GÖTTINGEN, Germany: The future of indigenous American studies in this historic German university town now lies partly in the hands of a 56-year-old Australian named Gordon Whittaker. Whittaker is one of the last professors in Germany who cultivates the dying languages of native peoples in North and South America. At the University of Göttingen, where he has been a professor since 1990, he looks likely to witness the end of such work there. This year, the university decided that students will be able to get degrees for the study of Africa and Southeast Asia, but not the Incas, Aztecs or the Sioux. Until he retires in 2019, Whittaker will continue his own work preserving the language of an American Indian tribe, the Sac and Fox Nation, but that is about it. "Göttingen will no longer produce the next generations of scholars who keep these kinds of languages and cultures alive," Whittaker said. "It will simply stop." The destiny of indigenous American studies in Göttingen - and the university's president protests that he is not trying to kill it off - underscores an historic change now taking place at German universities, institutions once known for cultivating of highly specialized fields of study in the humanities.
GÖTTINGEN, Germany: The future of indigenous American studies in this historic German university town now lies partly in the hands of a 56-year-old Australian named Gordon Whittaker.
Whittaker is one of the last professors in Germany who cultivates the dying languages of native peoples in North and South America. At the University of Göttingen, where he has been a professor since 1990, he looks likely to witness the end of such work there.
This year, the university decided that students will be able to get degrees for the study of Africa and Southeast Asia, but not the Incas, Aztecs or the Sioux. Until he retires in 2019, Whittaker will continue his own work preserving the language of an American Indian tribe, the Sac and Fox Nation, but that is about it.
"Göttingen will no longer produce the next generations of scholars who keep these kinds of languages and cultures alive," Whittaker said. "It will simply stop."
The destiny of indigenous American studies in Göttingen - and the university's president protests that he is not trying to kill it off - underscores an historic change now taking place at German universities, institutions once known for cultivating of highly specialized fields of study in the humanities.
