Request for info from/about indigenous groups that have/have had good relationship with linguists

Tue Apr 28 17:24:57 UTC 2009

kweh everyone,

A 27 year old French-Canadian anthropologist, Marius Barbeau, came to our NE
Oklahoma community
here in 1911 and in 1912.
Fresh from Oxford,hired as the second anthropologist of all Canada, he
immediately began doing fieldwork
among the Wendat "Huron of Lorette" and his search for lingering Wendat
culture led him here among the
 Wyandot (Wandat) where he was delighted to find not only fluent speakers
but those who would sing traditional
Wyandot songs for him into his new machine recording everythig on wax
cylinders.

Though not trained primarily as a linguist he recorded some and transcribed
a HUGE amount of material along with
 phonetic charts and graphs of pronominal prefixes,lists of names ,and
dictionaries, and suffixes.
His boss, Edward Sapir, felt he was overdoing it with the language,and
putting in TOO MANY keys for pronunciation
since Barbeau practically mapped every syllable closely. Not being overly
familiar with Iroquoian languages,Barbeau often ran
words he heard spoken together in his transcriptions and made his share of
errors....BUT...
We now have over 20,000 words and of course many of the -stems- have
seemingly endless variation.
We now have enough material to compare it to sister languages, Wendat
dictionaries of Sagard and Potier,plus all six-nation
 Iroquoian languages...and have material for actual revitalization.
Last week my mom and dad sat in on a day of my teaching Wyandot to K-4th in
the Wyandotte public school
and it was wonderful to see their joy as the kids sang their songs and put
simple sentences together.
The Wendat of Quebec are now ahead of us (Wyandots) in understanding urgency
and supporting revitalization efforts.
Here in Oklahoma...sad to say...its so far just me....with assistance by
linguists such as Craig Kopris and inspired by efforts
 of Laval University Quebec to produce suitable material for teaching Wendat
in their rez school.
I receive no funding for my time and work - all volunteer.

 Maybe Sapir was right, Barbeau might have overdone it.
Alot of expenses were coming from his own pockets as he wrote Sapir:
" I have used over a month of my own salary for this research....some money
from the dept. would be more
than appropriate" and he submitted a request for "$50 to $75." to which
Sapir sent him $75 from his own funds
saying,"i've been there myself and know how it is"
But in a letter to Barbeau from a Wyandot school teacher,Miss Dawson, is
proof to me he was on the right track:
"(a Wyandot) said that you talked just like one of the old Indian women and
perfectly correct which is quite a compliment
 to you. They will enjoy you when you can understand and speak with them"

I'm thankful for Barbeaus over attention and use of symbols to indicate
correct pronunciation.
Without Marius Barbeau's tenacity and his field work with informants and a
grueling schedule, to boot,
we might all be saying Wyandot is a dead language without any hope of
resurrection.

Richard Zane Smith
Wyandotte, Oklahoma

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 11:04 AM, phil cash cash <cashcash at email.arizona.edu
> wrote:

> Greetings Heather, everybody,
>
> There is an inspirational story yet online regarding the Nooksack
> situation.  It was originally a news article but now the original news
> citation is gone, although it still has the date.
>
> Rebirth of a language:
> Linguists, computer bring back nearly extinct Nooksack dialect
> http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=0086PN
>
> Anyway, since the original article I think there has been more follow up.
> It was such a great story we later included it in our volume
> Technology-Enhanced Language Revitalization (2006) for our AILDI courses
> here at UofA.
>
> Hope this helps.  And I do know there are more inspirational/good stories
> out there on the unique relationships between linguists and indigenous
> communities!  Besides where else in the internet universe will such an
> interesting question be asked and answered?  Only on ILAT, right...so,
> please help us out folks!  ;-)
>
> Phil Cash Cash
> UofA ILAT
>
>
>
> Quoting Heather Souter <hsouter at gmail.com>:
>
> > Taanshi, hello,
> >
> > Heather Souter d-ishinikaashon. En Michif Campeville, MB, Canada ohchi.
> My
> > name is Heather Souter. I am a Michif (Metis) from Camperville, Manitoba,
> > Canada.
> >
> > Those working in language documentation/revitalization of Michif (Metis)
> > languages continue to face many challenges. One is the lack of
> > understanding about the possible positive contributions linguists (both
> > indigenous and non-indigenous) can make to language policy and program
> > formation and implementation. Now, I am aware that there have been many
> > negative experiences with anthropologists and linguists in the past, but
> I
> > would like to know of positive experiences and relationship in the
> present.
> > My intention is to provide this information to our provincial Minister of
> > Michif Languages (Manitoba Metis Federation) with the hope that it will
> > inspire our politicians and bureaucrats to actively explore the
> > possibilities of respectful collaboration with academics and other
> language
> > professionals.
> >
> > I thank you in advance for any information you may provide.
> >
> > Eekoshi pitamaa. That is all for now.
> > Heather Souter
> > Language Activist and Community Language Researcher
>
>

-- 
"if you don't know the language you will only see the surface of the
culture..The language is the heart of the culture and you cannot separate
it."
Elaine Ramos, TLINGIT
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