As he began speaking the words of a Cherokee prayer that "calls on the Creator for his blessing," Durbin Feeling, a linguist and translator of the Cherokee language, let his voice lilt away from where one might have expected it to go. Few in the audience spoke Cherokee, but everyone clearly understood what Feeling said. Compared to the smooth, steady current of words inflected quietly but certainly by his lips, English seemed almost violent, broken and busy like river rapids.

Mr. Feeling ended the prayer and began speaking in English to his enrapt audience. Feeling, along with linguists and cultural activists from the Makah, Caddo, and Tohono O'Oodham peoples of North America, was participating in a recent Smithsonian-sponsored discussion program titled "The People, The Language: Preserving and Maintaining the Native Languages of North America." Rayna Green, director of the American Indian Program at the National Museum of American History, moderated the program which was held at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden's Ring Auditorium.

 There were four speakers and the message was always the same: Native American languages will die without dramatic action by Native Americans, tribal governments and schools, and the United States Government to encourage their preservation and perpetuation. Today, only 150 Native American languages survive from the more than 500 languages once spoken in North America. Linguists predict that as few as 20 of those languages will be spoken 50 years from now.

 It's no accident that languages are dying. An 1868 report from a federal commission on Indian affairs recommended that "their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted...Through sameness of language is produced sameness of sentiment, and thought."

 In 1990, in a belated reversal of that federal attitude, Congress established the Native American Languages Act to "preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice and develop Native American Languages." Two years later, Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii created a second Native American Languages Act that actually designed programs to fulfill the goals of the first act.

 But now that it's safe for Native American children to learn their languages again, who will teach them? "We are hanging on not even by a fingernail. We are lucky to count on one hand our living fluent speakers, " said Joanne Rickard-Weinholtz of the Tuscarora Nation in upstate New York. Rickard-Weinholtz, who has been working with tribal elders to teach herself their language, had stood up during the discussion to plead for ideas and assistance. She and others struggle to educate Tuscarora schoolchildren in their language of their ancestors.

 According to Rayna Green, after generations of being punished in school and scorned in public for speaking something other than English, many Native Americans have stopped speaking their native languages. "The culture around them wants anything but for them to speak their own language," said Green. And the overwhelming influence of English-speaking television and popular culture have made native languages seem irrelevant to some Native American youth.

Now, Durbin Feeling and others are working hard to convey the crucial relevance of Native American languages. People seem to be listening, but there is much to do. According to Green, "There is a sense of urgency about this. In so many tribes there are very few fluent speakers left. And even though you've got people that agree that this needs to be done, there's no one way to do it for so many different tribes." Green pointed out that Hebrew was successfully revived because millions of people devoted themselves to saving one language. But Native American tribal nations are often as small as a thousand people and, as is the case with the Tuscarora Nation, only a handful of fluent speakers are alive to pass along their language.

 "There are many good reasons to study Spanish, and French, and Japanese," says Green. "But isn't it odd that we don't also sit down and learn Navaho and Zuni, and other languages of our native land, along with the ancestral names of the ancient places we now inhabit?"