2 . Vida Woodhull Stabler is the director of the Omaha culture center at Omaha Nation Public Schools in Macy, Nebraska. She has been working for years to pass on the cultural knowledge of tribal (部落的) elders for future generations. But she faces a predicament: Only about a dozen Omaha tribe members speak the language fluently today.

For Kyleigh Merrick, 15, learning the Omaha language as a teen today is important but also a challenge. She goes to language class every day, but outside of class, there are few opportunities to speak it. Her great-grandmother uses it at home, but among her peers, only a handful will sometimes greet each other in the Omaha language. At school, only a few students are taking Omaha language classes and seem deeply interested in tribal language and culture.

Another big force that has worked against passing the native tribal language on over generations is boarding schools . The local government began sending native students to boarding schools from the 1800s to the 1960s. Students there were not allowed to express tribal culture and were taught only English.

“Our language does not have access to the same types of materials that Spanish and German do ― you can walk into any library and find Spanish books to read,” Stabler said. “Our community has had to develop tangible (有形的) materials on our own. The first challenge is ensuring people want to learn. The second is making sure they have materials to learn from.”

At Omaha Nation Public Schools, Stabler put tribal culture into students’ everyday school experiences, like hanging up a calendar with months in English and Omaha. In biology class, for instance, kids might make traditional tribal foods.

For Stabler, the work of making sure tribal culture lives on into the next generations never stops. “If students are rooted to our land ― they’ll be rooted as human beings,” Stabler said.