacher, Martie Woothtakewahbitty.
"Soobesʉ Nʉmʉnʉʉ sʉmʉoyetʉ̠ Nʉmʉ niwʉnʉʔeetʉ,” she said. “Ʉkitsi nʉnʉ tʉasʉ Nʉmʉ niwʉnʉ̠hutuʔi.Ubʉ̠nitu tʉasʉ Nʉmʉ niwʉnʉ̠hutuʔinʉ."
Woothtakewahbitty asks her students for an English translation, and they reply, “We spoke Comanche. We speak Comanche now, and we will speak Comanche in the future.”
The meaning of those sentences, once shared by Carney Saupitty Senior, held particularly more weight last September, after Woothtakewahbitty taught the students about federal Indian boarding schools and their targeted efforts to stamp out Comanche and other Native American languages. It was a couple days before the National Day of Remembrance for Indian Boarding Schools or Orange Shirt Day.
“The effects that it's had on the language so far and and how it was once taken, and now that it's here, that's important for these kids to know that this is rare to have a language, especially an endangered Indigenous language, inside of a public school,” Woothtakewahbitty said during her class. “When you speak a different language, you see the world from a different perspective.”
Down the hall in the next period, about a dozen other high school students recited phrases in Kiowa, such as “à óñ:táñ:dáu” or “I am happy.” Inside the classroom, brightly-colored pictures of Kiowa words with correlating images were displayed, similar to the Comanche language class.
Woothtakewahbitty is among a group of tribal citizens recovering the Comanche language because she knows firsthand how going deeper into its epistemology transformed her life and sense of self-image.
“So when I started learning the breakdown [of the language] for myself, I started learning why I am the way I am, why I do things the way I do, why I talk the way I do, even in English,” she said. “That would be the biggest surprise for me: how much I learned about my own identity.”
Assimilation efforts designed to trample Native American languages, identities
Indigenous children living in the Lawton Public Schools district are experiencing a stark contrast to what their relatives lived through more than a century ago.
The Comanche Nation — or Nʉmʉnʉʉ, which means “The People” in Comanche — was once made up of a larger group that included the Shoshone. But following the separation of the two camps, the Comanche headed west, migrating across the plains in what is now known as New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, among other states. They eventually settled in southwest Oklahoma, establishing their tribal headquarters in Lawton.
For members of the Kiowa Tribe specifically, they were displaced multiple times, both by other tribes and later by the federal government. Following forced removal and allotment, Kiowa children and young adults were subjected to assimilation at Indian boarding schools, as well as Comanche young folks, endangering the language, culture and, consequently, well-being of tribal members.
This history has left scars in Oklahoma and across the United States in the lives of Indigenous children.
Woothtakewahbitty said her family was reluctant to teach the Comanche language because of what occurred at those schools.
“A lot of folks that went through boarding school, like my great grandparents, who were abused in a boarding school, didn't want to pass that on because of that fear,” she said.
A 2015 research study published in the Journal of Mental Health Counseling examined interviews from 11 Native American elders of various tribes located across Turtle Island. Three themes emerged: traumatic historical events, the impact of boarding schools and internalization of oppression.
All of the participants mentioned boarding schools in their interviews.
One elder described their experience at a federal Indian boarding school as humiliating, saying, “I remember they would have us stand on a little box, and we had this sign on us that they put around our neck. I guess it said ‘I’m a dumb Indian, because I can’t speak English.’”
Survivors' experiences varied at roughly 80 federal boarding schools in Oklahoma listed by the DOI. But stories like this one — and studies citing poor physical and mental health impacts — were cataloged in the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report led by the Department of the Interior.
Ultimately, these findings show that Indian boarding schools caused “an intergenerational pattern of cultural and familial disruption” and heightened stressors that can still be felt to this day, evident in epigenetic inheritance – the genetic markers left in people’s DNA of ancestors’ trauma.
A lasting result is that Indigenous children face high rates of mental health disparities. Data from the CDC shows one in four American Indian and Alaskan Native high school students seriously considered suicide in 2023, and 45 percent felt sad or hopeless.
In Oklahoma, those numbers are comparable. About 43 percent of Native American high school students surveyed reported they felt depressed for two or more weeks, impacting their usual activities, according to a 2020 Oklahoma State Department of Health report.
Recent research points to potential reasons why those numbers are so high. A 2022 synthesized research review highlighted the distrust and cultural incompetence Indigenous people may feel toward healthcare professionals stemming from a turbulent history, as well as shame and stigma when receiving help. Additional problems include access to care, such as long waitlists, no access to a computer for telehealth services or transportation to physical services and geographical isolation from mental health services for those in rural areas.
In a Department of the Interior report, one recommendation for remedying the harmful and traumatic effects of boarding schools was to revitalize Indigenous languages, pointing to positive mental health and socioeconomic outcomes for current and future generations.
Healing intergenerational trauma through language learning
Jill Fish is a psychology professor at Macalester College in Minnesota and a descendant of the Tuscarora Nation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy in New York. Her research builds on Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems model — which explains how different environmental “layers” influence a child’s behavior and development — by centering Indigenous peoples’ present experiences and propping up history and culture's important role in their lives today. Fish said that includes settler colonialism, racism and the assimilation agenda.
“So when we think about these different environments like schools and health care systems and sports and our friends… the Indigenous model asked people to question to what extent is an Indigenous person's history or culture present in these other environments,” Fish said in a Zoom interview. “And also, how do these broader institutions need to change to be more congruent with our cultures and histories, and what dismantling do they need to do?”
Fish explained Indigenous people may have to survive by “walking in two worlds,” where they have to adopt a bicultural identity and shed layers of their authenticity to fit in, which decreases self-confidence. She said that shouldn’t have to be the case, and in some Oklahoma public schools, it’s not.
Raylisha Stanley is Lawton Public Schools’ Indian Education Director, who has long advocated for Native American culture to become an integral part of her students' experience. She’s been a driving force in the district’s language offerings and has promoted Native American clubs and events, such as handgame and stickball, expanding the district’s classes to be more inclusive of Indigenous students.
“We're trying to make every student feel the impact of their culture, be comfortable and be able to succeed,” Stanley said in an interview. “I think when you give that student that cultural awareness and self-confidence, they're going to reach their goals. They're going to set their goals higher.”
Studies have shown language use and revitalization can improve mental health outcomes in Indigenous communities by creating a sense of belonging, empowering students and improving cultural connections.
One study found that youth suicide rates saliently decreased in communities where more community members could speak conversationally in their Indigenous languages.
Fish’s research suggests “Indigenous populations experience the most positive developmental outcomes when they are able to access their histories and cultures in their environments, and less desirable outcomes when their environments prohibit this.”
Caden, a 16-year-old Comanche language student at LPS of Comanche and Kiowa descent, was raised by her mother, who could not teach her about her Comanche and Kiowa heritage because that came from her father’s side of the family. It wasn’t until she enrolled in Comanche that she could step into her Native identity.
“This is one of my favorite classes,” said Caden, whose last name isn’t used because she is a minor speaking about her mental health. “I feel like it’s more of a like spiritual connection learning about all this stuff and getting kids connected.”
Caden said it’s cultivated a spark within her, pushing her to keep learning Comanche and raise awareness about the impact of boarding schools. This growth in Caden’s self-worth and other Indigenous students like her is why world language programs are vital, says Cathleen Skinner, the Program Manager of the Oklahoma State Department of Education.
“So when your language is recognized when your heritage or your culture is recognized, and if it's accepted, students then feel like they're valued when it's welcomed,” Skinner said. “And that value that knowing you're accepted and valued really impacts your self-efficacy and confidence and perception of yourself.”
Native language programs grow in Oklahoma public schools, but erasure attempts still present
Tribes and school districts are expected to collaborate when offering Native American language programs in Oklahoma public schools, and Skinner explained that districts are required to contact the tribal nations in the district’s area.
“In most schools where there are Native American students, they are really interested in supporting every student, all those students, and so they are going to do what they can,” Skinner said. “But at the same time, the way that public school works is [prioritizing] the cost. There typically has to be a certain number of students per class in order for it to be considered viable.”
Stanley at LPS said the district's need for teaching Comanche and Kiowa languages was evident, but finding an accredited Kiowa teacher came with obstacles.
“Because with Native languages, they have to be accredited through their tribe,” Stanley said. “Their tribe has to say, ‘This person can teach this.’ Then, they have to go through the state hoops. We give them all the framework they need, but then finishing it is up to them.”
In the 2013-2014 school year, nearly 50 districts offered Native American language courses and about 915 students enrolled in those classes.
A decade later, the number of districts grew to 65 and the number of students in Native American language classes rose to more than 2,500.
Currently, 13 Indigenous languages — including Osage, Potawatomi, Cherokee, Muscogee and Choctaw — are taught in Oklahoma public schools, according to Skinner. At LPS, they started the year with 59 students in the Comanche class and 10 in the Kiowa class’s first year.
Despite research showing the positive impacts of language learning, world language credit is not a requirement for graduation for Oklahoma high school students due to recent legislation.
“We're working again to try to have the legislature reconsider where world languages fits into this,” Skinner said. “We've heard districts talking about how they're going to address that. And some districts I've heard are moving to a single year of a world language.”
The Kiowa language, a member of the Tanoan language family, is considered critically endangered, according to the Endangered Languages Project. For English speakers, it is difficult to learn because an error in pitch or tone can alter the meaning of a word.
The Comanche language is blunt and direct, according to Woothtakewahbitty. She said it can make her students, no matter their background, become more assertive.
“It might make them a bit more mouthy, but that’s OK,” Woothtakewahbitty said.
Some complaints Skinner has heard about world languages are that students may be unable to use them in the real world or that the classes they take don’t give them enough time to fully understand them. While she agreed language acquisition comes after years of speaking the language, the results of learning a new language are evident and significantly benefit Oklahoma students.
“We've seen this in Oklahoma looking at our dual language and immersion students, we can see that students who have been in these programs outperform their monolingual peers,” Skinner said. “It strengthens concentration and enables a person to have multiple perspectives when it comes to problem-solving, looking at people… and the most recent studies show that it has proven to strengthen the brain against dementia.”
The future of cultural preservation
Moriah is a citizen of the Kiowa Tribe and a junior taking Kiowa I at LPS. When she learned her Native language would be taught in her school, she knew immediately that she would enroll.
“I was sitting at my desk, and I heard them say ‘if you want to take a Kiowa class at LRC,’" Moriah said. “That's all I heard. And I was like, ‘I'm going to that.’ I was excited.”
When Moriah told her grandmother the news, she couldn’t believe it.
“She was just kind of like, ‘What? They are teaching Kiowa now?’” Moriah recalled.
Now, the two can speak the language together, a bond that Moriah and her grandmother are happy to share.
“Learning my own language, I feel like itself is a reward — to be able to go home and tell my grandma like, ‘Hey, I learned a new phrase,’” Moriah said.
Fish, the Indigenous mental health expert from Minnesota, said when a language that once ceased or rarely is spoken in a family begins to be declared again, it spurs intergenerational healing.
This familial bond, strengthened through language and culture, is helping to repair the damage caused by early colonizers, federal government leaders and Indian boarding school teachers, among others. Fish calls it a testament to the perseverance and will of Indigenous people to not only survive but to thrive and recultivate what was never entirely lost.
“When I think about boarding schools and how language would, literally, be beaten out of youth at such a precious time in their lives that for people to go back and to be able to share that and speak that with pride can really be felt, I think ancestrally and spiritually,” Fish said.
Before the first day of the class, Moriah knew how to pronounce one Kiowa word: the name of her grandmother’s cat, talí, which means boy. Now, she knows how to introduce herself.
“Sometimes I'm nervous she's gonna tell me I'm saying [a word] wrong,” Moriah said about her grandmother. “But yeah, she's proud of me.”
KOSU is part of the Mental Health Parity Collaborative, a group of newsrooms that are covering stories on mental health care access and inequities in the U.S. The partners on this project include The Carter Center and newsrooms in select states across the country.
