In Her Own Tongue (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

In Her Own Tongue
by Gayle Goddard-Taylor
http://www.americanprofile.com/issues/20040425/20040425_3859.asp

[photo inset - Jessie Fermino painstakingly compiled a dictionary in her
native language. Allen Scott Kingsley]

The dream started more than a decade ago. Cape Cod, Mass., resident
Jessie Little Doe Fermino saw faces that seemed familiar, faces that
looked like they belonged to her own tribe, the Mashpee Indians. But
the words they spoke had no meaning for the then-37-year-old social
worker. When the dream returned again and again, she began to suspect
it was a vision and that something was being asked of her.

“One day as I was driving to Woods Hole, I saw a sign for Sippewisset,”
she recalls. “That’s when I realized the words I was hearing had to be
Wampanoag.”

Her vision began to take the form of a question: Would today’s tribal
members welcome back their native language, a tongue that had
languished for more than 150 years? She posed the question to the two
area Wampanoag tribes, the Mashpee of Cape Cod and the Aquinnah of
Martha’s Vineyard, not convinced that she would get the unanimous
support she was seeking.

Amazingly, not a single tribe member was opposed. Some felt the vision
hinted of an ancient prophecy that predicted the tribes would abandon
their language but it would later return to them.

As she began research, Fermino discovered that Wampanoag was one of 33
Algonquian languages, and it had two distinct dialects—island and
mainland. Fortunately, much of the Algonquian language had been
preserved in Colonial documents. “We were the first North American
nation to have an alphabetic writing system,” Fermino says.

Then, in another stroke of luck, she was able to find in Boston one of
the 12 remaining King James bibles translated into Wampanoag in 1655 by
missionary John Elliott.

But soon things began to get more complicated, starting with spelling.
“People spelled words however they felt like spelling and so the
Wampanoags did the same thing when they started writing,” Fermino says.
And when Fermino began looking at linguistic analyses of her ancestral
tongue, she realized she was in over her head. “I had no background in
linguistics, so I couldn’t understand it,” she says.

Undeterred, she applied for a one-year fellowship at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to study with world-renowned linguist, the late
Kenneth Hale. It was a productive partnership that would blossom into
friendship. “He was my professor, my mentor, and my best friend,” she
says.

But by year’s end, Fermino had only begun to grasp the Algonquian
language. Her goal of compiling a dictionary, she realized, would
require graduate studies. So for another three years she juggled
family, work, and studies, while also beginning to teach what she knew
to tribal members.

Today, Fermino has developed a language curriculum for her students, who
range in age from 12 to 78. Some even come to class with infants in
tow. Her dictionary-in-progress has grown to 6,800 words. Two of her
advanced students have begun teaching, freeing her up for research. And
on a personal level, Fermino converses with her children in Wampanoag,
although, she quips, “they keep asking how to tell me to shut up.”

Fermino’s quest is hardly unique. Similar efforts to revive indigenous
languages have blossomed across the country in the last few decades. In
1978, the American Indian Language Development Institute was launched
in San Diego with the goal of training potential teachers for the Yuman
language group, which includes the southwestern Hualapai, Havasupai,
and Mohave tongues. Today, more than 20 language groups are
represented, says Professor Akira Yamamoto of the University of Kansas,
one of the institute’s founders.

At the time of European contact, some 600 native languages were spoken
across North America, Yamamoto says. Today, only about 210 survive.

For Fermino, bringing the Wampanoag language back to her tribe has
solidified her own sense of what it is to be an American Indian. “It
feels like I’m living my life in a good Indian way,” she says.

Gayle Goddard-Taylor is a frequent contributor to American Profile.