The Language is Life Conference for California Indian Languages

[Stan-sandy Anonby]

Sounds like an enjoyable conference. I admire the optimism. Boy, they sure are taking on some long odds.

Stan Anonby

On Mon, 11 Aug 2008 08:44:04 -0600
 "Harold Schiffman" <hfsclpp at gmail.com> wrote:
> Murmur, whisper, pray, sing, joke, shout …The Language is Life
> Conference for California Indian Languages
> 
> By Alison Owings
> 
> "If I can learn it, anyone can learn it," said Richard Bugbee, getting
> a roomful of laughs at the Marin Headlands Institute.  Although he is
> Luiseno, he was talking about learning to speak Kumeyaay.  "Immersion
> is the way to go."
> The sentiment was repeated often in the early April three day Language
> is Life Conference sponsored by AICLS: Advocates for Indigenous
> California Language Survival.  Immersion – especially using AICLS's
> "master apprentice program" — is one of the best ways to learn.  To
> eat, you better learn the words for food.
> 
> Bugbee, a member of the AICLS board of directors, was one of dozens of
> speakers who addressed hundreds of participants – students and
> scholars and teachers who are working passionately to preserve – and
> in some cases, trying to restore — California's Native languages. The
> mood throughout this 8th Language is Life conference held under sunny
> skies seemed a mixture of pleasure (teaching toddlers to talk their
> tribal language… even when mom and dad are only a step ahead
> themselves), frustration (why are casinos not funding Native language
> efforts more?), and a race against time.  Nancy Richardson Steele
> (Karuk) said when she was young, there were some 200 Karuk speakers in
> her tribe.  Recently, only 11 were left.
> 
> Not only are such treasures dying out, they – and people who manage to
> learn their Native language later – face the indignity of not being
> officially credentialed by Calilfornia authorities as language
> teachers.  (See Sidebar, "Certification of Native Speakers.") Nobody
> (at least in the sessions I attended) said learning a Native language
> is easy, that is, if you are no longer a toddler.  Leo Canez
> (Karut/Yurok/Tohono O'odham) recalled making "excuse after excuse
> after excuse" not to learn, until one day hearing elders speaking
> among themselves, and realizing he did not know what they were saying.
>  He was thinking of all his good Native deeds, including working for
> the Seventh Generation Fund, but the elders were apparently
> unimpressed.  They wanted to know, What are you doing for your own
> people in your village?
> 
> "I call that the `elder hammer,'" he said to more laughter.  As a
> consequence, Canez made three hours of recordings with one elder, put
> them in ipod format, and is now teaching Yurok at Humboldt State
> University. Elders!  They are the repositories of the languages, yes,
> but they certainly can be intimidating, said Stan Rodriguez,
> instructor of Kumeyaay at Kumeyaay Community College.  He recalled
> talking first with his tribal elders, before starting to teach.  "I
> got roasted and basted."  They also paid little attention to his
> curriculum plan.  "Shut up, and listen to how we talk."  Finally, he
> developed his own style, such as having students read Dr. Seuss books
> in Kumeyaay.  To learn the language of cooking, he brought in Coleman
> stoves, and had students prepare a meal of "Spam and commodity
> cheese."  He even had students play Jeopardy in Kumeyaay, as well as
> also Family Feud.  "We called it rez rumble." He brought in a vacuum
> cleaner and sheets, so students could learn the language of cleaning a
> house.  That was a problem: no word for vacuum cleaner.  He huddled
> with the elders, who came up with a word that means "thing that sucks
> up dirt."
> 
> While Rodriguez stressed innovation, and repetition, other speakers
> touted technology.  Dan Harvey, a non-Native software designer ("I get
> computers to do stuff.") demonstrated, to oohs and aahs, a free
> downloadable program he developed to teach students not only to learn
> their own language, but to develop their own multiple-choice lesson
> plans.  As an aside, Harvey urged Native youth to consider careers in
> computer science, "a good field" in which Natives are
> underrepresented. Inee Slaughter of the Indigenous Languages Institute
> demonstrated her group's programs, adding that her "language geek guy"
> was able to design keyboards and fonts for each language, and could
> also transcribe the marks developed by linguist/anthropologist J.P.
> Harrington.  "Wowwwww," breathed the audience.
> 
> Former Salinan chairman Gregg Castro demonstrated how to access the
> Smithsonian's National Anthropological Archives and retrieve data for
> language instruction.  He cautioned, in compressing CDs to mp3 files,
> sometimes compression loses changes in tone and  inflection.  It's
> still worth the effort, he said, adding that he has five grandchildren
> under the age of four, and is the first person in a half a century in
> the family to sing them a lullaby in their own language.
> 
> What of languages with no more Native speakers at all?  That dilemma
> is addressed in the "Breath of Life" program, initiated by L. Frank
> (Tongva/Ajachemem).  In various sessions at the AICLS conference, she
> was in turns serious and joking, saying at one point, as she and
> others try to learn a Native language for which there's no Native
> speaker, left,  "Nobody knows if you're not saying it right."  And,
> "you don't worry about Native speakers dying out."  (See Sidebar, The
> Keynote Speakers.)
> 
> Participants to the conference came from all over the state and
> beyond. Conference director Marina Drummer counted some 25 tribal
> affiliations, including Miwok, Maidu, Nisenan, Wintun,  Wiyot, Washoe,
> Tongva, Lakota, Elem Pomo, Luiseno, Yurok, Salinan, Ohlone,Chumash,
> Wukchumni, Tachi, Kawaiisu, Wailaki, Yowlumni, Achumwai, Hupa, Karuk,
> Cherokee, Quechan, and Mono.
> 
> Amid many, many stories, and simple ideas (tape the word for "teeth"
> on your bathroom mirror), the overarching sentiment was simple.  The
> effort to learn one's language is important, the timing urgent.  And
> as Richard Bugbee reports, the effort works.  "It's like planting
> seeds, it may take months, but all of a sudden you have a little
> plant," he said, remembering a time when he "realized all of a sudden,
> I was speaking Kumeyaay for two and a half hours!"
> 
> Education, and the right for Native languages to be a part of it, is
> one of the biggest issues facing language revitalization.  Sarah
> Supahan and Carole Lewis gave a presentation on the problem of
> certification for speakers, virtually none of whom have teaching
> credentials.  The "No Child Left Behind" policies are making it
> increasingly difficult for these language teachers, who have the
> rarest and most valuable knowledge – their tribal language – and yet
> are at best second-class staff, and at worst, not allowed to teach at
> all.  Supahan, Lewis and their colleague Marnie Atkins are fighting a
> battle now to follow several other states in establishing alternative
> credentialing procedures for Native language teachers, and to keep the
> current policy of allowing Native American languages that are taught
> in the schools of Humboldt County to fulfill the "foreign language"
> requirement for college entry.  (Changing the term "foreign language"
> would also be a good idea, they argue!)  Unfortunately, they are
> meeting with opposition from the California Commission on Teacher
> Credentialing.
> 
> One of the conference's keynote speakers was Cody Pata, who is part
> Hawaiian and part Nomlaki, and has done credit to both his languages.
> A well-known Hawaiian singer, Pata is also the Nomlakis' tribal
> linguist (as he said humbly, "No-one else was interested – that's why
> I got to hold that title.")  Beginning at one of the early "Breath of
> Life" workshops, Pata became a skilled linguist, gathering all the
> information he could find on Nomlaki, and using techniques of
> linguistic reconstruction through comparison with related languages to
> expand the available vocabulary further.  The audience was impressed
> with Pata's linguistic accomplishments, but for encores they wanted
> more Hawaiian chants.
> 
> The other keynote speaker was Ryan Wilson, past president of the
> National Indian Education Association.  "There is a fight now about
> who controls Indian education," he said, "And language has a lot to do
> with it."  Wilson was one of the the people responsible for the
> development of the Esther Martinez Native American Languages
> Preservation Act, which would support Native American immersion
> schools, the best hope of developing a new generation of fluent
> speakers.  When one senator placed a hold on the bill, Wilson and
> other proponents spoke to the Navajo code talkers, who were going to
> Washington.  The code talkers visited the senator, and one said "Years
> ago our country asked us to use our language as a weapon to help fight
> a war to save the liberties that we ourselves didn't even have.  We
> raised the flag at Iwo Jima.  Now we are asking you to lift up our
> language like we lifted up the flag."  The next day, the senator
> lifted the hold, and the Senate passed the bill.
> 
> http://www.kumeyaay.com/2008/08/murmur-whisper-pray-sing-joke-shout-%E2%80%A6/
> -- 
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