Should we leave language to the linguists?

In a recent article in 'The Daily Californian,' a linguistics professor was quoted about the study of indigenous languages by experts like himself.

One section in the article pretty much sums up for me how useful the university linguistic approach is to those of us who want to learn how to speak an indigenous language:

A common misconception of linguists is that they can speak many different languages. Garrett's response to this stereotype is that linguists study languages, not speak them, and he himself is still far from becoming fluent in Yurok.

"I'm at that foreign language learning stage where, when someone's talking, you recognize as it goes along that you know each of the pieces but they're going too fast for you to put it all together and you want to say 'No, no, stop, wait! Talk four times as slow!'" Garrett said.

While I would never go so far as to say linguistics has no place whatsoever in promoting and supporting people's desire to actually speak — as oppposed to simply study — their language, I believe we need to get people talking in Cree, not merely about Cree.

At least this professor was candid and honest enough to acknowledge this fact.