Taanshi,<br><br>As I read the posts, I am thankful that people are not only thinking about the issue in deep ways but FEELING in deep ways too.... <br><br>I echo sentiments that severing the ties of peoples to their lands and traditional life ways will eventually lead to loss of language. How can our young people see a need to save/use our languages if we no longer practice traditional spirituality, relationships, life ways, livelihoods, etc. that our languages so wonderfully express? Why not just use English (or some other "mainstream" language)? If there is no intrinsic need (expression of identity?), why would our children chose to learn/use
our languages which are often much more complicated learn/use than
English (or French, or Spanish, etc.)?<br><br>As some here have expressed, it is NOT an either/or choice when it comes to language and land.... How can it be when our language, our songs, our stories and our life ways have come forth from our living in certain places and the relationships with have with them? To me, saying that land is NOT as important as language, is like saying grandmothers and grandfathers are NOT as important to families as mothers, fathers and children.... <br>
<br>As I do language work, I ponder how in our efforts we can better preserve/maintain/restore/renew our connections to all our relations (especially the land). Like many activists before me, I keep coming back to the importance creating more opportunities to be on/in/with the land and "in community" and thus creating more opportunities to use our languages to express relationships/experiences/feelings/ideas that we cannot adequately express otherwise.... <br>
<br><br>Eekoshi pitamaa.<br>Heathe<br>Michif (Metis), <br>Camperville, Manitoba<br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Richard Zane Smith <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:rzs@wildblue.net" target="_blank">rzs@wildblue.net</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">ha! love that "calcified synapses"<br>hey, it was a gem...needed to be said!<br>Some of your story is familiar, in that my kids were also raised in the SW, Arizona and New Mexico, so when we pulled up our stakes and moved "back" to the area of our Wyandot(te) people in the corner of NE Okl..... it was a severe land and culture shock (as your dog, experincing that strange prickly cut grass. )<br>
<br>I have a friend who encountered a Navajo boy growing up on the inner city streets of London.<br>Even if he were to come "home" to Dinétah(Navajoland)...what would that be like?<br>like an astronauts child growing up on Mars?.....visiting earth....?<br>
<br>I think "pilgrimages" as you described to return to the source of your peoples memory is often necessary.<br>The Georgian Bay is also our Wendat ancestral homelands before the great dispersal in 1649, and unfortunately<br>
many Wendat/Wyandot pilgrimages there are to hold reburials, to take care of our dead, disrupted by bulldozers and "progress". Burial grounds (without rows of headstones) seem to be thought of as "archaeological data" and we are often <br>
burying ancestral remains that have been sawed in pieces, and MOST their grave goods somehow vanish into the vaults and shelves of convenient academic forgetfulness.<br><br>our ceremonies we conduct here are more like pictographs , <br>
symbolic pictures of something that was once as tangible as aching winter hunger, or real joy in finding wild strawberries<br>to make faces shine.<br>Now we hold ceremonies to remember our ancestors delight and thankfulness . <br>
But the ancestral joy in finding those little red fruits? we can only pretend to know....<br><br>unę́h!<span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888"><br>Richard</font></span><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5"><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">
<br><br>On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Rolland Nadjiwon <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mikinakn@shaw.ca" target="_blank">mikinakn@shaw.ca</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span>Well Richard...this just
came back at me, so, I guess I did share it with the list instead of just you. I
can't begin to imagine what my 'future' will be like...calcified
synapses...</span></div><div>
<div> </div>
<div align="left"> </div>
<div align="left">wahjeh</div>
<div align="left">rolland nadjiwon</div>
<div align="left">________________ </div>
<div align="left">
<div><span>"<font>I can
remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty." George
Burns</font></span></div></div>
<div> </div><br>
</div><div dir="ltr" align="left" lang="en-us">
<hr>
<font face="Tahoma"><b>From:</b> Indigenous Languages and Technology
[mailto:<a href="mailto:ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU" target="_blank">ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU</a>] <b>On Behalf Of </b>Rolland
Nadjiwon<br><b>Sent:</b> September-25-12 1:38 AM<div><br><b>To:</b>
<a href="mailto:ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU" target="_blank">ILAT@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU</a><br><b>Subject:</b> Re: [ILAT] Language more important
than land - academic (fwd link)<br></div></font><br></div><div>
<div></div>
<div dir="ltr" align="left"><span>It now seems so far
'after the fact', to post to the list. What I did have in mind to reinforce what
your post was very succinctly pointing out is the incredible and symbiotic
relation of language, place and ceremony/ritual.</span></div></div></div>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br></div></div><div class="HOEnZb"><div class="h5">-- <br><div><div>
<p>
</p>
<p><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:Georgia">"…revitalizing
our language is really just an act of returning to what we are supposed to be.
It is like a fish returning to the water, breathing and living once
again. "</span><font size="1"><span style="font-family:Georgia">Xh'unei
Lance E. Twitchell (Tlingit)</span></font></p>
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</div></div></blockquote></div><br>