Native tongue - I am Cucuaq and A is for angqaq

Fri Apr 25 05:23:57 UTC 2003

Karen "Cucuaq" Cooke's Testimony at the Governor's Tolerance Commission Meeting at Oct 1, 2001 Bethel, AK

(spoke in her Yup'ik language with a translator and with translating equipment called Personal PA )
I am Cucuaq. I am a school teacher. I have been for 8 years. I teach English and Yupik. I started as an English teacher and now I speak Yupik. We need to understand that our language is not strong. When we speak to others, I may speak in English. English is mandated so is therefore a stronger language. When I'm at the store I am sometimes tired of speaking English. I try to talk to people in my Yup'ik language and so many people don't know it. One store I go to has one Yup'ik speaker. As an example, look at the art of cutting fish. We in the villages are not better at cutting fish. We are told that we are the same people but we don't have the same culture. Health officials tell us we need eight glasses of water a day. But if we drank that much in the winter we would freeze if we got lost. Our traditions are not the same. Our ways of living are not the same. Although we read and speak English we are told that we don't understand. Taking Sharon Lindley's speech for example. Inm
 ates don't understand, even though they speak English. If our way of life is not understood by other cultures, there is a misunderstanding. Our way of life is changing. When I encourage our Native foods I hear that our food stinks. I don't tell other cultures that their food stinks. Grass is grown so that cows could be fed so that people can eat. WE as Americans are told that this is what we should eat.
Americans use 80 percent of all the world's resources. Our culture is to take what we need. Not any more. We are told not to be wasteful. That is our teaching. Our two cultures are not the same. There does not seem to be any middle ground. The American culture says 8 cups of water. Yup'ik culture is one cup. How are we to listen to our elders if our western education is different to what our grandparents learned. There is a big difference. Many times I try to talk to elders and they don't understand. They say that they understand because they grew up after contact with the American system. I know my traditions are what will help us as we advance. One law. Although the cultures and ways of living are not the same. They are too different. We in rural Alaska. Although I am very young and don't know much about our traditional way of life. I am told that we carry on what Eben Hopson started. The economic way of life  we cannot totally embrace this. We can make things work. Th
 at is what I want you to convey to your peers. We need to move toward what Eben Hopson started  self determination.

If we do not use our Native language it will not be strengthened. I have been to the ICC and it is practiced and used. There is a translator here and I know Trim is good and I want to use him. If there is a non-native speaker around I don't use the language because people feel that they are being talked about when they don't know the language. Perhaps some did not show up tonight because they did not know there was a translator here  they thought it might all be in English. So I wanted to make sure someone is speaking the language. Thank you.

http://www.sitnews.org

Please note that these are not the official minutes of the meeting. These are quickly typed-in notes provided by staff. Audio tapes will be available for purchase by the public at IMIG Audio/Video, 2611 Fairbanks St. Suite 100, Anchorage, AK 99503. Please contact Zena at (907) 274-2161

Matthew Ward <mward at LUNA.CC.NM.US> wrote:
Very interesting article.

One comment, though: when reading articles about minority languages in
in the mainstream press, I frequently find that the writer sees
loanwords as an example of language loss. This is kind of ironic,
considering the enormous number of loan-words in English--if the use of
loanwords was a sign of language loss, then English itself would be in
trouble. The writer uses the example of the English word "vitamin"
being used in Yupik as an example of the instrusion of English, yet in
Mandarin Chinese, by far the world's largest native language, "vitamin"
is "weitaming," which is simply the English word "vitamin" rendered
phonetically into Mandarin. There are literally hundreds of millions of
Mandarin speakers who cannot speak English even as a foreign language:
obviously, using English loanwords like "weitaming" does not threaten
their language any more than tens of thousands of French loanwords
threaten English.

At any rate, another way of looking at loan-words is that they are an
example of the flexibility that all languages possess. There are
several ways that languages create new vocabulary, one of which is
borrowing. I don't see how borrowing can be regarded as damaging, if it
allows languages such as Yupik to be used in the modern world. If Yupik
were to create a term like "vitamin" out of native roots, that would be
fine, but if Yupik speakers prefer the English loanword, then you have
the same result: Yupik, by being used, is adapting to the modern world.
Which, of course, is the whole key to survival. The real tragedy is
disuse, which creates a deadly cycle: languages do not adapt to the
modern world, which becomes a further excuse for disuse, which results
in less adaptation...

phil cash cash wrote:

>The following adn.com article was sent by:
>
> phil cash cash (pasxapu at dakotacom.net)
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Native tongue
>While support has been strong for Yup'ik instruction in schools, that support may be waning
>
>By JOEL GAY, Anchorage Daily News
>
>Published: April 20, 2003
>
>NAPASKIAK -- The first-grade classroom at Z. John Williams
>School could be anywhere in America. Pint-size wooden chairs
>and knee-high tables, plastic bins of crayons, walls plastered
>with colorful posters and strings of alphabet letters.
>
>But in Christine Samuelson's room, the alphabet is only 18
>letters long and A doesn't stand for apple. A is for angqaq,
>C means cauyaq and E is for ena.
>
>Samuelson teaches in Yup'ik, the mother tongue of the Eskimos
>who have inhabited the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta for thousands
>of years.
>
>You can read the full story online at:
>
>http://www.adn.com/front/story/2975432p-3009186c.html
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------
>This article is protected by copyright and should not be
>printed or distributed for anything except personal use.
>For information on reprinting this article or placing it
>on your Web site, please contact the Daily News marketing
>department at (907) 257-4429 or marketing at adn.com.
>
>
>

Onur Senarslan
He Who Brought Back the Distant One.
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