I am the child of farm workers. As a child, life in the fields means hard physical labor, inadequate education and the kind of despair that breeds violence and alcoholism. When I was 11, my father was employed year-round by a farm in the Puyallup Valley. Calif. Seeking to stem the staggeringly high school-dropout rate among American Indian students, in the late 1960s tribal leaders and educators agreed that Native students would respond better to Native teachers. To create that pool of educators, they started the nation's first Indian teacher-training program on the campus of Humboldt State University.
Linguists classify it as a separate language that became a distinct entity long ago.
Most Potawatomi who are involved with the language feel strongly that this is so. We do not provide subscriber or visitor names to anyone. Some articles presented in Canku Ota may contain copyright material. We have received appropriate permissions for republishing any articles. Material appearing here is distributed without profit or monetary gain to those who have expressed an interest.