Last few Whulshootseed speakers spread the word (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Posted on Fri, Feb. 11, 2005

Last few Whulshootseed speakers spread the word

BY ERIK LACITIS
The Seattle Times
http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/nation/10875202.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

AUBURN, Wash. - (KRT) - At age 81, she is a cultural treasure at the
Muckleshoot Reservation, even though she doesn't act like one and her
outward demeanor can sometimes seem a little gruff.

Ellen Williams is the last person alive here fluent in the tribal
language, the last one who can fully understand and speak a language
that, with its clicking and consonants with popping sounds, is so
vastly different from English.

Throughout the 26 federally recognized tribes in Washington state that
scenario is being repeated, with elders who are fluent dwindling to a
handful in each tribe.

When she recently visited the Muckleshoot Tribal College's
native-language classroom, Williams was tearfully presented with a
school T-shirt by Donna Starr, one of its two language instructors.

Starr became tearful because she feels so strongly about preserving the
language, Whulshootseed, which she teaches to high-schoolers four days
a week. Starr learned the language from her mother and then took
classes in the language, rating her fluency as intermediate. But she
has Williams to ask for correct pronunciations and meanings.

It's not an easy language to learn. It was only oral, not written, until
it was laboriously recorded in the 1960s and 1970s using international
phonetic symbols. The original work was led by Thom Hess, a now-retired
linguistics professor at the University of Victoria in British
Columbia. Williams was one of the 15 or so elder Native Americans in
the project. She is a Snoqualmie but has lived with the Muckleshoots
since her parents moved to Auburn in 1945.

Hess and two others are the authors of the Lushootseed dictionary that
covers the Native American language that was spoken from Olympia to the
Skagit River Valley. Whulshootseed is one of its varieties.

One of the motivations for Hess to spend years compiling the dictionary
was his belief that a people's culture cannot endure without its
language.

"It's theoretically possible, but I can't think of an instance," he
said. "The language is the best mirror of the culture. Each of our
words encapsulates our view of the world."

For example, regional tribes had more than a dozen words for salmon and
trout.

"Salmon were so very important to their way of life," said Hess. "They
would refer to the different species, sex, degree of maturity, times of
the year they returned, whether they came back on schedule or out of
schedule."

At the tribal college, eight to 12 high-schoolers from the Virginia
Cross Native Education Center show up for the language classes. In
tribes around the state, it is with such youths that there is hope for
keeping the language alive. Often tribal leaders themselves cannot
speak the native tongue.

For the Muckleshoots, Willard Bill Sr. is the tribal historian, but he
cannot speak the language.

"My mother really understood the language, but then she went to boarding
school, and, of course, the Indian language was not allowed. That's
when the cycle was broken," he said.

>From the 1870s until the 1930s, many Native American children were taken
from their families and placed in federal boarding schools, had their
hair cut, and were punished for speaking their native tongue.

Bill takes solace in hearing small success stories about preserving the
language. He had heard that some kids were using it to talk on the
playground, he said. "Day-to-day conversation. That's really a
breakthrough."

Starr is a very patient teacher.

"They aren't used to making all these sounds together," she said of her
students. "Nobody's ears have heard the language. We're waking it up,
and waking it up carefully."

Faith Minthorn, 19, one of the students at the language class, is a
registered Yakama, but her family background includes the Muckleshoots.
Recently, Minthorn said, she was using Whulshootseed words with her
2-year-old nephew, "little words, like, 'animals' and 'sit down,'
'stand up.'" That's how she practices her language skills, she said. "I
enjoy being part of bringing our culture back to life."

During the class, Starr held up pictures with the tribal words under
them: shoes, light, coyote, potato. "Remember, you make a kind of
spitting sound," Starr said of one pronunciation, "You really have to
spit that 'c' out."

The language has had to evolve over the decades, even when there were
many fluent speakers. "Refrigerator" is translated as "by means of
making things cold." "Stove" is translated as "making things with
fire."

There were about 20 distinct tribal languages in Washington state at the
time white settlers arrived, with each village having its own dialect,
said Hess. Now, he said, there are 15 languages left.

In 2003, the state's Board of Education began a three-year pilot program
awarding a First Peoples teacher certification for individuals fluent
in a native language. So far, 13 certificates have been awarded.

But it's a daunting task, even for the large Yakama Nation. Mavis
Kindness, language program manager, estimated there might be 100 elders
left out of the 9,700 tribal members who can understand and speak the
native tongue.

"I am fluent for this time and age," Kindness said. "As far as ancient
words, there are some that I don't understand or can even pronounce.
They've become nonexistent in our daily conversation. Like preparing
hand-tanned hides or gathering roots. The same thing with livestock,
especially horses. Not too many tribal people own horses."

And the high-schoolers, especially those attending public, not tribal
schools, "are not crazy about learning the 'old ways,' as they call
it," Kindness said.

In the end, it comes down to priorities. The Muckleshoots, for example,
are doing well financially because of income from their casino. Money
has been spent on a child-care center, the tribal college, help for
seniors and health care.

In the midst of all that is Williams, having lunch each day at the
tribe's Senior Center.

"A long time ago, everybody talked Indian," she said. "After I'm gone, I
don't know. My kids don't even talk Indian."

Her friend Donna Starr politely disagreed.

"I have hope for the kids," she said. "One of the parents saw me and
they were laughing. Her daughter that takes my class asked her dad for
money, but he didn't know what she was saying. She was talking
Whulshootseed."

---

© 2005, The Seattle Times.