Saving Sencoten (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

  SAVING SENCOTEN   [1] 

	   Brennan Clarke/Victoria News 		  

   JOHN ELLIOTT IS CONTINUING HIS FATHER\'S EFFORTS TO PRESERVE THE SENCOTEN
LANGUAGE, ONCE WIDELY SPOKEN AMONG ALL THE COAST SALISH PEOPLES.   

      

By Brennan Clarke
Victoria News
_Apr 21 2006_

  Central Saanich teacher leading charge to save local indigenous language from
extinction.

  To many people, language is little more than the words we use to communicate
thoughts. 

  For John Elliott, it's a lifeline to preserving 10,000 years of aboriginal
culture.

  "The language is the voice of the land. It's about our whole environment and
how we interact with nature," he said. "The language is all about your beliefs
and your whole world view."

  Elliott, a teacher at Lau'Welnew tribal school, has dedicated the last 30
years of his life to preserving Sencoten, an indigenous language spoken by
Coast Salish First Nations on both sides of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, with
the Saanich Peninsula at the heart of the ancient culture.

  Elliott's crusade to save the language is a continuation of work his father
began in the early 1970s.

  Dave Elliott, a longtime fisherman, was working as a janitor with the Saanich
Indian School Board when he decided to create a phonetic alphabet for Sencoten.
It was a difficult task since Sencoten, like many indigenous languages,
contains a range of sounds that are difficult to capture with the conventional
26-letter Roman alphabet used around the world.

  "My father used to say the language was dying and people were losing the
whole value system," Elliott recalled. "I'm taking his work one step further."

  When Europeans first arrived on Vancouver Island in the mid-1800s, there were
an estimated 7,000 Sencoten speakers. 

  Today, Elliott said that number has shrunk to a mere two dozen elders, due in
large part to a residential school system that prohibited aboriginal children
from speaking their native tongue.

  "There's only 23 or 24 fluent speakers remaining," said Elliott. "Usually
they're older people and some of them aren't that healthy. (The language) could
die with the elders that are here today."

  But the bid to save Sencoten (pronounced Sen-Cho-then) is yielding some
encouraging results. All 200 of the school's students study the language, and
the program has been around long enough that former students are now parents
who speak the language around their children.
"The fluency's coming, but it's slow. It took 50 years to take it out of us
through the boarding schools," Elliott said. 

  "After a couple of generations it's going to make a difference. In the past
there's been nobody at home to speak the language."

  One of the most useful teaching tools for young aboriginal students is First
Voices (firstvoices.ca), a three-year-old website that allows First Nations to
record and archive their native languages. 

  First Voices, a co-operative venture between the Saanich Indian School Board
and the provincially funded First People's Heritage Language and Culture
Council, contains still pictures, video clips, recorded voices, games and other
features to pique the interest of young learners.

  Elliott said the website is just a tool, not the saviour of his people's
language.

  "It's only a tool kit really. There has to be a personal commitment to really
knowing the language," Elliott said, noting the irony of using modern technology
to save an ancient language.

  "It really is ironic. A lot of these things that are taking our kids' minds
away and now we come along with an Internet tool."

  First People's Heritage Language and Culture Council executive director Tracy
Herbert, said so far 134 B.C. languages and three Yukon languages have been
archived on the site. It's also attracted interest from other indigenous groups
in Canada, such as the Mi'kmaq.

  "There are about 32 languages and 70-plus dialects in B.C. alone," she said. 

  The provincial government, which provides about $600,000 a year to help the
council support First Nations arts, recently handed over an extra $1 million in
one-time funding specifically for languages.

  Herbert said the federal government hasn't been quite so supportive. Although
B.C. is home to 60 per cent of Canada's aboriginal languages, the Department of
Canadian Heritage provides just $232,000 a year for language programs in B.C.

  Four years ago, former Heritage Minister Sheila Copps pledged $160 million to
preserve native languages, but the federal government has yet to follow through
on that commitment Herbert added.

  "It is a race against time and we really need to work co-operatively with the
communities and the language stakeholders," she said. 

  For Elliott, there's no distinction between saving the language and saving
the culture, since many of the words refer to creation stories and legends. 

  bclarke at vicnews.com[2]

  EXAMPLES OF SENCOTEN LANGUAGE
TENEW: land, earth or soil; can also mean "a wish for the people." 
SNANET: rock, mountain or boulder; can also mean "gift," since mountains are
considered sacred places that the creator gave to the people.
STEME: rain; but also means "a person falling from the sky," a reference to the
first person who came to earth.
TETACES: island; also means relatives of the deep in reference to humans who
were turned into islands by the creator and told to look after the people.
SCAANEW: salmon; also means "working people," which relates to a creation story
in which the creator transformed a group of hard-working people into salmon.

Links:
------
[1] http://www.saanichnews.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=28&cat=23&id=&more=
[2] mailto:bclarke at vicnews.com
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20060421/1b3426ad/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 21886 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20060421/1b3426ad/attachment.jpe>