Buffy & The Pequots

[Andre Cramblit]

Mashantucket Pequots Plan Language Conference
February 21, 2006
By RICK GREEN, Courant Staff Writer

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Singer and activist Buffy Sainte-Marie highlights a three-day conference
on "Revitalizing Algonquian Languages" that will begin Wednesday and is
sponsored by the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation.

The conference, which takes place at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and
Research Center on the tribal reservation near Ledyard, features more
than two dozen presenters from Indian tribes and academia, as well as
the screening of the PBS documentary "The Last Speakers."

Sainte-Marie, a Cree Indian whose Cradleboard Teaching Project educates
schoolchildren about native culture and history, will appear Thursday at
3:30 p.m. In addition to her recording and television career,
Sainte-Marie has a doctorate in fine arts from the University of
Massachusetts.

Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Council Secretary Charlene Jones said the
3-year-old conference brings together "tribal representatives, scholars
and writers from across the continent on this crucial subject. Each
conference has helped to advance the understanding of the strength that
tribal languages bring to our living cultures."

The museum owns two essential documents in studying lost native language
- early editions of a Bible translated into an Algonquian dialect.
Museum research director Kevin McBride said other tribes have recovered
languages no longer spoken, but it requires a significant commitment
from the tribal community.

Reviving a language can provide immense insight into a tribe's history,
he said. "The language of a people really helps inform you about many
things about them," McBride said.

There are no living fluent speakers of the Algonquian dialects once
spoken by Indians in Connecticut, but New England tribes are working to
revive the languages. Jessie Little Doe Baird, a Mashpee Wampanoag
tribal member and co-founder of the Wopanaak Language Reclamation
Project, will speak Wednesday at 9 a.m. about efforts to revive the
Wampanoag dialect.

The fee for the three-day conference is $125, $85 for students and
senior citizens, including breakfast and lunch each day. For more
information, contact 860-396-2167 or dgregoire at mptn.org.