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<br><b><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Salish revival</font></font></font></b>
<br><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>By JOHN STROMNES
of the Missoulian</font></font></font><img SRC="cid:part1.3FC39348.839F2D9D@ncidc.org" BORDER=0 height=254 width=360><img SRC="cid:part2.3FC39348.839F2D9D@ncidc.org" BORDER=0 height=1 width=5>
<br><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1><b>Joshua Brown
chats</b> with sisters Siliye, center, and Susseli Pete at the Salish language
immersion school in Arlee last week. Brown was recently awarded a 2003
Echoing Green fellowship worth $60,000 over two years to fund the Salish
Language Perpetuation Project.</font></font></font>
<br><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Photo by MICHAEL
GALLACHER/Missoulian</font></font></font>
<p><b><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Pablo man
wins $60,000 grant for language program</font></font></font></b>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>ARLEE - Joshua
Brown has studied such arcane subjects as social linguistics and bilingual
education but still isn't fluent in Salish, the native tongue of his Indian
tribe.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Neither are most
Salish Indians on the Flathead Reservation.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Salish as a living
language is dying fast, Brown said. Only 70 to 80 people are fluent out
of some 6,000 enrolled members in the entire tribal confederacy - Pend
d'Oreille, Salish and Kootenai. (Salish is by far the largest of the three
tribal groups that comprise the Flathead Nation.)</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Brown aims to
revive the language as a living, cultural force with the help of a two-year,
$60,000 "social entrepreneurship" award from a foundation in New York City.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>The Pablo resident,
who has a master's degree in public administration from the University
of Montana, is a founder of the Salish language-immersion school, Nk(w)usm
(One Fire) in Arlee. He was recently named one of the world's Top 10 Emerging
Social Entrepreneurs for 2003 by Echoing Green, a nonprofit group started
by the venture-capital investment firm General Atlantic Partners.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Competition for
the fellowship is tough. Brown said he went through a rigorous written
competition against more than 100 other hopefuls, and surprised himself
by making the finals last spring.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>In New York,
he went through grueling days of formal interviews with the foundation's
selection panel, who themselves were social entrepreneurs recruited from
all over the world. From the 25 semifinalists, 10 were chosen to receive
the $60,000 grants, Brown said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"It was basically
like defending your thesis" for a graduate degree, Brown said of the experience.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Since then, he's
attended Echoing Green workshops in Greenwich, Conn., and San Francisco
addressing social entrepreneurship skills, including, he said, the vital
"60-second elevator pitch" in which you explain your program's mission
and need to potential donors.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Over the past
16 years, Echoing Green has invested $21 million in seed money to more
than 370 individuals who the organization defines as "talented yet unproven
social entrepreneurs dedicated to addressing the root causes of social
challenges" and "visionaries who will develop new solutions to society's
most difficult problems ... (and) who will work to close deeply rooted
social, economic and political inequities to ensure equal access and to
help all individuals reach his/her potential."</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>So the grant
is a pretty big deal for a low-key, gentle, soft-spoken, bespectacled 29-year-old
from the Flathead Reservation, Brown agreed.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>An attorney for
the Eastern Montana Self-Help Law Project also was a winner. That project
uses technology, volunteer attorneys, paralegals and lay community members
to help people represent themselves in court in civil proceedings.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Brown started
thinking about becoming a social entrepreneur - although not in those exact
terms - several years ago when his friend and mentor Clarence Woodcock,
a beloved Salish elder, editor, linguist and cultural leader, died. Brown
had learned much from Woodcock, including language skills, spiritual and
cultural traditions, while in high school in St. Ignatius.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>When Woodcock
died, Brown was an undergraduate majoring in environmental sciences at
Salish Kootenai College in Pablo. This field of study would almost surely
get him a good job with the resource-rich Confederated Salish and Kootenai
Tribes when he graduated.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>But with Woodcock
dead, Brown realized that his easy access to a fluent Salish speaker and
cultural leader had been cut off forever.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"When he died,
I realized that I took a lot of things for granted," Brown said. So he
changed his academic major, his goals and his outlook on life.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"Ever since then,
I have studied history, linguistics and education," he said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>While at college,
he started thinking about how to revive Salish as a useful, vital, living
tongue among the Salish people on the reservation.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Deliberate repression
of the Indian language by religious and civil authorities for two generations
- now referred to politely as "the boarding school experience" in tribal
cultures throughout the western United States - had severely eroded the
language by the time Brown was born.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Salish was rarely
spoken by anyone outside the home, and then usually only among elders.
Brown's parents, for example, spoke little Salish at home. He remembers
learning Salish words and phrases from his great-grandparents and great
uncles.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>At St. Ignatius
High School, he attended Salish classes, but they were only "enrichment"
courses of study, designed to familiarize students with the local Salish
cultural tradition, not language fluency.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>That kind of
instruction will never save Salish from extinction, Brown said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"Public schools
are never going to save the Salish language ... they can't and should not
be expected to do it by themselves," he said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"The Salish community
should take the lead and possibly partner with schools and other entities
to move away from enrichment programs only, and discover solutions that
will really produce people who are highly fluent in at least the Salish
and English languages."</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Last year, Brown
and others sought support from the tribal government to do just that, starting
Nk(w)usm (One Fire) in Arlee for children ages 2 to 5. There is no requirement
that parents or children be enrolled tribal members, only that parents
maintain an active interest in the school, helping with school repairs,
maintenance, fund-raising and the like, and that the children attend regularly.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>The tribal government
encouraged the venture, providing $170,000 in funding last year, and $200,000
this year for staff and operations. The school recruited and hired fluent
Salish speakers, mostly older tribal members, and supplemented them with
younger folks, like Brown, who had academic training and teaching expertise.
The school now has 17 students - seeds for the future of the Salish language,
Brown and others hope.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>The Echoing Green
grant will allow Brown to form a nonprofit group to expand and elaborate
on the mission of the school, working in tandem with it, he said, to revive
Salish as a spoken, used and useful language and as a tool for cultural
revival.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Brown said the
formal structure of the nonprofit, tax-exempt Salish Language Perpetuation
Project he will form with the $60,000 grant is a work in progress. But
he foresees a collaboration between a variety of tribal and nontribal entities
and individuals. The tribal government, especially the CSKT Education Department,
is vital to its success, as is Salish Kootenai College, local public elementary
and secondary schools and UM.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>It is not too
late to revive Salish, he contends.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Other aboriginal
people - the Maori of New Zealand, for example, and the native cultures
of Hawaii - have had success reviving languages within those societies,
Brown said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"Language is
the foundation of society and the fundamental key that connects generations
through time. The Salish Language Perpetuation Project will ensure that
our language and heritage do not become extinct," he said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Echoing Green
warns fellowship recipients that entrepreneurship is fraught with risk,
success is never guaranteed, and there may not be a steady job at the end
of the rainbow. Brown has accepted the risks.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>"I want Salish
to be the language of our community, the language of the heart of the Salish
people," he said.</font></font></font>
<p><font face="Arial"><font color="#000000"><font size=+1>Reporter John
Stromnes can be reached at 1-800-366-7186 or at <a href="mailto:jstromnes@missoulian.com">jstromnes@missoulian.com</a></font></font></font>
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