A more genuine mother-tongue education can be found in the teaching of
Eskimo children in Alaska. Trifonovitch discovered (1976) that one important
by-product of the bilingual education programme in Alaska, which had
introduced the tuition of Eskimo children in their mother tongue, was an
increasing awareness of their cultural and ethnic identity. In contrast to this,
the monolingual English education of Apache children in North America
was leading to suicides among the children (Paulston, 1980) or a complete
rejection of American culture (Liebe-Harkort, 1980) as their own ethnic
identity was being negated.