Documentary about Tewa language

Documentary Follows Native Students Learning and Preserving Tewa Language

By Vincent SchillingIn November 2009, Santa Fe Preparatory School in Santa Fe, New Mexico sent out a newsletter announcing a self-study curriculum in which Native teenagers would study the Tewa language with the help of a mentor. When producer/director Aimée Broustra heard about it she decided to make a documentary.

“I knew this would be a story of inspiration and hope and it was a story that needed to be told,” Broustra said during a radio interview on Talk 1260 KTRC.

“The teenagers in The Young Ancestors are motivated and enthusiastic about learning because they understand the symbiotic relationship between language and culture; that one cannot survive for too long without the other,” Broustra says on the documentary’s website, TheYoungAncestors.com. “In a broader context the documentary explores the burgeoning movement by Native Americans to revitalize their native languages in tribes throughout America.”And:In the film, the Native youth, who are all Tewa, spend hours learning the Tewa language with mentor Laura Kaye Eagles, a seventh grade literature teacher at Santa Fe Prep. The pilot program is administered with the Indigenous Language Institute to help revitalize Native languages. The students get language credit for studying Tewa, as opposed to studying French or Spanish.

“We’re Native American, that’s who we are and we’re proud of it. We have that tradition backing us up,” Jordan Naranjo says in the film.

“I could hear my ancestors before but now that I am learning the language, I feel connected with my ancestors in everything I do,” Jeremy Montoya says.Below:  "Native students study Tewa with mentor Laura Kaye Eagles, a seventh grade literature teacher at Santa Fe Preparatory School in Santa Fe, New Mexico."