The voice of spirits past (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

The voice of spirits past

Extinct since the '70s, aboriginal language is spoken again by self-taught
Chilean high school student

June 09, 2007
Jen Ross
Special to the Star
http://www.thestar.com/living/article/221862

SANTIAGO–While most 16-year-old boys are busy playing video games or
worrying about girls, Joubert Yantén spends most of his spare time reading
dictionaries and singing tribal songs.

In the heart of Chile's bustling capital city, this awkward, acne-prone teen
finds a place to meditate amid the plants on the patio of his family's
modest home. He hums to himself, in the high-pitched tone of a pubescent
boy. Minutes later, his voice deepens, and he seems to enter a sort of
trance. Guttural sounds escape his mouth, and he pronounces the inflections
of this native tongue with obvious ease.

Yantén is speaking Selk'nam, the language of an extinct aboriginal group
that lived in the Tierra del Fuego islands of southern Chile and Argentina.
They were among the last native communities in South America to be settled,
in the late 19th century.

Yantén's obsession with these peoples began when he did an elementary school
project on Chile's native groups.

"It frustrated me that no one really saw the magnitude of the extinction of
an entire race in the south, where you used to see native women with babies
in their arms," he says, with a nostalgic tone in his voice. "Now, you'll
only find a couple of indigenous faces; it's really sad." Today, Yantén is
the only living speaker of a language that died with the last ethnic
Selk'nam in the 1970s.

He began learning the language at age 8. There was not a single surviving
speaker so he had to use dictionaries and audio cassettes of interviews and
shamanic chants, recorded by Jesuit missionaries.

Yantén pulls out a worn CD and plops it into his ghetto blaster. Soon, the
low-pitched chant of a medicine woman fills the room. Yantén sings along in
perfect harmony.

Experts say there are precedents for reviving extinct languages, and the use
of songs is key to the process of learning pitch and intonation.

"Through recordings, people can understand the mechanics and grammar of a
language," says Arturo Hernandez, a linguist with the Catholic University
of Temuco, in southern Chile. "Listeners can imitate sounds and learn to
speak in a less technical way, just like someone who learns a language
using a CD or DVD....What's surprising in this case is that this is not a
professional, but a boy who began learning at the age of 8."

A straight-A student, Yantén is a prodigy. Besides Selk'nam and Spanish, he
speaks fluent Mapudungun, the language of Chile's largest indigenous group,
the Mapuche. He considers himself only semi-versed in the native languages
of Onikenk, Haush, Kaweskar, and Quechua – not to mention English.

He's also learning Yagán – a nearly extinct language from Chile's far south.
He's been learning from its last living speaker, Christina Calderon, for the
past three years, on the phone and by Instant Messenger.

Yantén's love affair with language doesn't end with words. After learning
with recordings of tribal chants, he began inventing his own songs in
Selk'nam. But he's made a point of not reproducing the shaman chants. "The
singer was a shaman and those were her songs," he says. "The spirits
illuminated her to sing them. I have to be inspired by other spirits."

Beyond his talk of spirits, there is something eerie about the way Yantén
sings. If you close your eyes, you would think his was the voice of an
elderly indigenous man.

His mother, Ivonne Gomez, believes there is a mystical element to his
exceptional linguistic abilities.

"I've always believed that the spirits of his ancestors are with him," she
says, almost in a whisper. "He goes through many changes of voice and of
mental state."

Her great grandfather was Selk'nam, something she hid from her son when he
was younger.

"I never wanted to say anything because when I was in school, kids used to
tease me and call me `Indian,'" she explains, lowering her gaze. "That made
me sad, so I said to myself: `Why should I tell that to my son?'"

But by the time Yantén was 12, his interest in native languages had
practically become an obsession, and his abilities were confirmed by a
university professor. So his mother told him about his ancestry. She
started recording his singing and encouraged him to perform. He now gives
performances every two or three months.

Yantén has recorded two CDs of Selk'nam music, using savings from part-time
work. His father is an artisan, his mother, a housewife, and his
lower-middle class family had to take out loans to help finance his unusual
passion. Yantén applied for cultural preservation grants from the government
of Chile, but was rejected because he's younger than the minimum age of 18.

His lack of support has been a frustration not only for his family, but for
his new-found fans who work to preserve Chile's indigenous heritage. "It's
unfortunate that, in our country, culture gets no support," says Juan
Carlos Avilez, an anthropologist from the rural town of Curacavi who came
to see a Yantén performance at the Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago.

Supporters hope to arouse interest abroad, but Yantén has his own ideas for
reaching a wider audience. He's looking to popularize traditional native
music by fusing it with modern electronic beats and is already working on a
demo CD with some friends. He's also working on writing a new Selk'nam
dictionary and has a blog, joubert-yanten.blogspot.com.

While kids with such unusual abilities are often mocked and socially
ostracized, Yantén has many friends and few insecurities.

"He's a good boy and isn't into drugs or alcohol like most kids his age,"
interjects his mother, who often answers for him while we speak.

Yantén agrees that he has a healthy and normal social life, going out,
playing video games sometimes and listening to music. Rather than finding
his interests weird, he says his friends consider him "kind of cool." "If
we're walking and we see a native name on a street sign, they ask me what
it means," says Yantén..

Beyond recognizing the novelty of his gift for language, Yantén says few
people are interested in actually learning indigenous languages.
Nevertheless, he continues trying to pick up new ones, and trying to pass
on what he's learned.

Sitting down for dinner with his mother and older sister, he asks his mother
to pass the salt and the juice, in Selk'nam.

"Sal qui aya, ah, jugo qui aya, ah," he says, nonchalantly. I glance over at
her to see if she understands. She smiles in confirmation, admitting she is
beginning to pick it up.