[lg policy] Wampanoag revived

Sun Feb 12 17:00:10 UTC 2012

A Language Comes Home for Thanksgiving

Posted: 11/24/11 10:03 AM ET

Like many children, Mae Alice Baird can sing a song, play a game, or
tell a story. The difference is that she can do it in Wampanoag
(Wôpanâak). If the name of this language sounds vaguely familiar to
you, chances are that you heard about it at some point in history
class, probably around this time of year. It was spoken by Native
Americans back when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth. Although they
might not know the name of these Native people, many Americans
celebrate the Wampanoag each year at Thanksgiving. But very few are
aware that the group's descendants still live on their ancestral
homelands in Southeastern Massachusetts.

In spite of the survival of their culture and communities, for the
last six generations, no Wampanoag had spoken their ancestral language
-- the same language that gave English speakers words like pumpkin
(pôhpukun), moccasin (mahkus), and skunk (sukôk). Various factors --
such as religious conversion and laws prohibiting the use of the
language -- caused it to fade out, with the last fluent speakers dying
out in the mid-19th century. That's why it's incredible that, after
lying dormant for 150 years, Wampanoag is now alive again. It is
spoken each day by Mae, her parents, and other members of her
community.

How is such a thing possible? That question is answered in We Still
Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân, a documentary film from Anne Makepeace. "I
grew up in New England, and the assumption was growing up that there
were no Native Americans left in Massachusetts or Connecticut, and
that the Native people who helped the Pilgrims to survive just sort of
drifted into nowhere," Makepeace explains. "It was a revelation to
find out not only that there are Wampanoags still here, but that they
have vibrant communities and are very much identified with their
culture and their history."

The film documents the story and life's mission of Mae's mother,
Jessie Little Doe Baird, a woman with an indomitable spirit who set
out to reclaim the language, or as she says in the film, to bring the
language home. "I was totally amazed, impressed, and astonished by
what was happening with the language," Makepeace says. "I was drawn to
Jessie and the story of how she has energized her communities to bring
the language back."

The tribes of the Wampanoag Nation started the Wôpanâak Language
Reclamation Project, collaborative project to reclaim the language in
1993. Seeking to take the project further, Jessie applied for a
research fellowship in 1996 at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), where she worked with renowned scholars in
Algonquian languages, including the late Ken Hale and Norvin Richards.
Even though she had no formal language background, she went on to
receive her master's degree in linguistics, all while raising four
young children.

In addition to the awe-inspiring determination of both Jessie and her
community, there were several factors that enabled the language to be
reclaimed. The Wampanoag were the first Native Americans to adopt an
alphabetic writing system, which meant that they left behind many 17th
and 18th-century legal documents. Most of these were deeds and wills
for which translations into English had been produced while native
speakers were still alive. Another important resource was a Wampanoag
translation of the Bible published at Harvard in 1663. Given the
amount of terminology and content in the text, it was akin to a
Rosetta Stone. As members of the Wampanoag communities observe in the
film, the fact that this Bible translation was used to help resurrect
the language is ironic, since Christianity was one of the major
reasons the language died out in the first place.

The film also shows how Jessie tapped into the work of other
Algonquian languages as well as the Wampanoag corpus in order to
reconstruct the grammar and build a dictionary and pedagogical
materials for the language. Her efforts were successful, to the point
that when she later met with people who spoke other Algonquian
languages, such as Delaware, she found that they could understand each
other. Bringing back a language that had been silenced by colonizing
and globalizing forces is no small undertaking. In 2010, her
unprecedented work was recognized with a prestigious MacArthur
"genius" award. After two decades of devoting her life to this cause,
she has succeeded in revitalizing not only a language, but enabling
her people to more fully appreciate their heritage.

Makepeace was inspired to make the film, not only because of her
interest in the Wampanoag's history, but because she had a personal
connection to them. According to Makepeace, her Puritan ancestors were
involved with violent massacres of the Wampanoags in the 17th century.
Some of her distant relatives still own hundreds of acres of Wampanoag
land. When she approached the communities about developing the film,
she disclosed her family history. She was not only granted permission,
but was told by one community member, "You're closing the circle."

Certainly, her film has helped bring the success story of the
Wampanoag language to the eyes of millions of viewers. The film has
been screened at locations throughout the United States, and was
recently broadcast nationally by PBS. In an interview with Makepeace
this week, when I asked what inspired her to make the film, she
commented, "It's one of the few Native American stories captured on
film that I am aware of that's about hope and revival and a positive
vision of the future."

I also asked her what it was like to see the community members
learning the language and making such impressive progress right before
her (and the camera's) very eyes. She pointed out that the successes
of the language revitalization project have continued well past just
the time period covered in her film. One example she mentions is Troy
Currence, who today is vice president of the Wampanoag Language
Reclamation Project. "Toward the end of the film, Jessie's husband is
teaching him how to say 'good morning' in Wampanoag," she explained.
"That was three years ago, and since then, Troy has become much more
fluent, and his daughter is even moreso." Makepeace also cited the
example of Nitana Hicks, who recounts a Wampanoag creation story in
the film. Nitana went on to get her Master's degree at MIT in 2006
through the same linguistics program as Jessie. She now teaches the
language to Wampanoag in Boston and is getting a PhD in history at
Boston College.

The achievements of adult Wampanoags such as Jessie, Troy, and Nitana
are impressive. But the sustained future of the language ultimately
depends on children like little Mae. A force of nature, Jessie
continues paving the way so that other young community members can
speak the language natively like her daughter. "After working for
years, mostly without compensation, Jessie received a Macarthur
"genius" fellowship a year ago, which has enabled her to devote
herself full-time to the project. Perhaps even more importantly, a
federal grant from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA)
enabled the language project to launch a Master/Apprentice program
enable three full-time apprentices to work with her five days a week,
learning the language," explains Makepeace. "They have the goal of
becoming fluent enough to become teachers, so that the project can
launch an immersion school for kids to start learning all subjects in
Wampanoag starting from the age of kindergarten."

Why should you care about Wampanoag, or any extinct language, for that
matter? As Noam Chomsky says in the film, "A language is not just
words. It's a culture, a tradition, a unification of a community, a
whole history that creates what a community is. It's all embodied in a
language." But most importantly, as Makepeace clearly shows in her
film, a language can contribute significantly to mankind's collective
knowledge. That's something for all of us, not just the Wampanoag, to
be grateful for.

This Thanksgiving season, as you count your blessings in your native
language, remember that your ability to do so is something that is too
often taken for granted. Better yet, consider making a donation to the
Wampanoag language revitalization project. And, take a moment to learn
more about America's first languages. To find a screening of
Makepeace's film near you or obtain a copy, click here and learn more
about this incredible story of a language lost, then found.

--
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 Harold F. Schiffman

Professor Emeritus of
 Dravidian Linguistics and Culture
Dept. of South Asia Studies
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305

Phone:  (215) 898-7475
Fax:  (215) 573-2138

Email:  haroldfs at gmail.com
http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~haroldfs/

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