Once-dying Chinook language finds future in voices of children (fwd0

[Tony Johnson]

Thanks Phil.  I, as usual, am a little frustrated with the press'
ability to get facts straight, but all-in-all I think it is good for our
efforts.  I loved her writing that our way of saying how someone is sick
implies "animosity" to the sickness (I told her it implies "animacy").

How are you these days?  I do hope all is well--Tony

>>> cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU 06/08/2004 8:57:28 AM >>>
Tony,

Nice article!  I am glad to see that your efforts to revitalize
Chinook-Wawa are being recognized.

Phil Cash Cash
UofA, ILAT



> ----- Message from cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU ---------
>     Date: Tue, 8 Jun 2004 08:48:52 -0700
>     From: phil cash cash <cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU>
> Reply-To: Indigenous Languages and Technology
<ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU>
>  Subject: Once-dying Chinook language finds future in voices of
children (fwd0
>       To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>
> Once-dying Chinook language finds future in voices of children
>
> By Nancy Bartley
> Seattle Times staff reporter
>
> GRANDE RONDE RESERVATION, Ore. * To Tony Johnson, the Chinook jargon
> widely spoken by his ancestors was not just a second-class language
> used for trade but a language of tribal rituals, family gatherings
> and
> courtship. Until recently, it was almost extinct.
>
> Now, due largely to the 33-year-old Johnson, who regards each word
of
> his ancestral tongue as an heirloom, the jargon also known as
> "Chinuk-wawa" has become a language of the future.
>
> In the seven years he has worked for the Confederated Tribes of the
> Grand Ronde to revitalize the language, Johnson, who grew up in
> Raymond
> on Willapa Bay, has developed a teaching program that has become a
> model for tribes around the region.
>
> He has been "vital to the language having any future," said Portland
> linguist Henry Zenk, with whom Johnson created a written Chinuk-wawa
> alphabet.
>
> What makes the program successful is the traditional
> master-and-apprentice approach, in which students learn from elders,
> then become teachers themselves. That's coupled with the more
> modern-day concept of language immersion, in which students speak
> Chinuk-wawa in and outside the classroom.
>
> When tribal spokesman Brent Merrill, 43, was growing up, Chinuk-wawa
> was
> a language elders would use with one another when they didn't want
> younger people to know what they were saying.
>
> Now the Grand Ronde program is so successful, he said, children here
> use
> Chinuk-wawa to keep secrets from adults.
>
> "When they don't want parents to hear about something, they switch
> over," he said.
>
> On a bookshelf in his office, Johnson displays a teaching
certificate
> issued to him recently by the state of Oregon, making him the first
> licensed teacher of the uniquely expressive language, which was
> spoken
> two centuries ago by 100,000 tribal members, traders and explorers
> from
> Northern California to Southern Alaska.
>
> Three other licenses also have been issued * one to Zenk, the other
> two
> to tribal members here who learned Chinuk-wawa through
> adult-education
> classes taught by Johnson on the reservation.
>
> "It wasn't long ago * about 20 years * that the last of our elders
> who
> spoke it was passing away," said tribal teacher Bobby Mercier. "We
> are
> bringing a lot of our elders back by teaching the language. It's our
> identity."
>
> Teaching 4-year-olds
>
> Johnson, the son of a tribal chairman, has found that preserving a
> language must be undertaken on many fronts. In addition to creating
> an
> alphabet, he has designed a computer program so the Chinuk-wawa
> characters can be typed.
>
> He teaches 4-year-olds at the tribal day-care center and has shared
> meals with the few remaining tribal elders who still remember the
> language, gleaning from them Chinook words like taqwfla,
(hazelnuts),
> salt-tsfqw (salt water) and tilixaN (friend).
>
> And each of the past six years, he has organized a Chinuk-wawa
> workshop
> that draws linguists, historians and tribal members. Johnson wishes
> he
> could teach the language to the surviving Chinooks, but the tribe of
> 2,000, which once thrived near Chinook, Pacific County, has no money
> for such programs.
>
> The lucrative Spirit Mountain Casino, on the Grand Ronde
Reservation,
> makes the language program affordable.
>
> Other tribes with casino money frequently inquire about the tribe's
> success, but the program is a commitment not just of money, but of
> time
> and tenacity, Johnson said.
>
> Still, he hopes other tribes will want to learn Chinuk-wawa, and
that
> students he's teaching now will "grow up and marry each other and
> raise
> Chinuk-wawa-speaking households. Or become linguists and come back
> here
> and do what we're doing."
>
> Johnson was so determined that Chinuk-wawa would live on through his
> own
> son, Sammy, that he began talking to Sammy and singing him
> Chinuk-wawa
> lullabies even before the baby was born.
>
> [photo inset - STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
> Teacher Jackie Whisler records Chinuk-wawa words spoken by Lauren
> Lucio,
> 5, at the Twah Sunchako preschool.]
>
> To lose one's language is to lose one's culture, Johnson said.
>
> Once a strong tribe
>
> The Chinooks were once a strong tribe with related bands located
near
> the mouth of the Columbia River, from Pacific County east to the
> Cascades. For thousands of years, they fished and traded with other
> tribes using two languages * one a jargon for trade, the other pure
> Chinookan.
>
> In the late 1700s, when ships began stopping in the harbors and
> trading
> with the Chinooks, English and French words were added to the trade
> language, which became known as Chinuk-wawa, or Chinook jargon.
>
> It was this language Lewis and Clark encountered when they arrived
at
> the Columbia River in 1805 and were greeted by Chinooks offering
> boiled
> roots, dried sturgeon and potatoes.
>
> "What they were experiencing was clearly Chinuk-wawa," Johnson said.
> Though Lewis made notations of words in his journal, the field
notes,
> believed to include an entire vocabulary, did not survive the trip
> back.
>
> Contact with whites exposed the Chinooks to deadly diseases, and by
> the
> mid-1800s the remaining Chinooks were sent to reservations. By the
> 1850s, when many tribes were gaining federal recognition, the
> Chinooks
> were overlooked. Many went to the Grand Ronde, where they were among
> at
> least 20 other bands with 20 different dialects.
>
> There, Chinuk-wawa became no longer just a trade language but one
> necessary for day-to-day communication among the diverse bands * the
> first language of those born on the reservation.
>
> "It was the language used when someone courted their mate, when
> someone
> went to the post office, when someone went to the sweat lodge,"
> Johnson
> said.
>
> It took on the unique elements of the Grand Ronde culture, Johnson
> said,
> from how tribal members viewed nature, their spiritual life and
their
> health. While the phrase "I have a backache" almost implies in
> English
> an ownership of the condition, in Chinuk-wawa the words mean "there
> is
> a sickness living in my back," implying "an animosity to illness,"
> Johnson said.
>
> And the simple greeting, "How are you?" is more a question of the
> condition of your spirit than a casual inquiry.
>
> Listened to father's stories
>
> Johnson grew up with his parents and a brother in a two-story house
> in
> Raymond, off the reservation.
>
> As a young man, he sailed and fished in Willapa Bay and listened to
> his
> father tell stories of the past. But he had little of his culture
> except the few words in Chinuk-wawa he learned from his elders or
> could
> recall from his past.
>
> "Hum-upuch," his grandmother called him when he was a toddler.
> "Stinky
> pants."
>
> Johnson graduated with degrees in anthropology and silversmithing
> from
> Central Washington University in Ellensburg. Now divorced, he is
> raising 4-year-old Sammy in a small, gray rambler in Sheridan, a few
> miles east of the reservation.
>
> Since Sammy was a toddler, Johnson has taken him to the homes of the
> few
> tribal elders he knew who spoke the language. When Sammy utters the
> word "dret" * an expression similar to uh-huh * Johnson remembers
the
> now-deceased woman they once visited.
>
> "It pleases me so much to hear the voice of our elders in our
> children."
>
> Each day, he and Sammy go to the reservation's Twah Sunchako
> preschool *
> Chinook jargon for "A Bright Day is Coming."
>
> In a classroom in the sprawling, gray education building, parents
> drop
> off their preschoolers for a half-day of language immersion. A
> no-English rule is observed by all * even the youngest preschoolers
> correct each other when someone lapses into English.
>
> [photo inset - STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES
> Tony Johnson, son of a Chinook tribal chairman, holds his son,
Sammy,
> 4,
> who is a fluent speaker of the Chinuk-wawa language taught to him by
> his dad.]
>
> The room was filled with signs identifying common classroom objects
*
> clock, drum and fish in the aquarium * as tiktik, pumpum and phish.
>
> "When these kids get old, they'll be fluent speakers," said teacher
> Bobby Mercier, who was first exposed to Chinuk-wawa as a child. Now
> not
> only is he fluent, so is his 6-year-old son; his 2-year-old son also
> is
> learning the language.
>
> The reservation's other licensed Chinuk-wawa teacher is Jackie
> Whisler,
> whose dream was to carry on a conversation completely in Chinuk-wawa
> before her grandmother died. Now her own granddaughter and a niece
> are
> among the preschool students, and her daughter is in the
> adult-education class.
>
> Johnson and Sammy share the language in daily rituals of their own.
>
> Each morning when Sammy gets up, he talks about his dreams in
> Chinuk-wawa. And before he goes to bed, he tells his father the
> condition of his heart.
>
> "Nayka qat mayka, papa," he says.
>
> "Nayka qat mayka, Sammy," Johnson replies.
>
> Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522, or nbartley at seattletimes.com
>
>
> -inset-
> Listen to Chinuk-wawa
>
> One-minute conversation
>
> Approximate translation:
> Tony Johnson: How are you?
> Bobby Mercier: I am good.
> Crystal Szczepanski: Good.
> Jackie Whisler: I am good. How are you?
> T.J.: Good, but I have a lot to do.
> J.W.: It is always that way, isn't it.
> T.J.: It is exactly that way.
>
> B.M.: What should we do?
> J.W.: Well, the kids are gone; we should clean the school, right?
> T.J.: Yes. Who made a mess up on the loft?
> C.S.: I don't know who did that.
>
> J.W.: Where do we want to eat?
> B.M.: We should eat together at the casino.
> T.J.: That's good with me, what do you think?
> C.S.: Good.
> J.W.: We should go.
>
> T.J.: This language we are speaking now, they named it Chinuk Wawa.
> J.W.: Our old people used to speak this language really well.
> B.M.: Now we teach it.
> T.J.: We wish that it will be strong again.
> C.S.: We hope so.
> --
>
> -inset-
> Glossary of Chinuk-wawa words and phrases
>
> In Chinuk-wawa, capital letters are sometimes found in the middle or
> at
> the end of words. Exact pronunciations are sometimes difficult to
> duplicate with the English alphabet.
>
> QHata Nayka: How are you?
>
> Lush nayka: I am good
>
> LaXayfN nayka shiks: Hello my friend
>
> Nayka qat mayka: I love you
>
> Salt-tsfqw: Ocean or saltwater
>
> Taqwfla: Hazelnuts, or nuts of any kind
>
> PHaya-TsikTsik: Automobile (literally, fire wagon)
>
> TilixaN: People, friend or family
>
> Source: Tony Johnson
> --
>
>
> ----- End message from cashcash at EMAIL.ARIZONA.EDU -----