Journal of American Indian Education

3 J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 4 , I S S U E 2 in memoriam Joshua A. (Shikl) Fishman july 18, 1926–march 1, 2015 on march 1, 2015, the world lost one of the greatest sociolinguists and minority-language advocates of our time, Joshua A. (Shikl) Fishman. Known for his prolific writings on the sociology of language (more than 1,000 articles and monographs) and especially for his work on the protection and promotion of minoritized languages, Dr. Fishman was a strong and highly effective ally in the fight to revitalize and maintain Indigenous languages. “[U]nabashedly in favor of bilingual education ,” he believed that “bilingual education urgently requires not only attention and understanding but also sympathy, assistance and dedication ” (Fishman, 1976, as cited in García, Peltz, Schiffman, & Fishman, 2006, p. 15). Dr. Fishman was present at the second Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium held at Northern Arizona University in May 1995, where he famously advised those in attendance that schools “should be on tap and not on top of a language. The language does not belong to them. The language makes use of them” (Fishman, 1996, p. 194). Above all, Fishman insisted, schools should work in tandem with families and communities to safeguard the cradle of heritage language maintenance : intergenerational mother tongue transmission in the home. Further, he encouraged, “it is possible for small groups of . . . individuals to re-arrange their lives individually and collectively exactly in this revolutionary way” (1996, p. 194). Dr. Fishman would know, for that is precisely what he and his life partner of more than 60 years, Gella Schweid Fishman, did with Yiddish in their own Bronx, New York, home. As he recalled in a 1996 interview with Teresa McCarty, as a child at the dinner table, his father would ask his children, “What did you do for the language [Yiddish] today?” Joshua and Gella made Yiddish the language of their home and, with a few like-minded Yiddishspeaking families, the language of their close urban neighborhood. He urged Native American parents and educators to do the same with 4 J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 4 , I S S U E 2 their heritage mother tongues. “Do not leave your language alone,” Fishman cautioned in a book by the same title (2006). “Reversing language shift . . . is community building,” he emphasized; “that is what is essentially required, in and through the beloved language” (1996, p. 196). Joshua and Gella Fishman traveled widely and conducted several tours of Navajo and other Native nations to speak with educators, tribal leaders, and community members on language revitalization and maintenance. He participated in the National Association for Bilingual Education’s “reversing Indigenous language shift” sessions, and he held a 1998 summer residency at the American Indian Language Development Institute at the University of Arizona, where he taught a course based on his classic book, Reversing Language Shift (Fishman, 1991). “One thing we can be sure of,” Fishman insisted, is that “those who do not give up, but try again and again, become a community of hope, a community of dedication” (1996, p. 196). But, he added, hope must be met with an equal portion of action—not for the language itself, “but for the lifestyle”—the relationships and cultural world to which language is intimately tied (1996, p. 195). And that is perhaps the greatest gift that Joshua Fishman has left us—hope for the future of Indigenous and other “smaller” oppressed languages and the wisdom and tools through which to construct that Joshua and Gella Fishman in their Bronx, New York, home, February 2010. Photograph by Teresa L. McCarty. J O U R N A L O F A M E R I C A N I N D I A N E D U C A T I O N — 5 4 , I S S U E...