Preserving tribal culture focus of national conference, from language to memories to science (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/index.ssf/2009/10/preserving_tribal_culture.html

Preserving tribal culture focus of national conference, from language  
to memories to science
By David Stabler, The Oregonian
October 20, 2009, 6:36PM

Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian

Malissa Winthorn speaks with Phil Cash Cash during a lunch break. Cash  
Cash spoke about his doctoral work as a linguist trying to understand  
and preserve both the verbal and sign languages he grew up with on the  
Umatilla Reservation.

~~

Malissa Minthorn  stands at the back of a cavernous ballroom in the  
Red Lion Hotel on the River. Blue, yellow, silver and black beads  
cascade over her shoulders in a dress that her grandmother wore to  
weddings and funerals on the Umatilla Reservation.

Tuesday was opening day of a sold-out conference that has brought  
together 550 people from around the country with one interest in  
common: preserving tribal culture. As she looks over the packed room,  
Minthorn herself personifies the theme of the conference.

"After this, I'm storing it away," she says, fingering her bright red  
dress. "It's getting thin and fragile."

Preservation takes many forms, from a simple photograph to an entire  
museum of artifacts. From a jumpy film showing Bitterroot Jim  telling  
a bear story in sign language in 1932 to a mat house that the Wanapum  
tribe had to relearn to build on the banks of the Columbia River.

Culture is complicated for Native Americans, and so is its  
preservation. Without a record, some tribes left no trace. Passing  
culture down through the generations gets more complicated by a  
tradition of oral history that makes some elders suspicious of  
recordings and photography.

The National Conference Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums  is the  
fourth national gathering to help preserve, archive, display and  
perpetuate Native American culture. Hosts were the Oregon State  
Library and Tamástslikt  Cultural Institute on the Umatilla  
Reservation, near Pendleton. Speakers included library and language  
experts and Russell Means,  the activist, actor and author, who led  
the famous standoff at Wounded Knee, S.D., in 1973.

Libraries were a big presence at the conference. In an adjoining hall,  
exhibitors offered ideas on storage and displays, creating audiovisual  
labs and preserving images.

But protecting culture is not only about objects. In a time of Twitter  
and other quick communication, tribes are seeking a deeper connection  
to themselves, an appreciation of culture, the very DNA of who they  
are. That connection often starts with language.

Of the 54 languages identified in the Pacific Northwest, many verge on  
extinction. Only one speaker of the Wasco language is still living.  
Forty speakers of Nez Perce remain. Linguist predict that within two  
or three generations, no one will speak these languages.

The four-day conference, called "Streams of Language, Memory and  
Lifeways," underscored the urgency to save tribal culture in all its  
forms before it's too late.

"There are not enough words to give to tell you how important language  
is to our sacred traditions," Phil Cash Cash  told the assembled group  
at Tuesday's opening session. Cash Cash, a linguist who grew up on the  
Umatilla Reservation, studies language in the Columbia River region.

Language is key to helping Native Americans live their culture, he  
said. "Language follows basic laws of the culture and land and earth,"  
he said. "It's urgent we all understand how vitally important it is  
that language gets transferred to the younger generation."

Dallas Dick,  a photo archivist at the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute,  
took Cash's message to heart. "I'm feeling guilty because I'm not  
doing what I should be doing. We're losing it all, and I was one of  
the bad kids that never listened. I learned all the bad words."

Signs of preservation were everywhere. In a hallway on the way to the  
ballroom, attendees passed tables of necklaces, bracelets, earrings,  
blankets and crafts.

Downstairs, in a session about the Wanapum, a small tribe that has  
lived for thousands of years on the Columbia River north of the Tri- 
Cities, Angela Buck,  director of the Wanapum Heritage Center,  talked  
about her tribe's latest tool to preserve her culture: an RV. The  
vehicle travels throughout the region to share displays and history  
with native and non-native people. "We get around," she said. "We  
talked to 29,000 people last year. That may not seem like a lot to  
you, but it is to us."

In other efforts to protect the Wanapum culture, the river tribe  
recently dug out canoes, made string from hemp and built a mat house  
from the tule  plant, all projects new to them. The house was more  
than they bargained for, a process of finding, gathering, drying,  
tying and building that took months to complete.

"It was a huge project, overwhelming," said Rex Buck III,  who worked  
on the house. "We can't undo things that happened, but those projects  
fill the gap of who we are as a people."

The conference runs through Thursday.

--David Stabler
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20091022/d7271abc/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 92642 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20091022/d7271abc/attachment.jpg>