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Wednesday, February 21, 2007

WORDS A BRIDGE TO PAST, HEREAFTER

Descendants Of The Joseph Band Are Laboring To Preserve  The Nez Perce Language

  Agnes Davis, 82, is the daughter of the last recognized chief of the Joseph
Band of the Nez Perce tribe. She and a few others from her tribe are spending
countless hours working to preserve a dialect of Nez Perce. (Colin Mulvany The
Spokesman-Review ) 

VIDEO JOURNAL

  A look at the history of the Nez Perce people and their language.[1]

RELATED STORY

  War scattered the Nez Perce[2]

  Kevin Graman [3]
Staff writer
February 18, 2007   

  NESPELEM, Wash. – When Chief Joseph said he would "fight no more forever" at
the Battle of Bear Paw, he gave up his rifle, but not his way of life or his
claim to his ancestral land. 

  Today, nearly 130 years after the last great battle of the Nez Perce War,
descendants of Joseph's band continue his struggle to preserve the old ways
even as they live in perpetual exile on the Colville Indian Reservation, 200
miles from the land they call home.

  In Nespelem, in a cluttered reservation office, a group of Nez Perce gather
three days a week to preserve the language that they believe ties them to
Mother Earth and will one day grant them entry into the hereafter.

  "When you die, (the Creator) is going to speak to you in Nez Perce," said
Agnes Davis, 82, the daughter of the last recognized chief of the Joseph Band.
"He knows your history and all of your sins, and you have to have an Indian
name."

  Davis and her relative, Frank Andrews, 83, are among a handful of native Nez
Perce speakers, all in their 80s or 90s, who are descendants of the Joseph
Band, said their nephew, Albert Andrews Redstar.

  There are other native speakers of Nez Perce, particularly on the Nez Perce
Reservation in central Idaho and on the Umatilla Reservation in eastern Oregon.
But Davis and Andrews think and speak a dialect of the language as it evolved in
Oregon's Wallowa Valley, a place for which the elders of the Joseph Band still
yearn."We carry that grief still today," Redstar said. "Our ties are to the
land and the people interred in the land."

Davis' father, Willie "Red Star" Andrews, was raised by Joseph and his two
wives in Nespelem after his own mother died at Fort Spokane, where the Joseph
Band wintered in 1885.

  As a little girl, Davis sat by the side of the woman she called "grandma,"
one of Joseph's wives who was then old and blind.

  "I would sit by her bed and she would cry for Wallowa," Davis recalled. "I
was 8 or 9 and I didn't understand. (Nespelem) was my home.

  "Now I understand their loss," Davis said. "I went down there and stood at
the end of the lake (Wallowa Lake), and I thought about my grandma and then I
knew this is what she was crying for."

  Today, it is estimated that more than 400 descendants of the Joseph Band live
on the Colville Reservation. Many of them, including Davis and Redstar, keep the
traditional ways alive in the Walahsat Longhouse, a mile north of Nespelem, on
land donated by Redstar's mother.

  In April, the Nez Perce celebrate the First Roots feast at the longhouse as
part of the Walahsat religion, sometimes called the Washat, Longhouse or Seven
Drum religion.

  The longhouse is divided into two large rooms. One has tables and chairs and
is used for informal occasions. The other room is used for ceremonies,
including funerals. A large rectangular dirt floor, called the ha`wtnin'
we`yes, or sacred floor, is cut into the center of the ceremonial room to
maintain the Wallowa people's ties to Mother Earth. 

  "Our language reaches into the earth and becomes part of it and ties you to
the ground," said Redstar, who often leads longhouse adherents in song and
prayer in Nez Perce. "The words tie you back to Mother Earth. It is the
language into which we were born."

  Redstar spoke Nez Perce as his first language until he began attending school
at age 6.

  Now he is trying to "piece the language back together," with the help of his
aunt and uncle.

  Andrews, who is Christian, began working in language preservation more than
15 years ago. Davis didn't join him at the cultures and language program until
later because, she said, Nez Perce has always been a spoken, not a written,
language.

  "My people never did write and they never used a computer, so I was reluctant
to come here," Davis said. She still declines to be recorded or videotaped
speaking Nez Perce.

  But during a visit to Spalding, Idaho, she was asked the Nez Perce words for
things she didn't know, and she became concerned she was losing her language.

  Today, she and Andrews spend hours putting Nez Perce names to things.

  They consult a 4-inch-thick "Nez Perce Dictionary," the monumental work of
the Japanese linguist Haruo Aoki, professor emeritus at the University of
California at Berkeley. Aoki's dictionary, using the International Phonetic
Alphabet to symbolize sounds not used in English, was published in 1994. It is
based largely on research beginning in the 1960s.

   Because Aoki relied largely on research done on the Nez Perce Reservation,
Davis and Andrews have found dialectical differences between the dictionary and
the language as they speak it.

  They believe Christianity on the Nez Perce Reservation has influenced some of
the terminology as recorded in the Aoki dictionary. With the author's
permission, Davis and Andrews pore over the dictionary, as well as other
documents, and note differences between it and the dictionary in their heads.

  Davis cited the example of the Lapwai Nez Perce term "Holy Father,"
"ha`wtnin'pist," her word for father as in a family. The language as spoken by
the Joseph Band would never refer to the Creator, or Han'yawa`t, as "father."

  In Nez Perce, the meanings of words are altered by the use of a suffix or
prefix. For example, "ha`ma" is man, while "haha`ma" is more than one man. By
adding suffix upon suffix, one word in Nez Perce can reflect a phrase or an
entire sentence in English. 

  "Our language describes what a thing is used for rather than what it is,"
Redstar explained. The word for "chair" is "wexsiliq'ec'etes," literally a
place for sitting.

  As a result of their work, Davis and Andrews hope to produce a dictionary of
their own.

  Aoki remains in contact with the elders and despite advancing years, he
occasionally visits the Colville Reservation, where he is held in high regard.

  Nez Perce is a Sahaptin language similar to the dialects spoken by Yakima,
Cayuse, Walla Walla, Palouse and Umatilla tribes. The Cultures and Language
Program of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation is working to
preserve two other native languages, Okanogan and Moses Columbia, which are
Salish.

  Redstar and his son, Jim, volunteer at the language program, where Davis'
grandson, Milton "Jewie" Davis Jr., 35, a language instructor aide, teaches Nez
Perce to local students. 

  "Our backs are against the wall," Redstar said, because there are so few
native speakers among the Wallowa people, and so few are willing to make the
sacrifice to learn.

  "It's the heart of our people," he said. "You can understand a shade of us
through English, but to really get to know us, you must understand our
language."

Links:
------
[1] http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/video/archive.asp?postID=227
[2] http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=175026
[3] http://www.spokesmanreview.com/news/bylines.asp?bylinename=Kevin%20Graman
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