8 minute read
Preserving the Language, Preserving the Culture
P R E S E R V I N G T H E lan•guage
PRESERVING THE CULTURE
BY TOYA STEWART DOWNEY - MILLE LACS BAND OF OJIBWE, AIGC ALUMNA
JERMAYNE TUCKTA - CONFEDERATED TRIBES OF THE WARM SPRINGS RESERVATION, AIGC ALUMNUS
There’s an old video that shows two-year-old Mosiah Bluecloud being asked by his mother to wipe his face. The toddler stares blankly until his father tells him to do the same thing.
It wasn’t that Bluecloud (Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma), an American Indian Graduate Center Scholar, was being disobedient. Rather, it was that his mom spoke to him in English, and his father spoke to him using their native Kickapoo language.
“I didn’t understand English because Kickapoo was my first language,” said Bluecloud. “I remember, though, that my mom was always hungry for language and asked for words so she could use them to speak to me.”
It might be because of that memory, or that he feels fortunate to have had direct access to his language, that Bluecloud has devoted himself to teaching the language.
In 2016 he created a Kickapoo language department for the Kickapoo Tribe in Oklahoma, and has also done work with Texas and Kansas Tribes. Before then, he taught family members and others their native language.
“For me, it’s been about teaching and bringing language back to my people,” said Bluecloud, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in linguistics at the University of Arizona. “The bulk of my work is teacher training and I love that. Whether or not I take a job in academia, I will always teach my language.” Bluecloud is currently working with Stonybrook University in New York on its Algonquian Language Revitalization Project. This project is being done through documentation because there haven’t been first speakers in generations.
“There are so many tribes that have documentation, and some have first speakers. But some do not have either,” said Bluecloud, adding that the loss of language greatly impacts Native communities.
Across the country in Oregon, American Indian Graduate Center Alumnus Jermayne Tuckta (Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation) is also teaching language through both his Tribe’s museum and its culture and heritage department.
“I teach one of the four Warm Springs dialects. Each one has different writing systems,” said Tuckta. “In English, our language is called ‘Sahaptain’ and while we have similar dialects, we have different writing systems.”
The Warm Springs Reservation is known for its hot springs, but also because three Tribes live there - sharing the space, but having their own asymmetrical languages. This means that while there are similarities in their languages, they don’t understand each other, Tuckta explained.
Though his first language was English, Tuckta listened and tried to pick up words from his maternal grandmother and her siblings. He learned some words and phrases, but started taking classes with a teacher so he could surprise his Elders with his skills.
One of the biggest things he learned was that “there were cultural worldviews that are being missed in our current language right now.”
For example, he said, the language is very direct and traditionally there weren’t phrases such as, “good
MOSIAH BLUECLOUD KICKAPOO TRIBE OF OKLAHOMA
morning, good afternoon and how is the weather.” Instead, those phases have been created to adapt to pleasantries that are common in today’s English speech.
“Instead of saying, ‘how are you,’ in our culture you would say, ‘where have you been,’” he said. “I tell students I can teach them the phrases, but traditionally this wasn’t done in our language because we were very straightforward.”
Preserving the language though his teaching is very important to him as currently there are only three fluent speakers of the Warm Springs dialect.
“I have recordings of some of the Elders who were fluent speakers... some have since died from COVID-19 and aren’t here anymore.”
Tuckta, who attended the University of Oregon and has a Master of Arts in Language, is planning to pursue a Ph.D. in language revitalization. He is also working with the University to help create a dictionary of the traditional language.
“Today on the Warm Springs Reservation, there isn’t a teacher who teaches the way I do. I teach this way because that’s what the Elders taught me. But, it’s up to the community if the language continues to evolve,” he said. The experience of Dillon Vaughn (Mississippi Band of Choctaw) was different. He knew his Native language first, then began to speak English when he went to school. English became his dominant language.
“I was blessed to be around people who only knew Choctaw,” said Vaughn, recalling that his grandfather only knew enough English to get groceries at the store. “Everything else was Choctaw, so that’s what I heard and learned.”
“It will be hard for my two-yearold son to find someone who only knows Choctaw or who hardly knows English at all.”
Vaughn said his Tribe, the biggest in Mississippi, was “in their own bubble,” so when he left in 2007 to attend the University of Oklahoma it was a “culture shock.” This was because there were different Native cultures and Native languages everywhere.
“There were Native people who were passionate about Native people in general, which is not something I grew up with because we kept to ourselves,” he said.
As a studio arts major after his sophomore year, Vaughn didn’t know there were language arts classes available. Then, while attending a networking event, he met the Choctaw language professor who changed the trajectory of his life.
“When he found out I could speak my language, he asked me to come to his class to show the difference between Choctaw in Mississippi and Choctaw in Oklahoma,” said Vaughn, noting that there was a difference in accents and that his Tribe spoke faster and used contractions. By contrast, Oklahoma speakers used full words and spoke more slowly.
Around this same time, he began sharing an apartment with a Kiowa speaker who taught at the university.
“Seeing someone my own age teaching in a college setting was impressive to me because when I was growing up, the language instructors were grandmas and grandpas,” he said. “We talked about language all the time and compared our language.
Upon graduating, Vaughn worked for Oklahoma Public Schools in the Indian Education program as “an uncle to 300 kids.” He then moved back to Mississippi, where he became one of his Tribe’s first certified language instructors. Certification means “we are
fluent enough speakers to share and teach the language,” said Vaughn, who after two years was invited back to the University of Oklahoma to work as a language instructor -- a post he has held for the past six years.
Though it is commonly understood how significant language is, the impact it has on communities varies by Tribe and by region, according to some experts.
Take the Lumbee people, for whom language has never been a focus, said American Indian Graduate Center Alumna Dr. Linda Oxendine (Lumbee Tribe), the retired Chair of the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.
“We were exposed to dialect and it was a part of who we were,” she said. “There were separate communities who had separate dialects, but we don’t know what our language is because the Lumbee people are a result of infusion of other Tribes.”
She said by the time her people “were discovered,” they were speaking a broken form of English. Later research would show, however, that some words were distinctly among the Lumbee people. During her time in academia, Oxendine conducted research, explored facets of American Indian history and taught a Lumbee history and culture class.
“Language is an important form of transmission in our culture... of the history, values and way of life,” she said. “Language is a part of culture, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have culture because you don’t have language.”
“We have what we have because of our language and culture over time,” said Oxendine, adding that the Lumbee “define our people through kinship, community and the cultural parts of the community.”
She notes, though, that knowing more about their first language would help strengthen their culture and knowledge of who they are.
“Our languages hold a worldview that is the key to understanding how we should be,” said Bluecloud. “We learn how to be, how to respect, how to love and how to worship.”
“A child who understands that trees are beings is more respectful. We understand our relationship with the land and that we are all related and connected.”
Tuckta shares a similar perspective.
“It is important to carry the language forward for the children,” he said.
“My maternal grandmother, called Kała in my language, told me that without language “if you get buried in this land, the land may not recognize you.”
