Language more important than land - academic (fwd link)

[Heather Souter]

Taanshi,

As I read the posts, I am thankful that people are not only thinking about
the issue in deep ways but FEELING in deep ways too....

I echo sentiments that severing the ties of peoples to their lands and
traditional life ways will eventually lead to loss of language.    How can
our young people see a need to save/use our languages if we no longer
practice traditional spirituality, relationships, life ways, livelihoods,
etc. that our languages so wonderfully express? Why not just use English
(or some other "mainstream" language)?  If there is no intrinsic need
(expression of identity?), why would our children chose to learn/use our
languages which are often much more complicated learn/use than English (or
French, or Spanish, etc.)?

As some here have expressed, it is NOT an either/or choice when it comes to
language and land....  How can it be when our language, our songs, our
stories and our life ways have come forth from our living in certain places
and the relationships with have with them?  To me, saying that land is NOT
as important as language, is like saying grandmothers and grandfathers are
NOT as important to families as mothers, fathers and children....

As I do language work, I ponder how in our efforts we can better
preserve/maintain/restore/renew our connections to all our relations
(especially the land).   Like many activists before me, I keep coming back
to the importance creating more opportunities to be on/in/with the land and
"in community" and thus creating more opportunities to use our languages to
express relationships/experiences/feelings/ideas that we cannot adequately
express otherwise....


Eekoshi pitamaa.
Heathe
Michif (Metis),
Camperville, Manitoba



On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Richard Zane Smith <rzs at wildblue.net>wrote:

> ha! love that "calcified synapses"
> hey, it was a gem...needed to be said!
> Some of your story is familiar, in that my kids were also raised in the
> SW, Arizona and New Mexico, so when we pulled up our stakes and moved
> "back" to the area of our Wyandot(te) people in the corner of NE Okl.....
> it was a severe land and culture shock (as your dog, experincing that
> strange prickly cut grass. )
>
> I have a friend who encountered a Navajo boy growing up on the inner city
> streets of London.
> Even if he were to come "home" to Dinétah(Navajoland)...what would that
> be like?
> like an astronauts child growing up on Mars?.....visiting earth....?
>
> I think "pilgrimages" as you described to return to the source of your
> peoples memory is often necessary.
> The Georgian Bay is also our Wendat ancestral homelands before the great
> dispersal in 1649, and unfortunately
> many Wendat/Wyandot pilgrimages there are to hold reburials, to take care
> of our dead, disrupted by bulldozers and "progress". Burial grounds
> (without rows of headstones) seem to be thought of as "archaeological data"
> and we are often
> burying ancestral remains that have been sawed in pieces, and MOST their
> grave goods somehow vanish into the vaults and shelves of convenient
> academic forgetfulness.
>
> our ceremonies we conduct here are more like pictographs ,
> symbolic pictures of something that was once as tangible as aching winter
> hunger, or real joy in finding wild strawberries
> to make faces shine.
> Now we hold ceremonies to remember our ancestors delight and thankfulness
> .
> But the ancestral joy in finding those little red fruits? we can only
> pretend to know....
>
> unę́h!
> Richard
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tue, Sep 25, 2012 at 12:45 AM, Rolland Nadjiwon <mikinakn at shaw.ca>wrote:
>
>> **
>> Well Richard...this just came back at me, so, I guess I did share it with
>> the list instead of just you. I can't begin to imagine what my 'future'
>> will be like...calcified synapses...
>>
>>
>> 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 *Rolland Nadjiwon
>> *Sent:* September-25-12 1:38 AM
>>
>> *To:* ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
>> *Subject:* Re: [ILAT] Language more important than land - academic (fwd
>> link)
>>
>>  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.
>>
>
>
>
> --
>
>  "…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
>
> **
>
> **
>
> *
>
>
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