Nanticoke try to bring tribe's ancient tongue back to life (fwd)

Sun Mar 18 05:15:09 UTC 2007

Nanticoke try to bring tribe's ancient tongue back to life

By RACHAEL JACKSON, The News Journal
Posted Saturday, March 17, 2007
http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070317/NEWS/703170329/1006/NEWS

There is no surviving word for "goodbye" in the Nanticoke language, and
perhaps that is fitting.

Even though it has been more than 150 years since the last conversation
in Nanticoke took place, the tribe refuses to say farewell to the words
of its ancestors.

Joining a growing trend of American Indians reviving dormant languages,
the Nanticoke recently embarked on a quest to reclaim a nearly lost
part of their heritage.

The Millsboro-based tribe has a list of about 300 words and the insights
of a native speaker of a similar language. Right now, many of them feel
pride when they construct simple sentences.

But the Nanticoke, whose population is 150 to 200 locally with 1,000
active members nationwide, eventually hope to call each brother a nee-e
mat and each sister a nimpz.

Eventually they hope to recognize an eagle flying overhead as an
ah-whap-pawn-top and refer to a river as a peemtuck.

An estimated 175 Indian languages are still spoken in North America,
according to Leanne Hinton, a linguistics professor at University of
California, Berkeley, but few are still learned at home.

Another 125 languages don't have speakers, she said, estimating that
tribes are trying to revitalize about 50 of those languages. One of
those groups is the Nanticoke.

"I think it all shows the symbolic importance of a language as a kind of
identity symbol for a group," said Hinton, who works with language
revitalization.

Nanticoke Chief James T. Norwood agreed.

"A lot of tribes don't understand how you can survive without a
language," he said. "It's a certain bond that you have. It just
connects you more."

Recorded in 1792

The Nanticoke's journey to the language of their ancestors started with
a more than 200-year-old book. In 1792, Thomas Jefferson ordered the
words of the Nanticoke language to be written. It's the only surviving
record. The last fluent speaker died more than 150 years ago.

To fill gaps, the tribe called upon Myrelene Ranville, a Canadian who
speaks and teaches the Anishnabay language. Anishnabay and Nanticoke
are part of the Algonquin language family, so Ranville was eager to
help.

"To work with a tribe who essentially has not heard their language and
it has not been spoken in over 200 years and to work with a vocabulary
that was recorded at the request of Thomas Jefferson is just
incredible," she said. "It gives you shivers. This has not changed
since 1792."

In November, she left Manitoba for Delaware to lead classes on
Nanticoke, using the old book. Financed by donations to the tribe, she
applied her language's grammar and supplied words in Anishnabay when
none was available in Nanticoke. It was like recreating Spanish with
the help of a speaker of Italian.

Sterling Street, assistant treasurer for the tribe, said he learned that
the language is often literal. The word for "river," peemtuck, actually
means "water by the tall trees." The word for man is wohacki, and the
word for boy is wohacki-a-wauntit, which means little man.

"For a fox, they might not have called it a fox, they might have called
it 'four-legged red animal,'" Street said.

But Ranville soon returned to her life in Canada, where she regularly
converses with other tribe members in Anishnabay and has taught the
language in an elementary school. The Nanticoke were left with tapes of
her classes, which they play at sessions Thursday nights at the
Nanticoke Indian Center in Millsboro. Street, who has a good aptitude
for the language, leads the review sessions. But he does not call
himself a teacher. As students reviewed words for hand, arm and eye at
a recent class, he reminded them that he was still learning, too.

A few hundred miles north, in Connecticut, Stephanie Fielding is on a
similar mission to resurrect the Mohegan language, which also has
Algonquin roots. Fielding, who recently published an 800-word
dictionary, is working with the Mohegan-language diaries of Fidelia
Fielding, the aunt of her great grandfather, who died in 1908 as the
last fluent speaker of Mohegan. She said bits and pieces of the
language are used in the present-day Mohegan community.

"Even though people aren't fluent in it, we can use a word or two here
and there," she said.

Miami revived

Scholars have differing opinions on bringing back dormant languages.
Some point to the success of Hebrew, which before the establishment of
Israel had long been restricted to religious uses. There's also the
case of the Miami Indians in Oklahoma, who revived their language about
20 years after it fell out of use in the 1960s. Now, some Miami parents
are raising their children with the language.

"When it comes to reclaiming a cultural heritage, the home is really a
sanctuary," said Daryl Baldwin, a member of the Miami tribe who runs
the Myaamia Project at the University of Miami in Ohio. He said some of
his four children's first words were in Miami.

Hinton, the Berkeley scholar, who is also a co-founder of a group called
Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, helps organize
seminars for tribes to re-connect with their languages. She pairs young
people with older tribe members and makes them commit to weekly
conversation. She said the program has produced new speakers of about
30 languages.

Hinton said the interest in bringing back lost Indian languages is
gaining momentum.

"It's been a real steady increase since the '90s," she said. "Everyone's
realizing that their languages are in terrible danger."

Hinton said that while the Nanticoke may not regain their language in
its purest form, their efforts may not be in vain.

"It's certainly feasible that they could be speaking ... fluently," she
said. "The question as to whether fluent speakers could develop really
depends on how much reconstitution they do and how much drive there
is."

She said the point may not be the language as much as rediscovering a
part of the tribe's past.

Right now the Nanticoke are looking for money to conduct more research
and classes.

Kim Robbins, 41, hopes to teach her younger brother and niece and
nephews. A tribal dancer has written a song in Nanticoke. Others hope
to document their legends in the revived language. They're learning
their truest Indian names: Street, for example, is known as Earth
Keeper in English and Ahkee Ganuhwandung in the Nanticoke-Anishnabay
hybrid.

And once again, tribe members can greet one another as their ancestors
did.