Little Bear: Language is culture (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Little Bear: Language is culture

By Laurel Smith
Staff reporter

Jun 13 2007
http://www.kamloopsthisweek.com/portals-code/list.cgi?paper=15&cat=23&id=1005108&more=0

While munching on sponge cake with strawberry sauce and sipping coffee from
pristine white cups, the audience was in a great mood at Monday night’s
dinner of the Partnerships and Pathways to Aboriginal Success conference,
held at Thompson Rivers University.

Prof. Leroy Little Bear got things going with his jokes and stories, causing
laughter to spill out of the hall into the foyer. But after warming the
audience up, his speech returned to the focus of the conference —
aboriginal education.

Little Bear shared his experiences as a professor of Native American studies
at the University of Lethbridge. His lecture was on the differences between
thought processes in different cultures, using Native Americans and
Westerners as his examples.

A fan of Albert Einstein, Little Bear said that before studies on native
American culture could be taught, the way people of the culture think had
to be understood.

He touched on several major points that are fundamental in understanding the
aboriginal way of thinking and, therefore essential to teaching the topic.

Native Americans think in constant motion, or “flux,” as Little Bear called
it. In the Blackfoot language, he said, there is no word for inanimate. Due
to constant flux and change, transformation is possible, which is why, he
said, native American religious icons are usually able to transform in some
way.

“The door is always open for something to occur,” he said.

His second point was that natives think in terms of energy waves, because
everything is in flux. Unlike traditional scientists who look at particles,
waves are what everything can be broken down to, according to Little Bear.

“If everything is made of waves, then everything is animated.”

Little Bear said a university is a universe, arguing there should always be
room for other ways of thinking. He said native American studies causes a
threat because it offers a different basis and philosophy.

Noting that everything in native culture is interrelated, and that
relationships are important, Little Bear said another difference in the way
aboriginals think is how they learn and remember information.

He said renewal of knowledge is prevalent in the culture — the retelling of
the same stories, the singing of the same songs, the performance of the
same ceremonies.

“Even though we’ve heard the story 100 times, yet it’s told again.”

Native thinking is space, rather than time, oriented, he said, and therefore
natives are more likely to remember events by where they occurred, rather
than by when they occurred.

Little Bear said it is easy to tell a lie if one thinks in terms of time,
because the lie fades and disappears over time. For natives, a lie remains
in the place it was told, and is always remembered when that place is
visited.

He added that language is the key to understanding a culture.

The way a people speak has much to do with the way they think.

Due to the constant flux of the world as natives see it, Little Bear said
language also is constantly changing.

He used his own language, Blackfoot, as an example.

“The verb ‘to go’ can be conjugated 356,000 different ways,” said Little
Bear. “Think about the possibilities.”