Language more important than land - academic (fwd link)

Tue Sep 25 05:38:05 UTC 2012

It now seems so far 'after the fact', to post to the list. What I did have in mind to reinforce what your post was very succinctly pointing out is the incredible and symbiotic relation of language, place and ceremony/ritual.
We, my family, live at the juncture of the Great Lakes, Sault Ste. Marie, Canada. I was raised in a potowatomi/Ojibway community on the Georgian Bay. Our lives, our livelihood, our language and our ceremonials were/are inseparable from 'our' place. We have seasonal ceremonies to do with the lake waters, rivers and streams that feed us. There are spirits in those waters and we have many times and seasons of offerings and praying with those spirits. It is all tied into our place in the cosmos and we do these things because we have always done them.
My wife and I decided we would move our personal family, kiddies, cat, dog and etc, as if a nuclear family possible, to Tucson, Arizona and she would do her Masters there in the Indian Studies Program studying with some of the big names like Vine Deloria Jr., Dr. Robert K. Thomas, Dr. Tom Holmes and a host of other profs. We moved there in August of '89 knowing nothing about the deserts. Here, at the lakes, this time of year, autumn, is a time of offerings and feasts involving the lakes the water and our harvests. When it came time to do our offerings with the water, there was no water. In essence, we were not able to be who we are supposed to be without that water. There were man made ponds in a few of the parks but were not filled with what we call 'water'. We went up Mount Lemmon and searched the hills for a lake...there were none. We could not do our ceremonies or make our offerings on the lakes. My wife was more disturbed by this than I but I understood where she was at. She needed to do what we needed to do so she could be at peace during her studies and our stay in Tucson. We were left with no choice but to take the time to come home and do, at the least, our most important offerings. So we did that. It is 2,100 miles from our house to Tucson and another 2,100 miles to drive back to Tucson. We did it, and we got very good at it. If we travelled 70 miles per hour for 10 hours we could be here in three days and after a short rest, back to Tucson in 3 more days. During the three years we lived in Tucson, we made that trip 12 time and once for a holiday.
The impact of the land, people and language was indelibly impressed on us and I don't speak of 'just land', I speak of the extremely particular land of each people who live there. My wife and I and our children will never forget we and the land are symbiotic. I mentioned to my wife the discussion on land loss vs. language loss and the implication of a dichotomised importance. She looked at me like I had lost something. I told her it was a very serious discussion on ILAT. She said '...then they have no experience for it and no way of knowing us...' I think, sometimes she sees me as chasing pots of gold at the end of rainbows...maybe even all the time. I have not talked about it with her since...lol.
Our children didn't always want to make that long exodus back to the Great Lakes with us and so became quite acculturated and acclimatized to that desert environment. Our youngest son stayed the entire time in Tucson with his Papago, Yaqui, Mexican and Spanish American friends. When we made the final return trip we were probably in the Oklahoma/Missouri area when he made the comment, '...wow Dad, I forgot how many white people there are...' I'll never forget that one because it was another realization... And then as we moved northward he again made another profound comment...'wow...you can smell the water in the air up here...' So, if there is an intention, with indigenous peoples, to make some kind of artificial dichotomy somewhere, then someone somewhere is being done a great and harmful injustice.
Just thought of one more story:  Our eldest son, while we were down there, adopted a little pup and as with a lot of our peoples that dog was just another part of the family. Our son named him 'Chico'. We brought him back with us to Sault Ste. Marie and we did it in a marathon drive. When we pulled into the yard up here, everyone was so happy to be free. Chico jumped out of the jeep, ran across the driveway and stopped at the edge of the lawn. He put his paw on it, sniffed it and ran back and jumped in the jeep. He had no experience for grass. In Tucson all the yards have brick fences all around the back yards and the only other place we took him was to the desert. Even our dog had to adjust to his new environment and he went absolutely crazy with the first snowfall.
So these are a few thoughts I would have shared on ILAT with, perhaps, less of a personal narrative. The points you made so well brought these back to the forefront of my memories. So I will close now and kind of sorry I didn't get to share it with everyone...my wife and granddaughter were out at Lake Superior shores last week for offerings and ceremonies. Hopefully I have not ranted on too long....

wahjeh
rolland nadjiwon
________________ 
"I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty." George Burns

  _____  

From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Richard Zane Smith
Sent: September-19-12 2:18 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Language more important than land - academic (fwd link)

The dispossession and ethnic cleansing by force and legal judicial action by a wonderful new democratic society as USA
is a disturbing contradiction difficult to grasp. It still raises that inner dark question of  "Are we somehow less human
to be disposed of so systematically by such a flag waving, cheering smiling patriotic people?"

When a people with cyclical ceremonial life are removed form homelands and placed on lands that are basically "foreign"
it is very difficult for land based ceremonies and life-ways to survive. When my own ancestors surveyed lands in Kansas
prior to forced removal ,the scouts reported that the land was lacking in maple trees, which were such a part of our lives.
To remove even one ceremony (as the Thanking of the Maples) one busy cultural activity as sap harvesting, was to break a 
spoke from the wheel of our highly fluid and active Lifeway circle within which all seasons flowed together.
The Midwinter ceremonies themselves ceased when Oklahoma weather was found so different than northern climates.
Adaption to that which is new is not the issue. The issue is an undermining of land/mind/community/life-cycle.

So even when ceremonies do survive ,its within context of some distant place....and some spoken distant past,
more of a memorial activity ...no longer representing the land and action we now live with. A symbol is not reality itself,
and symbolic actions,even ceremonial activities, can easily become rituals drifting from the reality of community living.
Combine relocation with the missionary drive to imbed into the hearts and minds of children middle eastern creation stories,
and  frightening pictures of a "hell" for those who do not renounce their pagan ways... we end up with a very mixed up tribal identity,
depression and a sense of worthlessness and betrayal. Betraying our families if we convert, betraying modernity if we don't.

its difficult to write about, to express. I haven't read much on this topic, yet.
i'm simply speaking from personal struggle,thoughts and observation.

ské:nǫh
Richard Zane Smith
(Sǫhahiyǫh)

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 10:34 AM, Dr. MJ Hardman <hardman at ufl.edu> wrote:

What you say is the way I understood it 50+ years ago when I first went into the mountains and discovered that the only people in town during the day were the schoolkids, the ill, the drunks sprawled in the plaza - all men, and one blind man.  The drunks were all men who had left and come back.  I learned what women could do and could be and for that I am profoundly grateful.  I had, naively, expected to work with the women during the day (utter ignorance on my very young part).  I worked with the blind man, who was a superb teacher and who very much enjoyed working with me with his Jaqaru.  Since it was always dark, he was often the one who did the irrigating at night, and he liked to travel at night.  But the drunks, as I read it, were those who had left, been in the military or some other experience, learned the sexism/racism of the hispanic system and come back unable to fulfill the expectations of either culture, and thus, unable to feel good about themselves.  This is an observation of the late 50s, but it correlates with what you are saying and the way in which they were treated while they were away, in ways they could not admit nor process.  It seemed even more evident as I learned more about Jaqi culture.  MJ 

On 9/13/12 9:49 AM, "Richard Zane Smith" <rzs at WILDBLUE.NET> wrote:

Thanks Rolland and thanks MJ!
look forward to reading it.
>From our Wyandot removal, actually ALL the small nations removed to this NE corner of OKL.
we are very likely some of the most assimilated people groups. Also among the most belittled, 
and shamed, from all sides for not surviving as "real Indians"  ( another big topic entirely)
There is VERY likely a corolation between land loss (legalized ethnic cleansing), 
and depression, alcoholism, poverty, the loss of identity,as well as the obvious, language and ceremony.

Indigenous people groups, leaving homelands behind are in some way "reconstructed" people groups.
In our past captives were expected to leave behind the identity they were born into,
to merge into their adopted clan and phratry. In many regards we are captives taken to 
a foreign land -  trout raised in a pet store...

unę́h,
Richard

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 2:07 AM, Rolland Nadjiwon <mikinakn at shaw.ca> wrote:

P.P.S. to my post:  

Hardman, M. J. (1994) “’And if we lose our names, then what about our land?’, or, what price development?” in L. H. Turner and H. M. Sterk (eds) Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research (pp. 152-161). Westport & London: Bergin & Garvey.

http://plaza.ufl.edu/hardman/DTPacket/linguisticpostulate.pdf    in the .pdf format it is pages 34-39(equals 151-161)

wahjeh
rolland nadjiwon
________________ 
Harper is a joke and 'pansy' to anyone and any country that will act as his 'sin eater'...

  _____  

From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU] On Behalf Of Huang,Chun
Sent: September-12-12 9:35 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] Language more important than land - academic (fwd link)

Thank you, Bernadette Adley-SantaMaria

I recommend Hardman's article below where, through studying Jaqaru, she explains how land is indeed, as you point out, intertwined with language (both  being parts of the whole): if you lose one, you lose the other. Hardman also demonstrates how English, especially the English cultural thinking as manifested its three major linguistic postulates, can often do damage to the indigenous/local. One of the English postulates Hardman identifies is "ranking through comparative/absolute," which the original article in question here exemplifies very well for us: "Language (is) more important than land!" Really, what's the point of ranking the importance of language against the importance of land anyway??? Many English users, unfortunately, seem unable to escape such ranking mentality.

Hardman, M. J. (1994) “’And if we lose our names, then what about our land?’, or, what price development?” in L. H. Turner and H. M. Sterk (eds) Differences that Make a Difference: Examining the Assumptions in Gender Research (pp. 152-161). Westport & London: Bergin & Garvey.

Let me or Dr. Hardman know if you can't find a copy. I believe she wouldn't mind sharing.

Chun (Jimmy) Huang

Siraya of Taiwan

Assistant Professor, University of Guam

Dr. MJ Hardman
Professor of Linguistics and Anthropology
Department of Linguistics
University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
Doctora Honoris Causa UNMSM, Lima, Perú 
website:  http://grove.ufl.edu/~hardman/ 

-- 

"…revitalizing our language is really just an act of returning to what we are supposed to be. It is like a fish returning to the water, breathing and living once again. "Xh'unei Lance E. Twitchell (Tlingit)

richardzanesmith.wordpress.com

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2667 / Virus Database: 2579/5775 - Release Date: 09/18/12

  _____  

No virus found in this message.
Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
Version: 2013.0.2667 / Virus Database: 2579/5777 - Release Date: 09/19/12

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/ilat/attachments/20120925/ccf5fbf3/attachment.htm>