MultiTree:

Name: Kutenai Type: Language Alternate Names: Kootenai; Ktunaxa; Kootenay Spoken in: USA, Canada Number of speakers: 6 in Canada (2002 W. Poser). Population total all countries: 12 (Ethnologue) Number of speakers: 135 (UNESCO) Number of speakers: 12 (World Oral Literature Project) Code: kut Code Standard: ISO 639-3 Documentation: SIL Families: Isolates & Small Families Parent Subgroup: North American Language Isolate; North American Isolates; North American Language Isolates (nais) Brief Description: "Kutenai (Kootenai, Ktunaxa), an isolate, is the heritage language of three politically independent groups in Montana, Idaho, and British Columbia (the name Ktunaxa is now official in Canada). The Montana Kootenai are part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, and are concentrated at the northern end of the Flathead Reservation, around Elmo. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho has a reservation near Bonners Ferry, in the Idaho panhandle. The communities in British Columbia are represented by the Ktunaxa/Kinbasket Tribal Council and include the Lower Kootenay Band, with a reserve near Creston; the Tobacco Plains Band with a reserve at Grasmere; teh St. Mary's Band with a reserve near Cranbrook; and the Columbia Lake Band with a reserve at Windermere. Most elders of the neighbouring Shuswap Band, the Kinbaskets, near Invermere, have a working knowledge of the Kutenai language. The language is spoken by elders in all the communities, and there were monolingual speakers at Tobacco Plains and Bonners Ferry as recently as the 1980s. With a few exceptions, the youngest first-language speakers are in their 50s, and even some of them have more of a passive knowledge of the language than active fluency." Victor Golla, Atlas of the World's Languages 2007 pg. 17

Endangerment Status

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Linguist List Status: Nearly Extinct UNESCO Status: Severely endangered Ethnologue Status: Not listed Sutherland's Red List: Critically Endangered