Elders of Oneida Tribe Try to Preserve Their Language (fwd)

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Elders of Oneida Tribe Try to Preserve Their Language

Ted Landphair
Oneida, New York
05 Sep 2004, 15:26 UTC

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[photo inset - Oneida women practice ancient Oneida language in strictly
structured Berlitz classes, in hopes of learning the tongue well enough
to teach it to the tribe's young people. VOA photo - T. Landphair]

Off and on for 25 years, elders of the Oneida Indian Nation of about
1000 people in New York State have tried to teach the ancient Oneida
language to their children. The young people have learned enough for
rituals, and not much more. Only about 150 true Oneida speakers remain
in the tribe's three enclaves in the United States and Canada. So, as
VOA's Ted Landphair reports, the Oneidas are taking a drastic step to
save their dying language.

As anyone who's tried to learn a language can tell you, just memorizing
lists of vocabulary words doesn't work very well. Oneida young people
studied and studied, only to forget most of what they learned when they
stepped back into a world awash in English. Tribal elders concluded
that only serious language immersion would work. They turned for help
outside the nation, to the Berlitz organization, which employs its
trademark Berlitz Method at four hundred language centers in more than
sixty countries.

Richard Van Vliet is the instruction supervisor at the Berlitz office in
Rochester. He's developing a textbook and a guide to show the Oneidas
how to teach THEMSELVES their own language.

"This language is very difficult, because what they do is incorporate
nouns inside of verbs," he explains. "Let's say that I want to say, 'I
see the cat.' You take the word 'see' and put 'cat' in between the
three letters. You'd have an 's, c-a-t,' and then an 'e-e.' It makes it
very difficult to learn."

Brian Patterson is an elder of the Bear Clan, one of four in the Oneida
Indian Nation. Mr. Patterson says when the government imposed U.S.
citizenship on all Indians early in the 20th century, it took Indian
children from their homes and placed them in boarding schools where it
was forbidden to speak any language but English.

[photo inset - Oneida Bear Clan leaders Brian Patterson and Marilyn John
pushed for the language immersion program. VOA photo - T. Landphair]

"A whole generation of our people missed their language," says Mr.
Patterson. "And so now we're struggling to catch up. I heard a linguist
say one time, 'There are no dead languages. They are just sleeping.'
The first Oneida word that I learned, I was watching a Saturday-morning
cartoon in which these human-looking monkeys were dancing around a
fire, yelling 'OH-tuh, OH-tuh, OH-tuh.' And my mother came into the
living room. She was just laughing. I couldn't understand why she was
laughing at these monkeys yelling 'OH-tuh, OH-tuh, OH-tuh.' Well that's
kind of a swear word in Oneida."

Bear clan mother Marilyn John took some of the old lessons on the Oneida
reserve, recitations that were practically useless in everyday life.

"The language has a different meaning when you speak it to one another
than English," she notes. "When we have our ceremonies down at our long
house, or our council house, it means so much more if it's in the
language than it does in English. Just talking about Mother Earth. You
just can't put in English what that means."

Norma Jamieson is a Canadian Oneida and one of the last remaining Oneida
speakers. She was a language teacher in the old days, and now she's
starting over, the Berlitz way, with lots of full sentences,
role-playing, and repetition. Today's lesson for the VOA audience: a
chair is not just a chair.

"'Chair' is 'uh-NEETS-squah-huh-LUCK-quah' in Oneida. And
'uh-NEETS-squah-huh-LUCK-quah' means, 'You put your backside onto the
chair': 'uh-NEETS-squah-huh-LUCK-quah.' And that's what 'chair' means:
'You set yourself on it.' The action involved," explains Ms. Jamieson.

[photo inset - Casino money has helped the tribe prosper and pay for
educational and social programs, as well as schools and other tribal
buildings. VOA photo - T. Landphair]

Sherri Beglin and Sunny Shenandoah are two of the eight Oneidas now
learning their own complex language from Norma Jamieson and another
instructor. It's not a class. This is their full-time job, all day,
every day for a year. They are paid by the tribe to do it, so they're
sure to be motivated.

"I've dreamt it. People have told me I'm sleeping when I'm saying it,"
she says. "There have been a few times, like when I answer the phone or
I talk to people, I just automatically speak to them in Oneida without
even thinking. I even talk to my cat in Oneida!"

Whenever Sunny Shenandoah's grandmother spoke Oneida as a little girl,
she was beaten. Now Ms. Shenandoah has the entire tribe behind her
efforts to learn, use, and teach the language.

"The hard part right now is that there aren't many people who speak it,"
says Ms. Shenandoah. "But I think once we get more and more people
speaking it, it'll just grow and grow until everyone can speak English
and Oneida. And that means 'it's my responsibility to learn the Oneida
language.'"

There is one big disappointment about the language-immersion program so
far: only women have signed up. That's partly explained by the
culture's matriarchal traditions. The men complain they're too busy
with their jobs at the tribe's casino or elsewhere.

But this Indian nation has devised a clever way to get boys, if not men,
interested. Lacrosse is a Native American game that many others have
learned, and it's played with a passion on the Oneida reserve. So the
newly trained Oneida speakers are helping coaches slip more and more
Oneida words into a place where boys are sure to learn them, on the
lacrosse field.