April 30, 2024 • 60 mins
We are joined by Éedaa Heather Burge and Shodzi'dzo:wa:’ Damian Webster to talk about their language journey and current work, and also about systemic changes they hope to see in the near future. They also shared their thoughts on how to balance teaching the complexities of Indigenous languages while also being true to the spirit of the language and its ancestors, and then on how to be the medicine in times of difficulty and sorrow. Following a wonderful time with our guests, X̱ʼunei wraps up season 2 with messages for listeners and those working in Indigenous languages, and also hopes for future seasons of the show. Gunalchéesh, háwʼaa, quayana, mahalo for listening and spending time with us! Letʼs keep on going! Stoodis!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
They tried to colonizes, try to genocide, yet we're still
here with the Tongue on broke and l.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
A t just to cut you on art talks, cook
what you dot.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Dot.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, welcome, folks to the finale of season two of
The Tongue Unbroken. I'm so grateful that you folks are
listening and that we have these opportunities to engage in
conversations about language reclamation, movement building, about decolonization, about empowerment
(01:05):
and healing for Indigenous peoples, and so some of the
things I was thinking of as we sort of wrap
this second season is just trying to think about the
sustainability of language movements, trying to think about how to
build on things when everything's on fire and everything's running out.
But then sometimes I think these are colonial mechanisms to
(01:27):
get you to think that you can't do the thing,
when indeed you can if you can avoid the distractions,
take care of yourself, be kind, maintain like a sense
of peace and unity through a lot of different stuff.
And so for our closing, I have two guests who
are folks I just admire tremendously, and I really am
(01:52):
so thankful that we have the ability to build teams
of people on different parts of North America and then
to with each other and to share knowledge and to
share stories and to share I guess just like the
stick touitiveness that it takes to sort of keep going.
So we are joined today by folks who are We're
(02:13):
going coast to coast for this closing episode, and I'll
let our guests introduce themselves. So starting with Ida.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
I Tinka Heather Birge, yahan Aktati Aya, Yes, Mohawk kandaka
augus Kwanda. My plate name is Ida, my English name
is Heather Birge. I was adopted back on a t
Marsha hotch out of Klukwan, Alaska. So I'm Ghanaktati from Klakwan.
(02:47):
But I'm also the grandchild ancestraly mohawk from upstate New York,
the Augustasni community. I started learning Klinget in twenty eleven.
I get the question a lot of like, oh, what's
a mohawk person doing learning Plinkett teaching Clinkett, But I
I guess to backtrack. I am currently an assistant professor
(03:07):
of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast
with one. I started learning Plinkett in twenty eleven. Like
I mentioned Withe, he was my Plinkett language instructor. I
got my bachelors in Liberal Arts and Alaska Native Languages
and Studies, one of the first cohorts to do so
at uas graduated and then wasn't quite sure what to
(03:29):
do next. So one suggested that I go get my
Masters in linguistics, which I did at the University of
British Columbia, and then suggested that I continue on with
my PhD, which I did in Linguistic anthropology, trying to
unify some of these sometimes disparate fields a little bit.
So spent a lot of time in university studying Clinkett,
(03:51):
always with the goal of coming back here to Tahini Juno,
Alaska in teaching, which I'm now doing, which is really exciting.
So I've been learning for a really long time and
am now an instructor. I've got a bunch of degrees
to try and build language of vitalization within our academic spaces,
our university spaces, to really support learners like me who was,
(04:14):
you know, learning Planket at the University at US. While
I was doing that, it was in many Indigenous communities
really important to know who your family was, to be
able to introduce yourself and talk about where you came
from and sort of who your ancestors were. And when
I was an undergrad eighteen nineteen years old, I didn't
really know. Wasn't something my family talked about very much
(04:36):
for a wide variety of reasons. But in one of
Heathley ish Lyle James also a Planket Language instructors class,
he really encouraged his students to do that genealogy research
to you know, sort of figure out who your father's
people were, your mother's people were. And so in the
process of doing that, found out that I do have
connections to the Mohak community, the kanagate Aga community in
(04:57):
Agua Sassine and is something as a mixed Indigenous person
learning a language of the place that I'm at is
both empowering and also maybe a little bit of a
struggle sometimes to be part of a language community that
I'm passionate about.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
And that brought me in.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Goneotti was one of my Clink instructors as well, and
now I'm her daughter and have this you know, moral ethical,
familiar responsibility to support this work but it can be
hard sometimes working in a language that.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Is both is and is not mine. I guess.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
So that's a little bit I suppose of where I'm at,
what I do, how I knowne and going to cheesh
for having me excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and I just want to thank you tremendously going
to cheese plane, our plane, Chiese Clane. I called upon
you twice today, so I think we met over email.
You had caught episodes of the podcast and had reached out,
and then I was heading over to Buffalo, where you are,
(05:53):
and I was on an east coast trip in November,
and then I think you picked me up from the airports,
and I just really we just hit it off. I
just really, I think we align on a lot of
things in terms of how we're thinking about languages and
teaching and learning and building programs. And so I'm really thankful.
And you visited with a class I was teaching today,
(06:15):
although my teaching skills were tested extremely by my forgetfulness
and my just general scatter brained state of today. So
could you also introduce yourself and talk about your language journey?
Speaker 6 (06:29):
Sure? Thing, man, So.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Nate will go into today Dog Date, Nate, wye Nannie
they was had no wait, no haggy or gusslent.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
What got going well? Gig Dane Nate why nanny on
t Anny Kale walks home. So, just to introduce myself,
my name is Sozitzowa. It's I guess it refers to
a big corn tassel. I'm Turtle clan Tondwanda Seneca from
(07:14):
western New York and I just mentioned in there. I
have two daughters there Wolf clan from their mother and
I started my language journey about twenty years ago. My
daughter's twenty now, and not too long after she was born.
That's when I started taking up Seneca language. Nobody in
(07:36):
my family spoke, didn't have anybody to really pull from,
and as I've gone on this journey, that's really common.
A lot of people grow up without any speakers in
their family and put in the work to become language speakers.
So I haven't had any formal classes. It was mostly
just a lot of grit and grind, establishing relationships with
(07:59):
people and putting in the work to advance myself in
the language. I kind of mentioned this with the class
earlier today. After my daughter was born I would say
between two thousand and four twenty ten was kind of
some light work on the language intro stuff. Twenty ten
to twenty fourteen I really stepped up my efforts a
(08:22):
lot to make myself accountable. Twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen
is when I went to Oneida, Wisconsin started learning Oneida,
which really helped with my Seneca. And then in twenty
sixteen when I got my job at Tanawanda, That's where
everything really took off because now I had access to
a really good second language teacher and also got to
(08:43):
be around programming. Ended up becoming the director for Hanan
Tawny Hanonde s Stahwa, which really made me have to
be really accountable for everything that I was doing. And
then I moved into instruction for our adult program not
too long after that, which really forced me to push myself.
(09:03):
So it's really something to have gone through a lot
of those learning curves on my own, but with a
lot of really good guidance. I've always kind of doubted
myself on if I'm a good teacher, if I'm a
decent speaker, but I've had a good feedback from the
people I work with that I think I'm on the
right path and helping things move along, so I'll say
(09:24):
that much. And yeah, we did really hit it off
once I saw your classes over the pandemic. I had
always wanted to find a way to network, and you're
a busy guide and busy guys are hard to get
a hold of. So I just had to keep pushing
and pushing and finally found out you were coming here
and it was a good meeting and everything went off good.
(09:45):
And now I'm glad we're still networking today. So I'll
say that much awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And in case you folks are tuning in, perhaps for
the first time, and since this is the last episode
of the season, I should introduce myself. My name is
Lance Twitchel. I teach theling It language at the University
of Alaska Southeast and about two years ago I started
this podcast journey through the Next Up Initiative through the
(10:13):
iHeartMedia Network, and so I've been working in our languages
for quite some time. I started learning in nineteen ninety
six with my grandfather. My lineage, I'm fling It, I'm
lukoch Adi, raven Sake sling It, I'm double headed Keegani,
Raida and I'm also Yupik and saw me through my
(10:33):
father's side, and so yeah, it's it's all I think
of o this stuff all the time. And so on
a day to day basis, Ida and I are co
teaching and co managing a language program at the University
of Alaska Southeast and our focus is on Hotkill, the
Haida language, Samalge, the Simchian language, and fling It the
(10:53):
Clinket language. And we have had students who have taken
our classes from a lot of other languages in Alaska.
And so as we think about language reclamation, movement building,
and language revitalization and perhaps language revival, there's a lot
of stuff that we do on a day to day basis,
and so it's fun to have this platform to talk
about it and just say, oh, well, what if there
(11:15):
was a show that was nationally broadcast and we talked
about indigenous languages just for a solid hour. And so
it's been really amazing to do this. I'm thankful for
all the folks who have been guests on the show
and for all the folks who are helping to produce
and to help make it possible. When I first was
(11:35):
selling the idea, I thought I don't know if folks
are really going to buy into this, because indigenous languages
are just not something that folks talk about on a
day to day basis outside of ones who are doing
the work in the language, and so a lot of
our work is just trying to be visible while also
trying to survive and then trying to think of a
world where we're thriving. So I guess the question I
(11:57):
have few folks before we take our first break, is
what are the big systemic changes that you think need
to happen so that we can reach a state where
we're not just trying to survive, but we feel like
we are thriving and we are comfortable. Like colonization is
a hell of a thing. Like I think it's hard
(12:17):
to ever say like you're safe, but to be in
a state where we'll say, Okay, we're not just trying
to survive, We're actually trying to continue to build upon
something because we're thriving. So what do you think is
needed to get to that point?
Speaker 6 (12:33):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Just how do we fix everything? Is that the criset
the question?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, you know, just just that little old thing.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Okay, I mean it is a good question, and it's
sort of the everyday question to a certain extent, like
are we doing when we're building our programs, when we're
training teachers, when we're encouraging students and learners to be
a part of this, Like what are we building it for?
And what do we want it to look like? Like
I do think obviously it's a good question because you're
asking it. But it's a hard one too, because I
(13:04):
see kind of a wide variety of opinions about what.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
The next step should be.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
And I know for me sometimes it can be a
challenge to remember what that long term goal of not
safety but stability is when we're so sort of blogged
down into the day to day of trying to keep
our programs running and getting enough students. And so I
guess I mean one future vision of what might head
(13:30):
us in that right direction is building programs, sustainable programs
that aren't reliant explicitly on things like grant funding. I
know in Plingett Country we have a number of programs
that are starting to grow. We see that at the university,
we see that with howyk Tunga Kudi, the language nest.
But I still think, unlike some of our other indigenous relatives,
(13:52):
that have built programs like the Hawaiians, those programs are
largely tied to the school district and at least here
in so Tahini and Juno, there's a lot of instability
with our school district. There's that question of dual language.
Is that really going to get us where we want
to go versus you know, language medium education where it's
all where the education is within the language instead of
(14:15):
about the language. We've had language content classes within our
school districts for a while, right so, like the students
from they were for fifteen minutes to an hour a day,
maybe our learning Plinkett, Redkill or Schmagech depending on where
they're at in Southeast. But and this is not disparaging
any of the instructors or the programs you know that
that have built those classes, right like that even getting
(14:36):
those in the district was a huge challenge. But I
think any of those instructors would agree that that's not
going to build the level of fluency that we would
like to see. That would be the ideal for having
plink At be spoken and used and you know, incorporated
into everyday life an hour a week, a couple hours
a day, Like.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
It's not it's not.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
It's a step in the direct direction, but it's not
going to get us to that sort of long term
sustainability that you're talking about. And so I think one
potential solution for that right is to build programs that
are controlled by the community, that are for the community,
that are not necessarily behold into some of our state standards.
Maybe or maybe we're working intended with the state to get,
(15:19):
you know, something that that is fully indigenized. I think
it's really hard to try and operate within a system
that's already built a particular way and to both try
and teach people cling at try and get clinget in
the homes, try and get people sort of on board
with this movement, and also decolonizing these systems that weren't
built to host any of those things at the same time,
(15:40):
like really splits our energy. But we've been talking about
that for a really long time, and so I'm not
sure entirely what the next step would be, but that
maybe is one potential solution to our constant problem, our
constant struggle.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Rather jeez, yeah, I guess I'll chime in a little
about what's going on in Tanawanda and Seneca Country one
of your colleagues that you've worked with, Awana Decca, Brian Miracle.
He's spearheaded along with another teacher a while back in
the early two thousands, the root method system. So it's
(16:18):
been around that long, but it's only been around in
Seneca Country since twenty sixteen. A lot of the learners
before that never went through that system, so we've adopted that.
I've modified it, and the premise is the children learn
the language from their parents, so we're going to empower
the adults so that the language can be the main
(16:39):
focus in the household and that it trickles down to
the children. But I also have a school, so I
can take adult teachers who finish our program and plug
them into our school system, the pre K and the
K through three system, and they can stay at a
level of speakership with the kids where they're more immersed
in the language. So I have the benefit of where
(17:02):
our nation totally supports our language program through tobacco revenue.
So I mean, I wish it was something else, but
it pays all the bills. I never have to look
over my shoulder for any kind of grants. I don't
have to reapply for anything. Every six months or two years.
I also have the autonomy. I'm on my own timeline.
(17:22):
The Council isn't breathing down my back saying your students
need to be this far by this point in time.
That being said, I do hold myself highly accountable on
their progress. And the system that we have now has
really worked. So when we talk about, you know, what
do you do for the future of your language, I
think you assess what you've had in the past. We've
(17:44):
had teaching and lessons going on for probably the past
thirty or forty years, which I'm thankful for those people
holding those spaces. That being said, those efforts have not
produced any new speakers everyday speakers out of that. Some
ceremonial speakers for sure, but every day speak You can
just listen to people and they'll tell you they haven't
(18:04):
heard anybody dialogue in the language in front of them
in a long time. So when we bring in these
new systems, that's what we're looking at, is what's going
to bring back the day to day language use within
the community. And part of it is the root based
method that we're doing. But as we're gaining a lot
of traction and having success with our root based method program.
(18:25):
Now I'm looking at how do I expand that to
include more people who want to learn but can't afford
to leave their job to jump into our full time
adult program. So that is how do I make better
community classes that are effective. How do I address older learners?
Because you can mix in the older learners and a
lot of time, they just need a little more time
(18:46):
to process. And sometimes when you throw them in a
class with a bunch of young people, it creates this
division because you're waiting for them and they just need
a little more time, like they have a place and
the language is for them too. So I'm thinking, like
we need a fifty plus class, we need a mom,
mom and kid class, even family classes. Like what we
want to do is we want to bring in families
(19:08):
to come in for these structured cohorts and that way,
when the whole family goes home, they all remember getting
the lesson on what to use for dinner, what to
use for bad time, what to use for travel time.
It's not the kid coming home and the parent being
detached or vice versa. So I'm trying to expand my
ideas on how to be more inclusive to everybody. And
(19:30):
then as I teach new students, I'm trying to identify
those those prodigies, those ones where it comes to them
really easy, the ones that are pushing really hard, and
I try to tell them I need colleagues. I don't
just need people who go through the program and finish well.
I need colleagues who can stand by my side and
(19:50):
have a lot of really good ideas that they bring
to the table. Because nobody can get anything done all alone.
You need the help. And so that's been my biggest mission,
is to diversify what we're doing and to continue to
make it more effective.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Every year wonderful and we have, Yeah, we futilized and
kind of modeled the root word method among the thlingets,
and so we probably well, I guess I took it
by myself about five years ago to start trying to
figure out a color coding system for our verbs, because
the verbs are the most complicated part. And so we're
(20:26):
going to come back, We're going to take a short break, folks,
and then we're going to talk about maybe the complicated part,
and so gonna chiesh Claane for listening to season one
and to season two. If you are new to the podcast.
Thanks for coming. I appreciate you listening to indigenous voices
talking about indigenous languages. And we'll be right back in Chish.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
One or two or three times. You try any den, friends,
you run all around without your head. You struggle your thurday,
You struggle.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Still today now, but you'll find a broader away. My
brother and sisters, don't you know what fount the way
to wait it back?
Speaker 7 (21:31):
For those who call.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Believe in yourself, now, believe in us. Somehow donna decolor nothing.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So the language is echo back, and everything echoes back.
And whatever your situation is if you're working in indigenous languages,
whether your language has a lot of speakers and has
schools and systems that are running and that you have
folks have developed, or whether you're just getting started and
you're just trying to figure out what to do next,
because maybe you don't have any speakers, maybe you only
(22:20):
have a handful of speakers. Regardless, just know that there
are people who are rooting for you to succeed, and
there are folks who are trying to figure out how
to tie these movements closer together because we're doing different
things in terms of languages, but we're doing the same
thing in terms of what we're trying to get to,
which is a place of strength where our ancestors were
(22:43):
in pre contact times, just in terms of being able
to speak our own languages and being able to think
about things the way our ancestors did, Which leads me
to my complicated question of the day, which is, when
you think about the complexity of your language, when you
think about the depth of your language, how do you
approach balancing teaching the fundamentals of grammar and how the
(23:06):
language works and just being sort of true to the language.
And so there's a balancing act for me here, because
I think if we don't teach the complexities of the
language and the richness that it entails, then we end
up speaking kind of like all beginners, like stuck at
this beginner level. But if we get too saturated into
(23:27):
the complexity and the analysis of it, then people just
sort of become analyzers of the language and sort of
separate themselves a bit from the spirit of that language
and from their ancestors.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
So how do you do it all?
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Right? I did a lot of besides watching your classes
over the pandemic, I watched a lot of second language
acquisition specialists or experts. I don't know what they want
to be labeled, but that's what they do. One of
the specialists I watch. One of the things he said
was that students have an internal syllabus and you can
(24:02):
try to rush them through these grammar lessons with examples
and practice sentences, but until their brain is ready to
internalize it and make it kind of their own, you
can't rush it. It's a process. And so when he
said that, I thought, this is what we've been doing
in our classes. We'll cover all these grammatical concepts. We'll
(24:23):
show them all these crazy things they can do with
the word, like you can do this, and you can
do that right, and then we'll even have a quiz
on it, or we'll have sample sentences to kind of like, okay,
let let's see if these students were paying attention. And
we come back and we say, hey, you know we
covered this last week. You guys should know this. We
do that to our students. We have been doing that
to our students. And I thought, oh my god, that's
(24:45):
what we did to them. We just moved right along
and we're just we think that's what he said to
He goes Just because you showed them doesn't mean they
know how to use it. They have to get to
a point where they understand what comes before that. So
to me, it was all about laying the groundwork. Like
I'll show you some base, We'll show you the present tense,
We'll show you the stative or the perfective, and then
(25:06):
we'll ease you into things like future tents and past tents.
Later on we'll get into like a habitual past and
a stative past. But I'm not going to label it
that way. You know, maybe I'll mention it real quick.
But okay, here's you're running, but here's how to say
you were running. And that's all I'm going to give them.
I'm not going to now I want you to state
(25:27):
of past this verb. I'm not going to give them
all the terminology right now. I'm just going to show
them how to use it and how it changes, and
how they can plug it into an expression. So you
can teach grammar and linguistics without teaching grammar and linguistics.
We have translocative and cyslockatives, right so I can say
the dog is running, and then I can say the
(25:47):
dog is running away from us, and then I can
say the dog is running towards us, and I'm putting
little elements on the word, and I can have a
picture show the exact same thing. I don't ever have
to mention translocative or cyst lockative to the students. They
will implicitly figure out like, oh, that must mean they're
running away, and this one means it's running towards. And
you can put it on other action verbs just to
(26:09):
demonstrate those concepts without getting so technical in the explanation. Now,
as they wrap their heads around it, and you see
they've gotten better with the language, now you can bring
in those linguistic concepts because they already have a good
idea of what you're actually talking about. And that's where
I tell him, like, because we have teachers who do
(26:29):
talk in that higher level vocabulary where I'll say, okay,
if he says this, he just means this. When he
talks about modal prefixes, those are just your future tensors,
past tensors, your wood cut of suders. So we try
to keep the labels real simple, and we try to
keep the examples very concrete. And what do they talk
about the comprehensible input, Right, that's a big thing and
(26:52):
then the goal is communication. So even something we're on
clothing right now, so we're talking about something to say,
what are you going to wear? What are you wearing
to the wedding? Right? But we have wearing is like
in English, it sounds like it's a present tense term,
but it's really we're trying to say, like what are
you going to be wearing when the wedding comes?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:13):
So you're teaching people these concepts of like future extended stative.
But again I'm not going to bring in all this
I'm just asking what are you going to be wearing?
If you call for an uber, tell the uber what
you're wearing so they know who to pick up. I'm
not bringing in all the heavy terminology though, so you
you know, and that's art in itself because when we
get really good at it and we learn all the
(27:33):
cool concepts, like it's almost like we want to show off,
like yo, okay, here's a translocative, you know, duplicative verb,
you know, with incuative ending, and we get all carried
away because we you know, we know all this stuff
and we remember when we didn't know how to talk
like this and now we can. But if you want
your students to communicate, sometimes those terms blow them away.
(27:54):
It goes right. I mean, you don't even have to
talk about linguistic terms. You can just use big like
five syllable English than something else, and they just they're like, Okay,
I don't know what you're talking about, so you don't
want to lose them. And I think that's one of
the biggest things you do as you navigate, is I
guess articulation. People's ability to articulate meaning and explanation is huge,
(28:16):
even for people who are first language English speakers, Like
it's an art yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Kind of cheese.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I do sometimes think that indigenous language teachers are a
little bit like superheroes, because you need to know your
indigenous language. You need to know it well enough to
be able to teach it to somebody else. You need
to be able to unweave it, break it down into
these little parts, and then know enough about it to
then simplify it, because teaching it in like that approachable
(28:43):
way is sometimes more challenging than just talking about Yeah,
those like really in depth linguistic because you needed to
for many second language learners, like you needed to learn
what those things were and what those things were called,
kind of in this linguistic y way in order to
be able to then teach it. So I've been teaching
beginning plan get at the university for a couple of
years now and finding that balance between how much to
(29:05):
talk about, how much detail to go into and some students, yeah,
like you were talking about, you'll lose them when you, yeah,
start talking about the modals and aspectual.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Markers and these sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Some students though, are really like, they'll really geek out
about that, And I have to find because I think
some students think it's a little bit funny to like
nerd snipe you and be like, oh, I'm going to
get you to talk about this because it's because it's
something that I know that you know about, and so fine, like, oh,
we'll talk about that you know later, Oh that's an
intermediate question, that sort of thing. So finding that balance
can be really tricky. I think for me, what I'm
(29:40):
sort of trying to think about is that spatial repetition.
So I think I think it's Blaine Ray that you
were talking about, and he does the TPRs stuff. Maybe
how to make sure yeah that I mean, we'll do
the quizzes and stuff, we'll do check ins, we'll do
group projects, but making sure that your students are coming
along with you. It's been something that, yeah, I've been
trying to work on in my own classes, but I
(30:00):
think is something as we grow our programs and connect
with other classes and other learners sort of across our communities,
how are we ensuring that our students are able to
talk to each other and that they have like a
baseline shared knowledge, especially as a students' travel and they
transfer and they go to other places. Yeah, explaining some
(30:21):
of that more complicated stuff can be challenging, but it
also is. Yeah, like when I was talking about, if
you don't know enough of the patterns, then you'll kind
of be stuck with whatever you're able to memorize. And
with the language like Planet and many other languages. It
sounds like Seneca similarly has you know, really complex verbal structures.
In order to be able to just speak, you need
(30:42):
to know at least a little bit enough about those
patterns to be able to switch them out in your
mind to really get to that conversational stage. Then I
know that can be really maybe really frustrating for a
beginner students because they want to jump in and they
want to be able to have a conversation, and in
order to do that, you need to know at least
a little bit about verbs. In order to do that,
you need to know at least a little bit about
how verbs change and how the verb root changes. And
(31:06):
to even get to that, there's a certain like how
do you explain that simply? And Yeah, we do have
some students where when we talk about pronouns, they're not
quite sure what pronouns are in English, let alone you
know what pronouns are and planning gain. So there's a
little bit of like, Okay, well, how much time are
we spending on talking about what pronouns are versus being
in the language. But at the same time, if we
(31:26):
want to talk about I'm doing this, you're doing that,
they're doing this other thing, you need at least a
little Yeah, it's I guess, really complicated, and I'm not
sure that I personally have found that exact balance, but
I do think we're getting better every day. I think
part of yeah, using that root method, trying to get
to a place of more simplicity. Yeah, talking about these chunks,
(31:47):
do these things just memorize these chunks. If you're talking
about the future, that's what that's the chunk that you use.
But as a language learner, myself like it, Yeah, it
can be really a big challenge, but we're getting there.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
What And coming back to your comment about superheroes a
while back, and I remember I was teaching Klingett and
someone said, well, how do you use the infinitive? And
I just thought, are we going to fight Thanos? Because
I had no I was like, I don't know what
the infinitive is. And so we also like it's so much,
I think to just get to a point where I can.
(32:20):
For me, I just want to be conversational with these
elders that could speak. And so as I sort of
came into my own rising fluency, which was probably in
oh mid like right around twenty eleven when I took
this job to be a professor of Indigenous languages, I've
really challenged myself to work with some of the old
(32:42):
people and talk to them and figure out how I
could get myself to a point where I could be
conversational with them. And then I figured if I could
do that, then I could get them to talk to me.
And one of the things I realized is we had
fewer and fewer high fluency speakers, and most of those
speakers were eighty years old, ninety years old, and so
I took it upon myself to record them, and I
(33:04):
talked to my auntie Nora Downhoward quite a bit about
how she did it and why she did it, And
then a lot of my work became documenting as much
of the language as I could before we lost this
huge cluster of amazing speakers. And so part of the
work that we do as well is carrying around a
lot of pain of losing people, because there's a lot
(33:26):
of people that I learned how to talk to, like
the ones that they were the reason I learned how
to speak so I could talk to them, because they
were so fun and funny and brilliant and kind, and
they had like so much wisdom. But then, like as
we lost them, like it impacted me tremendously.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
I was so so sad.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Sometimes I would feel like just a feather falling into
the pit of despair. And but I would also take
this those times to say, Okay, there's a reason why
they talked to me, and there's a reason why they
shared things with me, and at the same time, if
you talk a lot about what should be done, and
if you do a lot about what should be done,
then don't be surprised if a lot of people start
coming at you and they start attacking you publicly, and
(34:09):
they start attacking you behind your back and stuff. And
so part of the work, I think is to be
the medicine, and to be the medicine in a time
when there's a lot of pain is a huge, huge challenge.
So as we start to kind of wrap up this,
it's a condensed conversation because there's a little bit of
work I've got to do to close out this season
(34:29):
and this podcast for the time being. But one of
my other big questions is how do you stay healthy
and to be that medicine in times when sometimes people
are real mean and sometimes people you know, there's been
people who said you're the reason I left the language,
you know, and that's that's tough to hear. That's really
(34:51):
tough to hear when when you're trying to give it
all you got and sometimes you know, everybody's got their
stuff to deal with, everybody's got their way of talking
about it. Someone wants told me, do you remember the
boarding schools. Do you know what those are? I was like, yeah,
well I wasn't there, but I've heard about it. And
this person said, you're doing to us what they did
to us, And I said, by keeping us in the language,
(35:12):
I said, I just don't see that, but I'm glad
you shared that with me. And I'm listening to what
you have to share. So how do you stay healthy
and balanced and medicinal while doing this work where everything's
on the line and go?
Speaker 6 (35:29):
That's a good one. I think it's really hard to
learn the language without learning your cultural institutions. So we
have ways we raise leaders, we have ways we marry people.
We have things we say when babies are born, and
we have ceremonies when we send people home when they
pass away. And if you can be a part of
those things and you can learn what those are, there
(35:52):
are so many fundamental things in there to guide you
through hard times. Those are keys to our own psychology
of our people. We've been dealing with all of these
things for generations, so nothing's really different these days. We
still deal with death and marriage and birth and hardship,
(36:12):
all these things, and those have been there forever and
they're still here. So when you sit there and listen
to them, like, it's really something to just know, like, wow,
this is still here today, like we're still doing this,
and how do we make sure that this carries on
to the next generation? Right, So even that they say
seven generations, like the faces that are coming should enjoy
(36:33):
the same thing that we enjoy today. And if you
know that, like your eyes on the prize, like my
job is to make sure that this goes on for
another generation, two generations, you know. And one thing I
learned over the years is just where to spend my energy.
You know. There's a lot of times where people from
the cheap seats want to weigh in on whether you're
(36:55):
doing it right or wrong, and I just usually have
to ask myself, like is this a mover and shake?
And this is somebody who I look up to, and
I would ask for advice, and everybody would ask for advice.
If it's not, I'll hear you out. But I'm not
going to stop the whole operation, so you can calm
me down. I have a big job to do, and
so I only have so much energy. So I'm going
to devote my energy to this language and this culture
(37:18):
and what we're trying to do, and it's almost like
you have to jump on this train that keeps going.
You know, when we lose elders, it's really tough, but
the train has to keep moving. When teachers resign for
whatever reason, the train has to keep moving. And that's
always been my mentality, is like, the train's got to
keep going. It's got to keep going. So no matter what,
(37:38):
you just have to be this force that just doesn't stop.
And then I can't do this forever. So you have
to be a model and an inspiration to others so
that when I can't do this anymore, somebody else is
going to take it with just as much fire, more
fire than I do.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
To keep going, I.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
Always say, like, keep your eye on the prize because
the more I network, the more I see so many
people deal with the attacks coming from the outside. But
the ones who really make it happen are the ones
who really just tuck their head down and run the
gauntlet and they break through to the other side. And
I just I send that all to everybody to have
(38:17):
that kind of indomitable spirit.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Yeah, I'm gonna cheese.
Speaker 6 (38:23):
How do I do it?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
A lot of therapy, No, I agree, like finding those
people who are your people and really nourishing and relying
on those relationships, because yeah, there will be a lot
of negativity in naysayers and people for a wide variety
of reasons that are going to be really critical of
the work that you do. And there have been times
(38:47):
where I want to be done, where I think about
dream about doing other things that is not so emotionally
fraught sometimes, But when I mention that to the people
who I know love me and support me and how
my back, they're the first ones that you know, don't
you know, don't stop like so finding those and nurturing
(39:07):
those relationships. And because not everyone is going to be
in a place emotionally, spiritually, psychologically to be healthy in
this kind of work, and that can be really hard
to navigate, especially when there might be people who really
have the passion but might just not have not be
in the right space, might be really negative. Keeping our spaces,
(39:30):
you know, as safe as possible for our students in particular,
I think, if we're going to build something that's going
to last and people are going to want and enjoy
being a part of, and having that be this big
renaissance type movement, we have to create spaces where people
want to be, where people feel safe and supported and
have those same opportunities to build relationships with.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
Each other, and that could be really challenging to do.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
How do you continue to craft safe spaces when you
yourself might not feel that safe or that supported. Yeah,
Also trying to mentor and raise other people as you're
coming up right, like this idea that none of us
are going to be here forever, none of us are
going to be able to do this forever. So mentoring
(40:14):
those people and lifting those people that could potentially, you know,
keep walking with you and then keep going after you're
done and retired on a beat somewhere or whatever the
case might be. Yeah, Language reclamation, planing ITT or otherwise,
Indigenous language reclamation, I think is all about relationships.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
And part of the grief of.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
Doing this work, whether that's losing speakers, mentors, or losing
friends who maybe just step away, losing students that maybe
just step away. Like, there's a certain grief to that
as well, is because this is so connected to personhood
and identity and belonging that it's because it's so powerful
that it can be so hard. And I think for
me recognizing that this is what I love to do,
(40:55):
even when I don't always love doing it. And yeah,
finding those people that really get you and support you
and love you, and she can be easier sent than done.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
But those are some of my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
And I just appreciate you both so much, and I
admire you both so much. I think each of you,
there's hundreds of languages in North America, and you folks
are going to be impacting way more than just one.
And so as we look at the work that we
do and the commitments that we make to our ancestors
and to our current peoples and to our future generations,
(41:33):
I think if we had more of you, folks, we
would just be winning all the time. And so wherever
you're at, whatever you're doing, just know that you can
be that person and you can continue to be or
you can become that person who is a change maker
and who is medicinal to your peoples. And so we're
going to take our second break, and I'm going to
(41:54):
come back and we'll wrap up. It's been a journey.
It's been a trip. It's been a lot of fun,
and it's been a nightmare at times. But that's how
we get through it, so we'll be back. Folks gonna cheesh.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
He he.
Speaker 7 (42:20):
Oh y're y'are not?
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Say?
Speaker 7 (42:29):
God? Oh? Had he a kind of talk he gets away.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
You m.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
M hmm.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
What's up?
Speaker 6 (43:23):
Two?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Kay has a tea t t chrishan tilt Yeah, Tina
to cut you on a tea? Yeah, how watching Houchin
has a tea? How watching you to me? Yes your
(43:49):
tonguey Christie had the trunky sani to tea. Yeah. That
day has to arc at dah ah yes at top
Yeah it just to cut you hong be too yeah
scene he too ye e t yeah seen you gor
(44:22):
one you go on. So as we start to reach
the end of this season two, I just want to
reflect on a number of different things here. I'm so
grateful for this opportunity. We're so blessed to have days
(44:47):
where we can share thoughts, share time, share struggle, share ideas,
and share the moments when we break through something where
maybe we think we couldn't do it, a clause to act,
but we go we go through. As I think about
(45:12):
this work, I think a lot about the people who
taught me, the ones who are no longer with us,
And I think I believe in you. I believe in
the work that you're doing. If you're working in indigenous languages.
(45:32):
Then there's one time I was working with Norah Downhower
and she says, I believe that there's there's something inside
that there was some gift that was given to us,
there was some opportunity, like a blessing that came to
us and that we would succeed. I think a lot
about our ancestors and the work that they did and
(45:56):
the things that they had to go through. Some of
them orchard, abused, humiliated, made to go through things that
no child should have to go through, no human should
have to go through. And these are the histories of
(46:16):
this place, the state of Alaska, the United States, Canada.
And that's not to say these places can't be wonderful places.
But if we don't take a look at what has
happened and what has caused immeasurable suffering and loss, then
we will have immeasurable suffering and loss. Harold Napoleon is
(46:42):
an author who once talked about this the great death
that affects everybody, and by not looking at it, I
think the only thing that we tend to do is
to be blinded by the ambitions that led to people
destroying everything that other peoples have. Entire languages removed, children, separated, women, abused, people,
(47:15):
sterilized without their consent in the courts of the conqueror.
Maybe these things are justified by saying indigenous peoples are
not human beings. But we're right here, We have been here,
and we will be here. The languages of the peoples
(47:37):
of North America echo across the lands, but we will
not let them just echo out into space. We will
catch those words, we will process them, will become one
with them, and will respond to them. We talk about
(47:57):
this concept of unity. We talk about this concept of
pushing through the moments when it does not seem possible.
I'm so thankful for everyone who's been on this show.
I'm so thankful for everyone who has contributed in some
way to these types of things. When I first pitched
(48:20):
this idea for the Tongue Unbroken, I was thinking about
so many elders that I had worked with and that
we had lost one of them. She switched to only
chenet in her final days. Her grandkids came to get me.
(48:40):
They said, what will you talk to her? We don't
understand what she's saying. So I went and grabbed an elder,
another elder, and I said, hey, we've we got some
wrek to do. It's not going to be easy. It's
a person you knows on their way. They're on their journey,
(49:01):
and they switched over to just clink it and we
needed to go talk to them. And I remember walking
into that room into the hospital and seeing the family
there and just feeling not so much the pressure of
what needed to be done, but feeling like maybe I
(49:22):
could be a bridge in that moment with the things
that I had been working towards. The elder she said
to me from her she was in a state of
real mental fog, and she said, okay, what are you?
(49:43):
My brother said like it, and the friend of your
grandchild she said, zikklun? Did you did you hunt moose?
Speaker 7 (50:02):
I said, like.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I said, no, I'm just teaching our language to people here.
Speaker 6 (50:12):
She said.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Quickly, you know when nature, she said, I washed all
of the pots. Everything's ready, I said, Kadai.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
And the.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Chin he said, oh that's that's great. You really did
a good job working on it. We're going to succeed together.
And then she uh, she kind of came to she
started flirting. She said, we have these two clans we
belong to kind of well, we have many clans, many
(50:55):
more than that, but they fall into these two groups
Brooch or chalk, Wolf or the Eagle, Yesh Raven or
the Crow. And she said, coach, get what are you wolf?
I said, take yet, I'm your Raven. And we talked
(51:20):
for a while. I could hear somebody translating all the
things we're saying for the family, and I was so
grateful that they would do that so I could just
stay in that moment with this elder. At some point
I said, Dick, I'm gonna go. She grabbed my hand
and she said, now I know I'm not alone, and
(51:45):
I share this with you as we rout season two
with the tongue unbroken, to say, you can be that bridge,
whether you already are or whether you aspire to be.
But it takes emotion and action. It takes determination, and
(52:07):
I think above all, it takes a love for the self,
a love for your people. It takes kindness, patience. You
need to be able to listen to things that might
be beyond your understanding, and you might have to say
some things that you might feel are beyond your ability.
(52:29):
But there have been times as I've used this language,
learned this language shing Get, where I've stood up and
I've been called upon to do something, and as I
sat down afterwards, I thought, I didn't know that I
knew how to say that, So maybe I tapped into something.
There was an elder Jaquit Walter Sobolov you have to
(52:54):
be one hundred and two. Many of us who are
learning shing Get in late nine in the early two
thousands were very lucky to have chances to talk to him.
He was giving a speech in a big clanhouse chid
Kakha na Kahiti in Sitka. They were celebrating the anniversary
(53:16):
of their building, their beautiful, beautiful building, and I was
just watching him speak, and he had a nahin's oh
he oh, he had a choke out blanket, and he
had no dog salmon hat on, and he was amazing.
(53:40):
Was miserperized by what he was saying. And somebody came
to me and said, we want you to respond. This
was probably two thousand and two. Maybe I was six
years into my language journey, just a baby. So I
started thinking about all these things that I might say
(54:03):
I stood up in front of the people, and as
I looked to my right at Kacha, and as I
looked beyond him to this row of clan leaders sitting there, elders, speakers,
wisdom bearers, and I looked out at this crowd of people,
(54:25):
people I knew, people who were teaching me.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
My mind went blank.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
I started a panic and I said, I said, please
forgive me, I'm learning thing. It go to E. Sherman Davis.
(54:56):
He yelled out, yeah, Quati, it will be and his
voice just boomed out, yeah quay, and it was calm,
wake go. So sometimes I think about this stuff too,
how to stay calm in times of panic, this colonization.
(55:21):
There was a genocide to us that still is, And
sometimes you have to face that some politician who's got
lots of power history on their side, at least somehow
justified all these things. It's not just individuals, it's whole
(55:46):
religious entities, churches, Presbyterian, Catholic, Salvation Army, many more of
them Episcopalian. And not to say those are bad things
at their core, but it was their doctrine to attack us,
(56:07):
to try and take our language, take our land, prohibit
us from being ourselves, and it was the US Forest
Service burning down cabins, burning down homes of Native peoples,
and those whole communities, burning down villages, building their homes
on top, constructing schools where we buried our dead. But
(56:32):
despite all of that, all the children who were slapped,
picked up by their hair, things shoved in their mouths, chemicals,
they kept going. There was a determination there on dawut
a ye Wuti. He did it with forty two, with
(56:56):
this somehow finding a way to never give up on
this obligation of what it means to be indigenous. We're
not guaranteed a next day and next time, so you
got to make it count. You got to hold each
(57:18):
other up. Sometimes you're gonna get that urge to do
some harm to someone. You gotta rise above that and
remember your ancestors or for we're on that hill watching
the future generations are on that hill listening. These are
(57:38):
the ways that we carry our obligations, our responsibilities the Kuliana.
This has been the tongue unbroken. We're hoping, I'm hoping
that there's a season beyond this. But I believe something
brought you to this space, and something brought me to
(58:02):
this space where we could talk about what goes on
beyond this, where we can say there was a time
when Indigenous peoples were still endangered, and that time has passed.
Thankfully that time has passed. We are a non genocidal state,
a non genocidal nation. Indigenous languages we expect to hear them,
(58:27):
because these are Indigenous lands coming back into the hands
of the people. But it's not a land back initiative
because it was never ours. It was a place for
our little grandchildren where we would take care of that
space reserved for them. These are the ways we are
taught to separate ourselves from being an individual who's trying
(58:52):
to take everything, and to being a peace of the puzzle,
a servant of the people, a servant of the movement.
Taireti unity, kris kran love, tikchaan kindness. As you continue
your journey, just know there are so many people behind
(59:14):
you holding you up. There are so many people in
front of you waiting for you to bring a voice
to them, rising up standing for what's right. Our language,
our culture, it was made for us all across North America,
these hundreds of languages, they were never intended to be
(59:36):
taken from the place from the people, so as we
reconnect with ourselves with their language. Yeah. Aware a day. Yeah,
this is how we are healed. This has been the
Tongue Unbroken, the project of the Next Up Initiative and
the iHeart Media Network. We'll be back in Chish
They tried to colonizes, try to genocide, yet we're still
here with the Tongue on broke and l.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
A t just to cut you on art talks, cook
what you dot.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Dot.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
Yeah, welcome, folks to the finale of season two of
The Tongue Unbroken. I'm so grateful that you folks are
listening and that we have these opportunities to engage in
conversations about language reclamation, movement building, about decolonization, about empowerment
(01:05):
and healing for Indigenous peoples, and so some of the
things I was thinking of as we sort of wrap
this second season is just trying to think about the
sustainability of language movements, trying to think about how to
build on things when everything's on fire and everything's running out.
But then sometimes I think these are colonial mechanisms to
(01:27):
get you to think that you can't do the thing,
when indeed you can if you can avoid the distractions,
take care of yourself, be kind, maintain like a sense
of peace and unity through a lot of different stuff.
And so for our closing, I have two guests who
are folks I just admire tremendously, and I really am
(01:52):
so thankful that we have the ability to build teams
of people on different parts of North America and then
to with each other and to share knowledge and to
share stories and to share I guess just like the
stick touitiveness that it takes to sort of keep going.
So we are joined today by folks who are We're
(02:13):
going coast to coast for this closing episode, and I'll
let our guests introduce themselves. So starting with Ida.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
I Tinka Heather Birge, yahan Aktati Aya, Yes, Mohawk kandaka
augus Kwanda. My plate name is Ida, my English name
is Heather Birge. I was adopted back on a t
Marsha hotch out of Klukwan, Alaska. So I'm Ghanaktati from Klakwan.
(02:47):
But I'm also the grandchild ancestraly mohawk from upstate New York,
the Augustasni community. I started learning Klinget in twenty eleven.
I get the question a lot of like, oh, what's
a mohawk person doing learning Plinkett teaching Clinkett, But I
I guess to backtrack. I am currently an assistant professor
(03:07):
of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast
with one. I started learning Plinkett in twenty eleven. Like
I mentioned Withe, he was my Plinkett language instructor. I
got my bachelors in Liberal Arts and Alaska Native Languages
and Studies, one of the first cohorts to do so
at uas graduated and then wasn't quite sure what to
(03:29):
do next. So one suggested that I go get my
Masters in linguistics, which I did at the University of
British Columbia, and then suggested that I continue on with
my PhD, which I did in Linguistic anthropology, trying to
unify some of these sometimes disparate fields a little bit.
So spent a lot of time in university studying Clinkett,
(03:51):
always with the goal of coming back here to Tahini Juno,
Alaska in teaching, which I'm now doing, which is really exciting.
So I've been learning for a really long time and
am now an instructor. I've got a bunch of degrees
to try and build language of vitalization within our academic spaces,
our university spaces, to really support learners like me who was,
(04:14):
you know, learning Planket at the University at US. While
I was doing that, it was in many Indigenous communities
really important to know who your family was, to be
able to introduce yourself and talk about where you came
from and sort of who your ancestors were. And when
I was an undergrad eighteen nineteen years old, I didn't
really know. Wasn't something my family talked about very much
(04:36):
for a wide variety of reasons. But in one of
Heathley ish Lyle James also a Planket Language instructors class,
he really encouraged his students to do that genealogy research
to you know, sort of figure out who your father's
people were, your mother's people were. And so in the
process of doing that, found out that I do have
connections to the Mohak community, the kanagate Aga community in
(04:57):
Agua Sassine and is something as a mixed Indigenous person
learning a language of the place that I'm at is
both empowering and also maybe a little bit of a
struggle sometimes to be part of a language community that
I'm passionate about.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
And that brought me in.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
Goneotti was one of my Clink instructors as well, and
now I'm her daughter and have this you know, moral ethical,
familiar responsibility to support this work but it can be
hard sometimes working in a language that.
Speaker 5 (05:22):
Is both is and is not mine. I guess.
Speaker 4 (05:25):
So that's a little bit I suppose of where I'm at,
what I do, how I knowne and going to cheesh
for having me excited to have this conversation.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Yeah, and I just want to thank you tremendously going
to cheese plane, our plane, Chiese Clane. I called upon
you twice today, so I think we met over email.
You had caught episodes of the podcast and had reached out,
and then I was heading over to Buffalo, where you are,
(05:53):
and I was on an east coast trip in November,
and then I think you picked me up from the airports,
and I just really we just hit it off. I
just really, I think we align on a lot of
things in terms of how we're thinking about languages and
teaching and learning and building programs. And so I'm really thankful.
And you visited with a class I was teaching today,
(06:15):
although my teaching skills were tested extremely by my forgetfulness
and my just general scatter brained state of today. So
could you also introduce yourself and talk about your language journey?
Speaker 6 (06:29):
Sure? Thing, man, So.
Speaker 3 (06:35):
Nate will go into today Dog Date, Nate, wye Nannie
they was had no wait, no haggy or gusslent.
Speaker 6 (06:53):
What got going well? Gig Dane Nate why nanny on
t Anny Kale walks home. So, just to introduce myself,
my name is Sozitzowa. It's I guess it refers to
a big corn tassel. I'm Turtle clan Tondwanda Seneca from
(07:14):
western New York and I just mentioned in there. I
have two daughters there Wolf clan from their mother and
I started my language journey about twenty years ago. My
daughter's twenty now, and not too long after she was born.
That's when I started taking up Seneca language. Nobody in
(07:36):
my family spoke, didn't have anybody to really pull from,
and as I've gone on this journey, that's really common.
A lot of people grow up without any speakers in
their family and put in the work to become language speakers.
So I haven't had any formal classes. It was mostly
just a lot of grit and grind, establishing relationships with
(07:59):
people and putting in the work to advance myself in
the language. I kind of mentioned this with the class
earlier today. After my daughter was born I would say
between two thousand and four twenty ten was kind of
some light work on the language intro stuff. Twenty ten
to twenty fourteen I really stepped up my efforts a
(08:22):
lot to make myself accountable. Twenty fourteen to twenty sixteen
is when I went to Oneida, Wisconsin started learning Oneida,
which really helped with my Seneca. And then in twenty
sixteen when I got my job at Tanawanda, That's where
everything really took off because now I had access to
a really good second language teacher and also got to
(08:43):
be around programming. Ended up becoming the director for Hanan
Tawny Hanonde s Stahwa, which really made me have to
be really accountable for everything that I was doing. And
then I moved into instruction for our adult program not
too long after that, which really forced me to push myself.
(09:03):
So it's really something to have gone through a lot
of those learning curves on my own, but with a
lot of really good guidance. I've always kind of doubted
myself on if I'm a good teacher, if I'm a
decent speaker, but I've had a good feedback from the
people I work with that I think I'm on the
right path and helping things move along, so I'll say
(09:24):
that much. And yeah, we did really hit it off
once I saw your classes over the pandemic. I had
always wanted to find a way to network, and you're
a busy guide and busy guys are hard to get
a hold of. So I just had to keep pushing
and pushing and finally found out you were coming here
and it was a good meeting and everything went off good.
(09:45):
And now I'm glad we're still networking today. So I'll
say that much awesome.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
And in case you folks are tuning in, perhaps for
the first time, and since this is the last episode
of the season, I should introduce myself. My name is
Lance Twitchel. I teach theling It language at the University
of Alaska Southeast and about two years ago I started
this podcast journey through the Next Up Initiative through the
(10:13):
iHeartMedia Network, and so I've been working in our languages
for quite some time. I started learning in nineteen ninety
six with my grandfather. My lineage, I'm fling It, I'm
lukoch Adi, raven Sake sling It, I'm double headed Keegani,
Raida and I'm also Yupik and saw me through my
(10:33):
father's side, and so yeah, it's it's all I think
of o this stuff all the time. And so on
a day to day basis, Ida and I are co
teaching and co managing a language program at the University
of Alaska Southeast and our focus is on Hotkill, the
Haida language, Samalge, the Simchian language, and fling It the
(10:53):
Clinket language. And we have had students who have taken
our classes from a lot of other languages in Alaska.
And so as we think about language reclamation, movement building,
and language revitalization and perhaps language revival, there's a lot
of stuff that we do on a day to day basis,
and so it's fun to have this platform to talk
about it and just say, oh, well, what if there
(11:15):
was a show that was nationally broadcast and we talked
about indigenous languages just for a solid hour. And so
it's been really amazing to do this. I'm thankful for
all the folks who have been guests on the show
and for all the folks who are helping to produce
and to help make it possible. When I first was
(11:35):
selling the idea, I thought I don't know if folks
are really going to buy into this, because indigenous languages
are just not something that folks talk about on a
day to day basis outside of ones who are doing
the work in the language, and so a lot of
our work is just trying to be visible while also
trying to survive and then trying to think of a
world where we're thriving. So I guess the question I
(11:57):
have few folks before we take our first break, is
what are the big systemic changes that you think need
to happen so that we can reach a state where
we're not just trying to survive, but we feel like
we are thriving and we are comfortable. Like colonization is
a hell of a thing. Like I think it's hard
(12:17):
to ever say like you're safe, but to be in
a state where we'll say, Okay, we're not just trying
to survive, We're actually trying to continue to build upon
something because we're thriving. So what do you think is
needed to get to that point?
Speaker 6 (12:33):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (12:33):
Just how do we fix everything? Is that the criset
the question?
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Yeah, you know, just just that little old thing.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
Okay, I mean it is a good question, and it's
sort of the everyday question to a certain extent, like
are we doing when we're building our programs, when we're
training teachers, when we're encouraging students and learners to be
a part of this, Like what are we building it for?
And what do we want it to look like? Like
I do think obviously it's a good question because you're
asking it. But it's a hard one too, because I
(13:04):
see kind of a wide variety of opinions about what.
Speaker 5 (13:09):
The next step should be.
Speaker 4 (13:10):
And I know for me sometimes it can be a
challenge to remember what that long term goal of not
safety but stability is when we're so sort of blogged
down into the day to day of trying to keep
our programs running and getting enough students. And so I
guess I mean one future vision of what might head
(13:30):
us in that right direction is building programs, sustainable programs
that aren't reliant explicitly on things like grant funding. I
know in Plingett Country we have a number of programs
that are starting to grow. We see that at the university,
we see that with howyk Tunga Kudi, the language nest.
But I still think, unlike some of our other indigenous relatives,
(13:52):
that have built programs like the Hawaiians, those programs are
largely tied to the school district and at least here
in so Tahini and Juno, there's a lot of instability
with our school district. There's that question of dual language.
Is that really going to get us where we want
to go versus you know, language medium education where it's
all where the education is within the language instead of
(14:15):
about the language. We've had language content classes within our
school districts for a while, right so, like the students
from they were for fifteen minutes to an hour a day,
maybe our learning Plinkett, Redkill or Schmagech depending on where
they're at in Southeast. But and this is not disparaging
any of the instructors or the programs you know that
that have built those classes, right like that even getting
(14:36):
those in the district was a huge challenge. But I
think any of those instructors would agree that that's not
going to build the level of fluency that we would
like to see. That would be the ideal for having
plink At be spoken and used and you know, incorporated
into everyday life an hour a week, a couple hours
a day, Like.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
It's not it's not.
Speaker 4 (14:56):
It's a step in the direct direction, but it's not
going to get us to that sort of long term
sustainability that you're talking about. And so I think one
potential solution for that right is to build programs that
are controlled by the community, that are for the community,
that are not necessarily behold into some of our state standards.
Maybe or maybe we're working intended with the state to get,
(15:19):
you know, something that that is fully indigenized. I think
it's really hard to try and operate within a system
that's already built a particular way and to both try
and teach people cling at try and get clinget in
the homes, try and get people sort of on board
with this movement, and also decolonizing these systems that weren't
built to host any of those things at the same time,
(15:40):
like really splits our energy. But we've been talking about
that for a really long time, and so I'm not
sure entirely what the next step would be, but that
maybe is one potential solution to our constant problem, our
constant struggle.
Speaker 6 (15:55):
Rather jeez, yeah, I guess I'll chime in a little
about what's going on in Tanawanda and Seneca Country one
of your colleagues that you've worked with, Awana Decca, Brian Miracle.
He's spearheaded along with another teacher a while back in
the early two thousands, the root method system. So it's
(16:18):
been around that long, but it's only been around in
Seneca Country since twenty sixteen. A lot of the learners
before that never went through that system, so we've adopted that.
I've modified it, and the premise is the children learn
the language from their parents, so we're going to empower
the adults so that the language can be the main
(16:39):
focus in the household and that it trickles down to
the children. But I also have a school, so I
can take adult teachers who finish our program and plug
them into our school system, the pre K and the
K through three system, and they can stay at a
level of speakership with the kids where they're more immersed
in the language. So I have the benefit of where
(17:02):
our nation totally supports our language program through tobacco revenue.
So I mean, I wish it was something else, but
it pays all the bills. I never have to look
over my shoulder for any kind of grants. I don't
have to reapply for anything. Every six months or two years.
I also have the autonomy. I'm on my own timeline.
(17:22):
The Council isn't breathing down my back saying your students
need to be this far by this point in time.
That being said, I do hold myself highly accountable on
their progress. And the system that we have now has
really worked. So when we talk about, you know, what
do you do for the future of your language, I
think you assess what you've had in the past. We've
(17:44):
had teaching and lessons going on for probably the past
thirty or forty years, which I'm thankful for those people
holding those spaces. That being said, those efforts have not
produced any new speakers everyday speakers out of that. Some
ceremonial speakers for sure, but every day speak You can
just listen to people and they'll tell you they haven't
(18:04):
heard anybody dialogue in the language in front of them
in a long time. So when we bring in these
new systems, that's what we're looking at, is what's going
to bring back the day to day language use within
the community. And part of it is the root based
method that we're doing. But as we're gaining a lot
of traction and having success with our root based method program.
(18:25):
Now I'm looking at how do I expand that to
include more people who want to learn but can't afford
to leave their job to jump into our full time
adult program. So that is how do I make better
community classes that are effective. How do I address older learners?
Because you can mix in the older learners and a
lot of time, they just need a little more time
(18:46):
to process. And sometimes when you throw them in a
class with a bunch of young people, it creates this
division because you're waiting for them and they just need
a little more time, like they have a place and
the language is for them too. So I'm thinking, like
we need a fifty plus class, we need a mom,
mom and kid class, even family classes. Like what we
want to do is we want to bring in families
(19:08):
to come in for these structured cohorts and that way,
when the whole family goes home, they all remember getting
the lesson on what to use for dinner, what to
use for bad time, what to use for travel time.
It's not the kid coming home and the parent being
detached or vice versa. So I'm trying to expand my
ideas on how to be more inclusive to everybody. And
(19:30):
then as I teach new students, I'm trying to identify
those those prodigies, those ones where it comes to them
really easy, the ones that are pushing really hard, and
I try to tell them I need colleagues. I don't
just need people who go through the program and finish well.
I need colleagues who can stand by my side and
(19:50):
have a lot of really good ideas that they bring
to the table. Because nobody can get anything done all alone.
You need the help. And so that's been my biggest mission,
is to diversify what we're doing and to continue to
make it more effective.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
Every year wonderful and we have, Yeah, we futilized and
kind of modeled the root word method among the thlingets,
and so we probably well, I guess I took it
by myself about five years ago to start trying to
figure out a color coding system for our verbs, because
the verbs are the most complicated part. And so we're
(20:26):
going to come back, We're going to take a short break, folks,
and then we're going to talk about maybe the complicated part,
and so gonna chiesh Claane for listening to season one
and to season two. If you are new to the podcast.
Thanks for coming. I appreciate you listening to indigenous voices
talking about indigenous languages. And we'll be right back in Chish.
Speaker 7 (21:00):
One or two or three times. You try any den, friends,
you run all around without your head. You struggle your thurday,
You struggle.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Still today now, but you'll find a broader away. My
brother and sisters, don't you know what fount the way
to wait it back?
Speaker 7 (21:31):
For those who call.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Believe in yourself, now, believe in us. Somehow donna decolor nothing.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
So the language is echo back, and everything echoes back.
And whatever your situation is if you're working in indigenous languages,
whether your language has a lot of speakers and has
schools and systems that are running and that you have
folks have developed, or whether you're just getting started and
you're just trying to figure out what to do next,
because maybe you don't have any speakers, maybe you only
(22:20):
have a handful of speakers. Regardless, just know that there
are people who are rooting for you to succeed, and
there are folks who are trying to figure out how
to tie these movements closer together because we're doing different
things in terms of languages, but we're doing the same
thing in terms of what we're trying to get to,
which is a place of strength where our ancestors were
(22:43):
in pre contact times, just in terms of being able
to speak our own languages and being able to think
about things the way our ancestors did, Which leads me
to my complicated question of the day, which is, when
you think about the complexity of your language, when you
think about the depth of your language, how do you
approach balancing teaching the fundamentals of grammar and how the
(23:06):
language works and just being sort of true to the language.
And so there's a balancing act for me here, because
I think if we don't teach the complexities of the
language and the richness that it entails, then we end
up speaking kind of like all beginners, like stuck at
this beginner level. But if we get too saturated into
(23:27):
the complexity and the analysis of it, then people just
sort of become analyzers of the language and sort of
separate themselves a bit from the spirit of that language
and from their ancestors.
Speaker 7 (23:39):
So how do you do it all?
Speaker 6 (23:42):
Right? I did a lot of besides watching your classes
over the pandemic, I watched a lot of second language
acquisition specialists or experts. I don't know what they want
to be labeled, but that's what they do. One of
the specialists I watch. One of the things he said
was that students have an internal syllabus and you can
(24:02):
try to rush them through these grammar lessons with examples
and practice sentences, but until their brain is ready to
internalize it and make it kind of their own, you
can't rush it. It's a process. And so when he
said that, I thought, this is what we've been doing
in our classes. We'll cover all these grammatical concepts. We'll
(24:23):
show them all these crazy things they can do with
the word, like you can do this, and you can
do that right, and then we'll even have a quiz
on it, or we'll have sample sentences to kind of like, okay,
let let's see if these students were paying attention. And
we come back and we say, hey, you know we
covered this last week. You guys should know this. We
do that to our students. We have been doing that
to our students. And I thought, oh my god, that's
(24:45):
what we did to them. We just moved right along
and we're just we think that's what he said to
He goes Just because you showed them doesn't mean they
know how to use it. They have to get to
a point where they understand what comes before that. So
to me, it was all about laying the groundwork. Like
I'll show you some base, We'll show you the present tense,
We'll show you the stative or the perfective, and then
(25:06):
we'll ease you into things like future tents and past tents.
Later on we'll get into like a habitual past and
a stative past. But I'm not going to label it
that way. You know, maybe I'll mention it real quick.
But okay, here's you're running, but here's how to say
you were running. And that's all I'm going to give them.
I'm not going to now I want you to state
(25:27):
of past this verb. I'm not going to give them
all the terminology right now. I'm just going to show
them how to use it and how it changes, and
how they can plug it into an expression. So you
can teach grammar and linguistics without teaching grammar and linguistics.
We have translocative and cyslockatives, right so I can say
the dog is running, and then I can say the
(25:47):
dog is running away from us, and then I can
say the dog is running towards us, and I'm putting
little elements on the word, and I can have a
picture show the exact same thing. I don't ever have
to mention translocative or cyst lockative to the students. They
will implicitly figure out like, oh, that must mean they're
running away, and this one means it's running towards. And
you can put it on other action verbs just to
(26:09):
demonstrate those concepts without getting so technical in the explanation. Now,
as they wrap their heads around it, and you see
they've gotten better with the language, now you can bring
in those linguistic concepts because they already have a good
idea of what you're actually talking about. And that's where
I tell him, like, because we have teachers who do
(26:29):
talk in that higher level vocabulary where I'll say, okay,
if he says this, he just means this. When he
talks about modal prefixes, those are just your future tensors,
past tensors, your wood cut of suders. So we try
to keep the labels real simple, and we try to
keep the examples very concrete. And what do they talk
about the comprehensible input, Right, that's a big thing and
(26:52):
then the goal is communication. So even something we're on
clothing right now, so we're talking about something to say,
what are you going to wear? What are you wearing
to the wedding? Right? But we have wearing is like
in English, it sounds like it's a present tense term,
but it's really we're trying to say, like what are
you going to be wearing when the wedding comes?
Speaker 1 (27:12):
Right?
Speaker 6 (27:13):
So you're teaching people these concepts of like future extended stative.
But again I'm not going to bring in all this
I'm just asking what are you going to be wearing?
If you call for an uber, tell the uber what
you're wearing so they know who to pick up. I'm
not bringing in all the heavy terminology though, so you
you know, and that's art in itself because when we
get really good at it and we learn all the
(27:33):
cool concepts, like it's almost like we want to show off,
like yo, okay, here's a translocative, you know, duplicative verb,
you know, with incuative ending, and we get all carried
away because we you know, we know all this stuff
and we remember when we didn't know how to talk
like this and now we can. But if you want
your students to communicate, sometimes those terms blow them away.
(27:54):
It goes right. I mean, you don't even have to
talk about linguistic terms. You can just use big like
five syllable English than something else, and they just they're like, Okay,
I don't know what you're talking about, so you don't
want to lose them. And I think that's one of
the biggest things you do as you navigate, is I
guess articulation. People's ability to articulate meaning and explanation is huge,
(28:16):
even for people who are first language English speakers, Like
it's an art yeah, I.
Speaker 5 (28:20):
Kind of cheese.
Speaker 2 (28:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
I do sometimes think that indigenous language teachers are a
little bit like superheroes, because you need to know your
indigenous language. You need to know it well enough to
be able to teach it to somebody else. You need
to be able to unweave it, break it down into
these little parts, and then know enough about it to
then simplify it, because teaching it in like that approachable
(28:43):
way is sometimes more challenging than just talking about Yeah,
those like really in depth linguistic because you needed to
for many second language learners, like you needed to learn
what those things were and what those things were called,
kind of in this linguistic y way in order to
be able to then teach it. So I've been teaching
beginning plan get at the university for a couple of
years now and finding that balance between how much to
(29:05):
talk about, how much detail to go into and some students, yeah,
like you were talking about, you'll lose them when you, yeah,
start talking about the modals and aspectual.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
Markers and these sorts of things.
Speaker 4 (29:17):
Some students though, are really like, they'll really geek out
about that, And I have to find because I think
some students think it's a little bit funny to like
nerd snipe you and be like, oh, I'm going to
get you to talk about this because it's because it's
something that I know that you know about, and so fine, like, oh,
we'll talk about that you know later, Oh that's an
intermediate question, that sort of thing. So finding that balance
can be really tricky. I think for me, what I'm
(29:40):
sort of trying to think about is that spatial repetition.
So I think I think it's Blaine Ray that you
were talking about, and he does the TPRs stuff. Maybe
how to make sure yeah that I mean, we'll do
the quizzes and stuff, we'll do check ins, we'll do
group projects, but making sure that your students are coming
along with you. It's been something that, yeah, I've been
trying to work on in my own classes, but I
(30:00):
think is something as we grow our programs and connect
with other classes and other learners sort of across our communities,
how are we ensuring that our students are able to
talk to each other and that they have like a
baseline shared knowledge, especially as a students' travel and they
transfer and they go to other places. Yeah, explaining some
(30:21):
of that more complicated stuff can be challenging, but it
also is. Yeah, like when I was talking about, if
you don't know enough of the patterns, then you'll kind
of be stuck with whatever you're able to memorize. And
with the language like Planet and many other languages. It
sounds like Seneca similarly has you know, really complex verbal structures.
In order to be able to just speak, you need
(30:42):
to know at least a little bit enough about those
patterns to be able to switch them out in your
mind to really get to that conversational stage. Then I
know that can be really maybe really frustrating for a
beginner students because they want to jump in and they
want to be able to have a conversation, and in
order to do that, you need to know at least
a little bit about verbs. In order to do that,
you need to know at least a little bit about
how verbs change and how the verb root changes. And
(31:06):
to even get to that, there's a certain like how
do you explain that simply? And Yeah, we do have
some students where when we talk about pronouns, they're not
quite sure what pronouns are in English, let alone you
know what pronouns are and planning gain. So there's a
little bit of like, Okay, well, how much time are
we spending on talking about what pronouns are versus being
in the language. But at the same time, if we
(31:26):
want to talk about I'm doing this, you're doing that,
they're doing this other thing, you need at least a
little Yeah, it's I guess, really complicated, and I'm not
sure that I personally have found that exact balance, but
I do think we're getting better every day. I think
part of yeah, using that root method, trying to get
to a place of more simplicity. Yeah, talking about these chunks,
(31:47):
do these things just memorize these chunks. If you're talking
about the future, that's what that's the chunk that you use.
But as a language learner, myself like it, Yeah, it
can be really a big challenge, but we're getting there.
Speaker 7 (32:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
What And coming back to your comment about superheroes a
while back, and I remember I was teaching Klingett and
someone said, well, how do you use the infinitive? And
I just thought, are we going to fight Thanos? Because
I had no I was like, I don't know what
the infinitive is. And so we also like it's so much,
I think to just get to a point where I can.
(32:20):
For me, I just want to be conversational with these
elders that could speak. And so as I sort of
came into my own rising fluency, which was probably in
oh mid like right around twenty eleven when I took
this job to be a professor of Indigenous languages, I've
really challenged myself to work with some of the old
(32:42):
people and talk to them and figure out how I
could get myself to a point where I could be
conversational with them. And then I figured if I could
do that, then I could get them to talk to me.
And one of the things I realized is we had
fewer and fewer high fluency speakers, and most of those
speakers were eighty years old, ninety years old, and so
I took it upon myself to record them, and I
(33:04):
talked to my auntie Nora Downhoward quite a bit about
how she did it and why she did it, And
then a lot of my work became documenting as much
of the language as I could before we lost this
huge cluster of amazing speakers. And so part of the
work that we do as well is carrying around a
lot of pain of losing people, because there's a lot
(33:26):
of people that I learned how to talk to, like
the ones that they were the reason I learned how
to speak so I could talk to them, because they
were so fun and funny and brilliant and kind, and
they had like so much wisdom. But then, like as
we lost them, like it impacted me tremendously.
Speaker 7 (33:44):
I was so so sad.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Sometimes I would feel like just a feather falling into
the pit of despair. And but I would also take
this those times to say, Okay, there's a reason why
they talked to me, and there's a reason why they
shared things with me, and at the same time, if
you talk a lot about what should be done, and
if you do a lot about what should be done,
then don't be surprised if a lot of people start
coming at you and they start attacking you publicly, and
(34:09):
they start attacking you behind your back and stuff. And
so part of the work, I think is to be
the medicine, and to be the medicine in a time
when there's a lot of pain is a huge, huge challenge.
So as we start to kind of wrap up this,
it's a condensed conversation because there's a little bit of
work I've got to do to close out this season
(34:29):
and this podcast for the time being. But one of
my other big questions is how do you stay healthy
and to be that medicine in times when sometimes people
are real mean and sometimes people you know, there's been
people who said you're the reason I left the language,
you know, and that's that's tough to hear. That's really
(34:51):
tough to hear when when you're trying to give it
all you got and sometimes you know, everybody's got their
stuff to deal with, everybody's got their way of talking
about it. Someone wants told me, do you remember the
boarding schools. Do you know what those are? I was like, yeah,
well I wasn't there, but I've heard about it. And
this person said, you're doing to us what they did
to us, And I said, by keeping us in the language,
(35:12):
I said, I just don't see that, but I'm glad
you shared that with me. And I'm listening to what
you have to share. So how do you stay healthy
and balanced and medicinal while doing this work where everything's
on the line and go?
Speaker 6 (35:29):
That's a good one. I think it's really hard to
learn the language without learning your cultural institutions. So we
have ways we raise leaders, we have ways we marry people.
We have things we say when babies are born, and
we have ceremonies when we send people home when they
pass away. And if you can be a part of
those things and you can learn what those are, there
(35:52):
are so many fundamental things in there to guide you
through hard times. Those are keys to our own psychology
of our people. We've been dealing with all of these
things for generations, so nothing's really different these days. We
still deal with death and marriage and birth and hardship,
(36:12):
all these things, and those have been there forever and
they're still here. So when you sit there and listen
to them, like, it's really something to just know, like, wow,
this is still here today, like we're still doing this,
and how do we make sure that this carries on
to the next generation? Right, So even that they say
seven generations, like the faces that are coming should enjoy
(36:33):
the same thing that we enjoy today. And if you
know that, like your eyes on the prize, like my
job is to make sure that this goes on for
another generation, two generations, you know. And one thing I
learned over the years is just where to spend my energy.
You know. There's a lot of times where people from
the cheap seats want to weigh in on whether you're
(36:55):
doing it right or wrong, and I just usually have
to ask myself, like is this a mover and shake?
And this is somebody who I look up to, and
I would ask for advice, and everybody would ask for advice.
If it's not, I'll hear you out. But I'm not
going to stop the whole operation, so you can calm
me down. I have a big job to do, and
so I only have so much energy. So I'm going
to devote my energy to this language and this culture
(37:18):
and what we're trying to do, and it's almost like
you have to jump on this train that keeps going.
You know, when we lose elders, it's really tough, but
the train has to keep moving. When teachers resign for
whatever reason, the train has to keep moving. And that's
always been my mentality, is like, the train's got to
keep going. It's got to keep going. So no matter what,
(37:38):
you just have to be this force that just doesn't stop.
And then I can't do this forever. So you have
to be a model and an inspiration to others so
that when I can't do this anymore, somebody else is
going to take it with just as much fire, more
fire than I do.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
To keep going, I.
Speaker 6 (37:56):
Always say, like, keep your eye on the prize because
the more I network, the more I see so many
people deal with the attacks coming from the outside. But
the ones who really make it happen are the ones
who really just tuck their head down and run the
gauntlet and they break through to the other side. And
I just I send that all to everybody to have
(38:17):
that kind of indomitable spirit.
Speaker 5 (38:21):
Yeah, I'm gonna cheese.
Speaker 6 (38:23):
How do I do it?
Speaker 4 (38:24):
A lot of therapy, No, I agree, like finding those
people who are your people and really nourishing and relying
on those relationships, because yeah, there will be a lot
of negativity in naysayers and people for a wide variety
of reasons that are going to be really critical of
the work that you do. And there have been times
(38:47):
where I want to be done, where I think about
dream about doing other things that is not so emotionally
fraught sometimes, But when I mention that to the people
who I know love me and support me and how
my back, they're the first ones that you know, don't
you know, don't stop like so finding those and nurturing
(39:07):
those relationships. And because not everyone is going to be
in a place emotionally, spiritually, psychologically to be healthy in
this kind of work, and that can be really hard
to navigate, especially when there might be people who really
have the passion but might just not have not be
in the right space, might be really negative. Keeping our spaces,
(39:30):
you know, as safe as possible for our students in particular,
I think, if we're going to build something that's going
to last and people are going to want and enjoy
being a part of, and having that be this big
renaissance type movement, we have to create spaces where people
want to be, where people feel safe and supported and
have those same opportunities to build relationships with.
Speaker 5 (39:51):
Each other, and that could be really challenging to do.
Speaker 4 (39:54):
How do you continue to craft safe spaces when you
yourself might not feel that safe or that supported. Yeah,
Also trying to mentor and raise other people as you're
coming up right, like this idea that none of us
are going to be here forever, none of us are
going to be able to do this forever. So mentoring
(40:14):
those people and lifting those people that could potentially, you know,
keep walking with you and then keep going after you're
done and retired on a beat somewhere or whatever the
case might be. Yeah, Language reclamation, planing ITT or otherwise,
Indigenous language reclamation, I think is all about relationships.
Speaker 5 (40:32):
And part of the grief of.
Speaker 4 (40:33):
Doing this work, whether that's losing speakers, mentors, or losing
friends who maybe just step away, losing students that maybe
just step away. Like, there's a certain grief to that
as well, is because this is so connected to personhood
and identity and belonging that it's because it's so powerful
that it can be so hard. And I think for
me recognizing that this is what I love to do,
(40:55):
even when I don't always love doing it. And yeah,
finding those people that really get you and support you
and love you, and she can be easier sent than done.
Speaker 5 (41:06):
But those are some of my thoughts.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
And I just appreciate you both so much, and I
admire you both so much. I think each of you,
there's hundreds of languages in North America, and you folks
are going to be impacting way more than just one.
And so as we look at the work that we
do and the commitments that we make to our ancestors
and to our current peoples and to our future generations,
(41:33):
I think if we had more of you, folks, we
would just be winning all the time. And so wherever
you're at, whatever you're doing, just know that you can
be that person and you can continue to be or
you can become that person who is a change maker
and who is medicinal to your peoples. And so we're
going to take our second break, and I'm going to
(41:54):
come back and we'll wrap up. It's been a journey.
It's been a trip. It's been a lot of fun,
and it's been a nightmare at times. But that's how
we get through it, so we'll be back. Folks gonna cheesh.
Speaker 6 (42:09):
He he.
Speaker 7 (42:20):
Oh y're y'are not?
Speaker 6 (42:27):
Say?
Speaker 7 (42:29):
God? Oh? Had he a kind of talk he gets away.
Speaker 6 (43:14):
You m.
Speaker 4 (43:21):
M hmm.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
What's up?
Speaker 6 (43:23):
Two?
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Kay has a tea t t chrishan tilt Yeah, Tina
to cut you on a tea? Yeah, how watching Houchin
has a tea? How watching you to me? Yes your
(43:49):
tonguey Christie had the trunky sani to tea. Yeah. That
day has to arc at dah ah yes at top
Yeah it just to cut you hong be too yeah
scene he too ye e t yeah seen you gor
(44:22):
one you go on. So as we start to reach
the end of this season two, I just want to
reflect on a number of different things here. I'm so
grateful for this opportunity. We're so blessed to have days
(44:47):
where we can share thoughts, share time, share struggle, share ideas,
and share the moments when we break through something where
maybe we think we couldn't do it, a clause to act,
but we go we go through. As I think about
(45:12):
this work, I think a lot about the people who
taught me, the ones who are no longer with us,
And I think I believe in you. I believe in
the work that you're doing. If you're working in indigenous languages.
(45:32):
Then there's one time I was working with Norah Downhower
and she says, I believe that there's there's something inside
that there was some gift that was given to us,
there was some opportunity, like a blessing that came to
us and that we would succeed. I think a lot
about our ancestors and the work that they did and
(45:56):
the things that they had to go through. Some of
them orchard, abused, humiliated, made to go through things that
no child should have to go through, no human should
have to go through. And these are the histories of
(46:16):
this place, the state of Alaska, the United States, Canada.
And that's not to say these places can't be wonderful places.
But if we don't take a look at what has
happened and what has caused immeasurable suffering and loss, then
we will have immeasurable suffering and loss. Harold Napoleon is
(46:42):
an author who once talked about this the great death
that affects everybody, and by not looking at it, I
think the only thing that we tend to do is
to be blinded by the ambitions that led to people
destroying everything that other peoples have. Entire languages removed, children, separated, women, abused, people,
(47:15):
sterilized without their consent in the courts of the conqueror.
Maybe these things are justified by saying indigenous peoples are
not human beings. But we're right here, We have been here,
and we will be here. The languages of the peoples
(47:37):
of North America echo across the lands, but we will
not let them just echo out into space. We will
catch those words, we will process them, will become one
with them, and will respond to them. We talk about
(47:57):
this concept of unity. We talk about this concept of
pushing through the moments when it does not seem possible.
I'm so thankful for everyone who's been on this show.
I'm so thankful for everyone who has contributed in some
way to these types of things. When I first pitched
(48:20):
this idea for the Tongue Unbroken, I was thinking about
so many elders that I had worked with and that
we had lost one of them. She switched to only
chenet in her final days. Her grandkids came to get me.
(48:40):
They said, what will you talk to her? We don't
understand what she's saying. So I went and grabbed an elder,
another elder, and I said, hey, we've we got some
wrek to do. It's not going to be easy. It's
a person you knows on their way. They're on their journey,
(49:01):
and they switched over to just clink it and we
needed to go talk to them. And I remember walking
into that room into the hospital and seeing the family
there and just feeling not so much the pressure of
what needed to be done, but feeling like maybe I
(49:22):
could be a bridge in that moment with the things
that I had been working towards. The elder she said
to me from her she was in a state of
real mental fog, and she said, okay, what are you?
(49:43):
My brother said like it, and the friend of your
grandchild she said, zikklun? Did you did you hunt moose?
Speaker 7 (50:02):
I said, like.
Speaker 2 (50:08):
I said, no, I'm just teaching our language to people here.
Speaker 6 (50:12):
She said.
Speaker 2 (50:15):
Quickly, you know when nature, she said, I washed all
of the pots. Everything's ready, I said, Kadai.
Speaker 6 (50:30):
And the.
Speaker 2 (50:33):
Chin he said, oh that's that's great. You really did
a good job working on it. We're going to succeed together.
And then she uh, she kind of came to she
started flirting. She said, we have these two clans we
belong to kind of well, we have many clans, many
(50:55):
more than that, but they fall into these two groups
Brooch or chalk, Wolf or the Eagle, Yesh Raven or
the Crow. And she said, coach, get what are you wolf?
I said, take yet, I'm your Raven. And we talked
(51:20):
for a while. I could hear somebody translating all the
things we're saying for the family, and I was so
grateful that they would do that so I could just
stay in that moment with this elder. At some point
I said, Dick, I'm gonna go. She grabbed my hand
and she said, now I know I'm not alone, and
(51:45):
I share this with you as we rout season two
with the tongue unbroken, to say, you can be that bridge,
whether you already are or whether you aspire to be.
But it takes emotion and action. It takes determination, and
(52:07):
I think above all, it takes a love for the self,
a love for your people. It takes kindness, patience. You
need to be able to listen to things that might
be beyond your understanding, and you might have to say
some things that you might feel are beyond your ability.
(52:29):
But there have been times as I've used this language,
learned this language shing Get, where I've stood up and
I've been called upon to do something, and as I
sat down afterwards, I thought, I didn't know that I
knew how to say that, So maybe I tapped into something.
There was an elder Jaquit Walter Sobolov you have to
(52:54):
be one hundred and two. Many of us who are
learning shing Get in late nine in the early two
thousands were very lucky to have chances to talk to him.
He was giving a speech in a big clanhouse chid
Kakha na Kahiti in Sitka. They were celebrating the anniversary
(53:16):
of their building, their beautiful, beautiful building, and I was
just watching him speak, and he had a nahin's oh
he oh, he had a choke out blanket, and he
had no dog salmon hat on, and he was amazing.
(53:40):
Was miserperized by what he was saying. And somebody came
to me and said, we want you to respond. This
was probably two thousand and two. Maybe I was six
years into my language journey, just a baby. So I
started thinking about all these things that I might say
(54:03):
I stood up in front of the people, and as
I looked to my right at Kacha, and as I
looked beyond him to this row of clan leaders sitting there, elders, speakers,
wisdom bearers, and I looked out at this crowd of people,
(54:25):
people I knew, people who were teaching me.
Speaker 3 (54:29):
My mind went blank.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
I started a panic and I said, I said, please
forgive me, I'm learning thing. It go to E. Sherman Davis.
(54:56):
He yelled out, yeah, Quati, it will be and his
voice just boomed out, yeah quay, and it was calm,
wake go. So sometimes I think about this stuff too,
how to stay calm in times of panic, this colonization.
(55:21):
There was a genocide to us that still is, And
sometimes you have to face that some politician who's got
lots of power history on their side, at least somehow
justified all these things. It's not just individuals, it's whole
(55:46):
religious entities, churches, Presbyterian, Catholic, Salvation Army, many more of
them Episcopalian. And not to say those are bad things
at their core, but it was their doctrine to attack us,
(56:07):
to try and take our language, take our land, prohibit
us from being ourselves, and it was the US Forest
Service burning down cabins, burning down homes of Native peoples,
and those whole communities, burning down villages, building their homes
on top, constructing schools where we buried our dead. But
(56:32):
despite all of that, all the children who were slapped,
picked up by their hair, things shoved in their mouths, chemicals,
they kept going. There was a determination there on dawut
a ye Wuti. He did it with forty two, with
(56:56):
this somehow finding a way to never give up on
this obligation of what it means to be indigenous. We're
not guaranteed a next day and next time, so you
got to make it count. You got to hold each
(57:18):
other up. Sometimes you're gonna get that urge to do
some harm to someone. You gotta rise above that and
remember your ancestors or for we're on that hill watching
the future generations are on that hill listening. These are
(57:38):
the ways that we carry our obligations, our responsibilities the Kuliana.
This has been the tongue unbroken. We're hoping, I'm hoping
that there's a season beyond this. But I believe something
brought you to this space, and something brought me to
(58:02):
this space where we could talk about what goes on
beyond this, where we can say there was a time
when Indigenous peoples were still endangered, and that time has passed.
Thankfully that time has passed. We are a non genocidal state,
a non genocidal nation. Indigenous languages we expect to hear them,
(58:27):
because these are Indigenous lands coming back into the hands
of the people. But it's not a land back initiative
because it was never ours. It was a place for
our little grandchildren where we would take care of that
space reserved for them. These are the ways we are
taught to separate ourselves from being an individual who's trying
(58:52):
to take everything, and to being a peace of the puzzle,
a servant of the people, a servant of the movement.
Taireti unity, kris kran love, tikchaan kindness. As you continue
your journey, just know there are so many people behind
(59:14):
you holding you up. There are so many people in
front of you waiting for you to bring a voice
to them, rising up standing for what's right. Our language,
our culture, it was made for us all across North America,
these hundreds of languages, they were never intended to be
(59:36):
taken from the place from the people, so as we
reconnect with ourselves with their language. Yeah. Aware a day. Yeah,
this is how we are healed. This has been the
Tongue Unbroken, the project of the Next Up Initiative and
the iHeart Media Network. We'll be back in Chish
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