VOA慢速英语2012 THIS IS AMERICA - Some American Indian Tribes Recording Faster Growth Than Rest of US

THIS IS AMERICA - Some American Indian Tribes Recording¹ Faster Growth Than Rest of US

FAITH LAPIDUS: Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Faith Lapidus.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And I’m Christopher Cruise. This week on our program, we learn why some American Indian tribes are growing faster than the rest of the country. In some cases tribes are moving to restrict membership and are even expelling members to control growth. Later, we look at language and the mind -- how certain word choices might help you discover if a person is lying.

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FAITH LAPIDUS: In populations, the "rate of natural increase" is a rate based on the number of births minus the number of deaths. It does not include migration². In the United States the rate of natural increase is about one percent a year. However, over the past ten years, growth rates for some American Indian tribes have been two to three times higher than the national average.

The federal government recognizes five hundred sixty-six American Indian and Alaska Native tribes within the United States. In some ways the tribes are nations within a nation. They can make their own laws on their reservation lands. And their governments have complete authority to decide who can be a member of the tribe. Tribal³ citizenship⁴ is based on the blood lines of ancestors.

The Colville tribe in Washington State is considering a plan to ease tribal membership requirements 

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Some Native Americans are returning to their communities because of their tribes' increasing wealth from gambling⁵ operations and other businesses. But fast growth has been difficult for some tribes, while others wish they had more members.

The Tulalip Tribes are based near Everett, Washington, in the Pacific Northwest. Their growing membership is a source of pride for John McCoy, a tribal member and a Washington state representative. He says part of the reason for the tribe's growth is improved health care.

JOHN MCCOY: "We’re living longer. Our babies are surviving birth."

Another reason for the growth, he says, is an increase in jobs on reservations, with the increase led by tribal gaming operations.

JOHN MCCOY: "So we have our peoples coming back from other states. They’re coming home because there is an economy."

The Tulalip tribes have had a twenty-two percent growth rate over the past ten years. Some tribes around the country have grown even faster.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Some of those tribes have felt the need to increase membership requirements in order to control the sharp growth.

In California, some tribal governments have even made cuts in their membership. The biggest reason appears to be financial. Having more members means a smaller share for each individual in the sharing of tribal wealth.

For example, the Puyallup Tribe in western Washington state currently pays each member two thousand dollars a month in profit sharing. Tribal members voted to limit new enrollments in two thousand five.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Like the Puyallups, the Grand Ronde Tribe in Oregon operates a successful casino. Members of the Grand Ronde Tribe have changed their membership requirements three times since nineteen ninety-nine.

Recently tribal members voted to keep tight enrollment⁶ requirements in place. For example, new members must have a parent who was on the membership list at the time of their birth.

Before the vote, Dee Edwards posted an emotional video on YouTube saying that the rules split her family and left out her grandchildren.

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A former member of the tribal council, Andy Jenness, recorded that video for Ms. Edwards. He says he supports rules that will not divide families, even if that means smaller payments for him.

ANDY JENNESS: "The amount of growth that is acceptable to me is that of natural birth and the tribe growing at the natural rate, whatever that is. If that means I have less in my per capita check, so be it."

FAITH LAPIDUS: But other members warned against opening the "floodgates" of tribal membership. Over the years, people have criticized so-called tribal jumpers. These are Native Americans whose ancestry⁷ includes connections to several tribes. "Jumping" means giving up citizenship in one tribe to move to a wealthier one.

If too many people do that, it can reduce shares of profit and put more pressure on tribal services that everyone wants.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Yet there are also tribes that would welcome new members. Among them is the Colville Confederated Tribes in northeastern Washington state.

Council member Ricky Gabriel has proposed that members vote to ease the blood requirement in the tribe's constitution. That way more children from mixed marriages could become members. He says his proposal has had a lot of positive reactions.

RICKY GABRIEL: "The elders are extremely happy about this. They’re pushing hard. They’re seeing their grandchildren not be able to be enrolled⁸."

Membership in the tribe currently requires that a person have at least one-fourth Colville blood. It takes just a couple of generations of marrying outside the tribe to put children at risk of being excluded from membership.

Mr. Gabriel's proposal would change the requirements and recognize blood from any Indian tribe toward the minimum. Several tribes around the country including the Tulalips and Puyallups have ended all blood requirements. They now base membership on direct descent from tribal members on historic membership lists.

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FAITH LAPIDUS: Pronouns can be very useful -- in fact, more useful than you might even imagine. Pronouns are words like I, we, you, they, he, she and it. We use them -- another pronoun -- in place of nouns and noun phrases.

James Pennebaker has written a new book called "The Secret Life of Pronouns." Mr. Pennebaker is a professor, but not an English professor. He is a professor of psychology⁹ at the University of Texas at Austin. He says word choices show more about what people are thinking that they might realize.

JAMES PENNEBAKER: "What they do is tell us how a person is thinking, where they are paying attention. So, for example, if I use the word I a lot, it tells a researcher that the person is paying attention to themselves, to their feelings and their thoughts."

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: Professor Pennebaker decided¹⁰ to do some research. He and his student assistants fed large amounts of written material into a computer. They used a program designed to recognize patterns in word use to analyze¹¹ what people were saying or writing.

JAMES PENNEBAKER: "We get huge bodies of text, it could be conversations or books or poems or whatever, and by analyzing¹² the way they are using pronouns and also articles, prepositions and conjunctions -- this is a group called function words -- we get a sense of how they are thinking and how they are connecting with others."

For example, Mr. Pennebaker looked at writings from personal blogs before and after the terrorist attacks on the United States in two thousand one.

JAMES PENNEBAKER: "We studied seventy thousand blog entries for one thousand people from two months before to two months after September eleventh, and what you find is that on September eleventh the entire culture drops in the way it uses 'I,' 'me' and 'my.' It increases the use of 'we' and we can track how long these language changes occur. With 'we,' for example, they go on for the next two months."

FAITH LAPIDUS: Another time, he recorded conversations at an event where young singles were brought together to go on dates with people they had never met before. Analysis of the conversations proved to be a good predictor of whether any two people would continue seeing each other after that event.

CHRISTOPHER CRUISE: And there are other uses for this kind of language analysis. James Pennebaker says one of the most promising¹³ areas of study involves lie detection. Remember those function words he talked about -- articles, prepositions, conjunctions, as well as pronouns? How people use these words, he says, can give investigators¹⁴ a pretty good idea of whether someone is lying or trying to hide something.

JAMES PENNEBAKER: "What we find is pretty consistent: when people tell the truth they use the word 'I' at much higher rates. They are owning what they are saying. When they are lying they tend not to use 'I.' They are almost avoiding self-referencing."

Professor Pennebaker says this method is still far from being a "lie detector¹⁵." But it can be a useful tool for investigators, and using a computer can improve the results.

In one test, students had to decide from a statement if a person was lying. The students were correct just fifty-two percent of the time -- about the same as if they had guessed. But when a computer analyzed¹⁶ the word use, it found the liars¹⁷ with sixty-seven percent accuracy.

FAITH LAPIDUS: Most of the research has been done with English texts. But Professor Pennebaker says the software has produced similar results using texts in Spanish, Chinese and other languages.

JAMES PENNEBAKER: "What we find is pretty much the same thing. When people are using the words 'I,' 'me' and 'my' at high rates, they tend to be more honest, they tend to be a little bit more depressed¹⁸, they tend to be a little bit more anxious than people who do not use 'I's' and that holds up across all these different languages and even ancient languages like ancient Greek."

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CHRISTOPHER CRUISE:Our program was produced by Brianna Blake, with reporting by Tom Banse and Greg Flakus. I’m Christopher Cruise.

FAITH LAPIDUS: And I’m Faith Lapidus. You can find transcripts¹⁹ and MP3s of our programs along with other activities for learning English at voanews.cn. You can also find our podcasts in the Apple iTunes Store. And you can join the conversation on Facebook and Twitter at VOA Learning English. Join us again next week for THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English.

1 recording   

n.录音，记录

参考例句：

• How long will the recording of the song take?录下这首歌得花多少时间？
• I want to play you a recording of the rehearsal.我想给你放一下彩排的录像。

2 migration   

n.迁移，移居，（鸟类等的）迁徙

参考例句：

• Swallows begin their migration south in autumn.燕子在秋季开始向南方迁移。
• He described the vernal migration of birds in detail.他详细地描述了鸟的春季移居。

3 tribal   

adj.部族的，种族的

参考例句：

• He became skilled in several tribal lingoes.他精通几种部族的语言。
• The country was torn apart by fierce tribal hostilities.那个国家被部落间的激烈冲突弄得四分五裂。

4 citizenship   

n.市民权，公民权，国民的义务(身份)

参考例句：

• He was born in Sweden,but he doesn't have Swedish citizenship.他在瑞典出生，但没有瑞典公民身分。
• Ten years later,she chose to take Australian citizenship.十年后，她选择了澳大利亚国籍。

5 gambling   

n.赌博；投机

参考例句：

• They have won a lot of money through gambling.他们赌博赢了很多钱。
• The men have been gambling away all night.那些人赌了整整一夜。

6 enrollment   

n.注册或登记的人数；登记

参考例句：

• You will be given a reading list at enrollment.注册时你会收到一份阅读书目。
• I just got the enrollment notice from Fudan University.我刚刚接到复旦大学的入学通知书。

7 ancestry   

n.祖先，家世

参考例句：

• Their ancestry settled the land in 1856.他们的祖辈1856年在这块土地上定居下来。
• He is an American of French ancestry.他是法国血统的美国人。

8 enrolled   

adj.入学登记了的v.[亦作enrol]( enroll的过去式和过去分词 )；登记，招收，使入伍（或入会、入学等），参加，成为成员；记入名册；卷起，包起

参考例句：

• They have been studying hard from the moment they enrolled. 从入学时起，他们就一直努力学习。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• He enrolled with an employment agency for a teaching position. 他在职业介绍所登了记以谋求一个教师的职位。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

10 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

11 analyze   

vt.分析，解析 (=analyse)

参考例句：

• We should analyze the cause and effect of this event.我们应该分析这场事变的因果。
• The teacher tried to analyze the cause of our failure.老师设法分析我们失败的原因。

12 analyzing   

v.分析；分析( analyze的现在分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析n.分析

参考例句：

• Analyzing the date of some socialist countries presents even greater problem s. 分析某些社会主义国家的统计数据，暴露出的问题甚至更大。 来自辞典例句
• He undoubtedly was not far off the mark in analyzing its predictions. 当然，他对其预测所作的分析倒也八九不离十。 来自辞典例句

13 promising   

adj.有希望的，有前途的

参考例句：

• The results of the experiments are very promising.实验的结果充满了希望。
• We're trying to bring along one or two promising young swimmers.我们正设法培养出一两名有前途的年轻游泳选手。

14 investigators   

n.调查者，审查者( investigator的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• This memo could be the smoking gun that investigators have been looking for. 这份备忘录可能是调查人员一直在寻找的证据。
• The team consisted of six investigators and two secretaries. 这个团队由六个调查人员和两个秘书组成。 来自《简明英汉词典》

15 detector   

n.发觉者，探测器

参考例句：

• The detector is housed in a streamlined cylindrical container.探测器安装在流线型圆柱形容器内。
• Please walk through the metal detector.请走过金属检测器。

16 analyzed   

v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析

参考例句：

• The doctors analyzed the blood sample for anemia. 医生们分析了贫血的血样。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The young man did not analyze the process of his captivation and enrapturement, for love to him was a mystery and could not be analyzed. 这年轻人没有分析自己蛊惑著迷的过程，因为对他来说，爱是个不可分析的迷。 来自《简明英汉词典》

17 liars   

说谎者( liar的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The greatest liars talk most of themselves. 最爱自吹自擂的人是最大的说谎者。
• Honest boys despise lies and liars. 诚实的孩子鄙视谎言和说谎者。

18 depressed   

adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的

参考例句：

• When he was depressed,he felt utterly divorced from reality.他心情沮丧时就感到完全脱离了现实。
• His mother was depressed by the sad news.这个坏消息使他的母亲意志消沉。

19 transcripts   

n.抄本（ transcript的名词复数 ）；转写本；文字本；副本

参考例句：

• Like mRNA, both tRNA and rRNA are transcripts of chromosomal DNA. tRNA及rRNA同mRNA一样，都是染色体DNA的转录产物。 来自辞典例句
• You can't take the transfer students'exam without your transcripts. 没有成绩证明书，你就不能参加转学考试。 来自辞典例句