February 27, 2024 • 55 mins
Dr. Walkie Charles is a Yupʼik language professor and the Director of the Alaska Native Language Center. He joins us to talk about his approach to language teaching, surviving and overcoming horrendous boarding school experiences, and brushing off the terrible parts of life in order to be yourself in language reclamation movements. The Boarding School Era, known as the Residential School Era in Canada, is a horrible and inhumane part of the histories of the United States and Canada. Dr. Charles is a survivor of that era, and has emerged as one of the most powerful voices in Indigenous Language reclamation efforts in Alaska.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode contains detailed descriptions of a boarding school experience,
including abusive treatment and sexual abuse of a minor by
a health care professional. Personal trauma of this nature regularly
occurred during the boarding school or residential school era, which
began in eighteen sixty nine and ran until the nineteen sixties.
This era included forced separation of children from their families,
(00:23):
prohibitions of Indigenous languages and cultures, and a variety of
horrendous tortures, abuses, neglects, and the deaths of thousands upon
thousands of children. On the tongue unbroken, we give love
to those who survived, and we honor those who did not,
and we encourage widespread healing from this genocidal era. If
you would like to learn more, engage in the materials
(00:45):
from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. If
you do not know about this era, then please listen
to this episode, Educate yourself further, and then ask how
you can help. If you are a survivor or the
descendant of a survivor, practice self care and reach out
when you need help, and help others when they reach out.
Tell your story, and join programs like the Healing Voices movement.
(01:10):
We go forward with love and the strength of our ancestors.
We brush off the attempts to destroy us and rerise
up with the voices of many languages. In related movements
of reclamation. Good chiesh you go Aquan.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
They try to colonizees, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on broke and.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
A sha which to cut you on your e.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
T hat.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Na Chris a t. You are the medicine. Welcome to
the tongue unbroken. We are here in Anchorage, Alaska, in
a little conference room that this hotel was so wonderful
to let us use. And I am here with the esteemed,
brilliant and wonderful doctor Waki Charles. It's so exciting to
(02:21):
be able to talk to you here today and to
just share some time and space. Could you introduce yourself
and talk about what you do.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Dav I imam Anglish, hung Dog and Clue Danny Rank
Lamon Wrinkle Institute Boarding School, Lamon At, Doug DoD lit
(03:00):
Nowist Munga University of Alaska, Fairbanks, sami University of Alaska, Fairbanks,
Some Alaska Native Language Center ami As Munga well First
of all, I just want to say thank you June
for inviting me to speak with you about who I
am and what my contributions have become. I am Gumachak,
(03:24):
named after the person who assisted father Lineux in creating
this writing system for the Yupik people. In the Yupik culture,
when somebody dies and a baby is born, the baby
is provided the spirit of the person who had just died.
Gumah was a person who Ozubik, who assisted father Leniu,
a French Jesuit priest, in writing and creating the first
(03:47):
writing system of the Yupik Catholic Upik people of the
Yukon Delta. And the old folks who know this know
that they say, oh, you're still continuing your work. And
then aged twelve, and I'll talk about this so more,
as I said Hochston earlier, at age twelve, I was
taken away to boarding school. But I'll talk about that.
(04:08):
It's just a little bit. I am a professor at
the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. I'm the director of the
Alaska Native Language Center. I've lived in Fairbanks for the
last forty three years, and I'm really excited. Every year
is a really exciting year because my program, the Youpik program,
graduates people with degrees a bachelor's degree in you pick
and I have four graduating this year Canachk.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And for those who might not know, Yupik is a
language on western Alaska, and this is my father's people.
So on my father's side, I am Yupik and Sammi.
My uppo was Tim Twitchell, and his father was a
Klosek who came and ran a store and collected a
lot of masks and did a lot of pretty amazing things.
His name is Adam Hollis Twitchell. And on my mother's side,
(04:53):
I'm Kingett and I am Heide, and also on my
father's side, I'm Sammi. So walk in, I have a
lot of connections through the work that we do, which
is in language reclamation, movement building and teaching, and so
I want to start with really the positive stuff and
just really think about the work that you've done. There's
a lot of times in my day to day life
(05:15):
where I've had conversations with you and then I have
taken things back and become a better teacher because I
talk to you about how to teach people indigenous languages
So when you have someone, let's say day one, class one,
and they say doctor Waukee, I wann yorchten, how do
you get them started?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, first of all, I'd say Crenee, and I will
honor you by using your name when I call attendance,
because that is your given name. I will learn how
to spell it. I will learn how to say it
because in my classroom, your name I honor and they
know me as Gumahak. And everybody else who comes in
(05:58):
with their epic names, and if they had been misspelled
in previous years by other their teachers, we write them
properly in the class. There are people who come in
who are non Yupik and they want a Upik name.
I said, write it in your journal and give it
to me, and I will call my family. In two days,
I will provide them their names. Well, depending on we
(06:20):
know what it takes or how long it takes for
me to connect with my family. And there's a story
that I'd like to share because it's really really powerful.
There was a Caucasian girl who was in my class
who has since then received a PhD and is director
or curator of the museum in Juno So. But she
(06:41):
was going to school getting her PhD. She wanted to
take Upik because that was going to connect her with
her study her PhD. And so I asked her what
year and what month were you born, because it doesn't
matter what day, but she wrote, I was born. I
was born July eleven, nineteen seventy three. That was the
(07:03):
day that my brother's body was found floating in the river.
And immediately I gave her my brother's name. Wow, today
she is my brother and she has my brother's Yupik name,
And so that's how powerful naming is in my culture.
(07:24):
I don't look at her as doctor curator, she's my brother.
And you pick people do not do gender. So you
have like Kumaha, the person I'm named after was a woman.
But in you pick even the Yupik words, Yupik sentences
like lukok could mean she was eating, or he was eating,
(07:44):
or it was eating. And that's what's so beautiful about
Yupik is that you know, set everything aside and just be.
And so once I learned the students Yupik names, that
those are the names I call them by every day,
and it's such a celebration every day to allow my
students to hear their name, and I'd say nay, and
(08:05):
he'll say uni hua because he'll have to respond, yeah,
he's clinked. But then if he's going to respond, he's
going to respond in you pick Onihua. And then the
other thing that I say is welcome to yotun one
oh one, an emotionally charged class. Some of us come
to this room knowing the language already. Some of us
(08:27):
are you pick, but we've not provided the opportunity to
learn our language because of the history of our parents
or our grandparents. And there's those of you who are
confused because are scared because you've never heard you pick before.
So there's lots of emotions that flow through here, and
if we could see them in real life, I wonder
(08:48):
how many colors I would be just floating in this
room about the emotions that are happening. So I honor
those emotions and know the fact that this room, this
space here is the safest place for you to learn
your heritage language that you weren't provided or if you
are provided to the language, this is the place where
(09:08):
you're going to strengthen your ability to use the language
in ways it's proper. Because I honor the language. I
was provided the skills to learn so that I could
share with you the most proper way of learning and
delivering the language to those who need it. And so
it's going to be a lot of work. But know
(09:29):
the fact that even if you make a mistake in
this room, I'm going to say asbah and asebah is
I think our Jewish brothers and sisters would say mazel tov.
So you're gonna hear asekhbah when you misspell a word.
You're going to hear asekbah when you mispronounce a word,
because we're gonna we're gonna fix it together. We're gonna
(09:52):
these are this this room, and these times are opportunities
to learn together because you're not here alone. You come
with an empty slate, and that slate sometimes gets messy
because we don't know. And so know the fact that
whether you know the language or you not know, for
those who know the language, for those of you who
(10:13):
know the language, please recognize that these people who don't
know are the ones who are struggling but had the
passion to learn something that which they wouldn't otherwise. And
so welcome to you in one oh one, and let's
learn about how to use baby words. And this is
semester one and it's only fifteen weeks, but we have
(10:34):
lots to learn and will take the time to do this.
I'm not going to go any faster than I breathe,
and you're going to hear me say, we'll get there
when we get there. You didn't get it today. We'll
get there when we get there. You will feel it
when you get there. I don't care how long it takes,
but you'll get there when you get there.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Good cheesh, crayon. I can really relate to that. I
think a classroom is an incredibly sacred space. It's a
safe space, it's a place to There's a lot of
people who sometimes have trauma affiliated with coming to the language.
It could be coming back to it, it could be
coming for the first time, and you don't know that student.
You might not know their backstory and what's happening and
(11:14):
all the things going through their mind. I love what
you were sharing about names and connections because the language
connects us and it keeps us moving, and it helps
to expand our mind into this universe where we know
our ancestors, and our ancestors were waiting for us to
come to them, and I think about this. I had
(11:34):
a student who said, you know, this is my third semester,
and I really thought about this in my second semester
because we took our winter break and we came back
and we come in and everybody's hugging each other and
they're saying hi and no disrespect to chemistry. But that
wasn't happening in my chemistry class. There was an identity
(11:55):
that's formed in this place where you're talking about an
indigenous language that just keeps going, and Yuchten is one
of the strongest languages in Alaska. Our ancestors on that
side were really able to endure so much and hold on.
And one of the things I always think about is
when a student really becomes they get really close to
(12:17):
becoming a speaker, and I think there's a little bit
of fear and hesitation sometimes to really let go of
English and just go and stop translating and just go
for it. And so I really like how you're encouraging
folks to just be comfortable, to be okay, and to
let them know that we have time and it's okay.
If it takes a while to grasp a concept, to
(12:40):
remember a word, to remember a name, to remember a story.
Because these pieces come in such an interesting way, and
so as students are getting really close to just full
on becoming speakers, they kind of hesitate sometimes when they're
just getting ready to just start really talking, because maybe
they doubt themselves. Like I've seen a lot of students,
(13:02):
is that I'm not going to say it right, and
then they do.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Here's I think where I celebrate what I do. Not
only do I attempt to make a safe environment for
my students to learn, but there's so much repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition,
And I'll have them say it really, really really quietly,
(13:26):
and not have them say it really loudly. I'd have
them repeat I had and how would your grandmother say?
And then they would do the grandmother voice? Or how
about your up? But when he's mad, how would he say?
Oh you go kinds of things? Or what a shy
little girl? And so use any voice, And we practice,
(13:48):
and we practice because it's not book you pick. Yeah,
it's out of a book that we're learning you, but
I want to make it ours and use any kind
of and how would you say it when you're excited
to go and so use whatever your soul wants to expel,
because again, this is our language. It's not like computer science.
(14:12):
Computer science is a system's language. This is our language.
And we hold on to those unconsciously agreed upon sort
of socio linguistic and cultural rules that nobody's ever going
to take away from us because they've always been here.
It's about time that we have this opportunity to bring
all that out. And so whatever it takes and to
(14:36):
let go or to fly out of that nests you know,
and you're ready anyway, I keep saying that every day
we'll get there. When we get there and look at that,
look at that, and so we have maybe a non
you big saying that for the first time. It say
oh wow, let's stop drop what you're doing. And I
would like you guys to just start clapping because I
(14:57):
just heard from so and so. And speaking of which,
I had this kid six foot three I think or
six foot six, blonde hair, blue eyes, and I saw
him at a one year celebration of life at one
of my niece's daughter's celebration, but died in a car crash.
And so this kid was there who happened to be
(15:19):
friends with my niece, and this was first year, you pick,
first semester, and so his name is Ramcluk and he
had come before I did, and he was only sitting
against the wall with a plate of food. And so
I saw him against the wall with a plate of food.
I said, oh, no, I didn't say anything. I just
said gramachluk and he waved and said hi to me.
(15:41):
And then a few moments later I heard him going,
oh louder, I mean, like really loud. And when my
students do something or produce a sound, I immediately say,
way to go, a way to go, as bah, you're
practicing you pick? He goes, no, there's a bone stuck
(16:01):
in my throat. And that's funny because with that side,
I say, look, how do you take the bone out
out of your throat? Net? And he didn't even think that.
It just happened naturally, and I mistook it for practicing.
You pick is cheese.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And one of the conversations that I have on here
with different language teachers is this balancing act that we
sometimes do between speaking and listening and being in the
language and just not overthinking how it works. And then
this other moment where we're sort of talking about the
structure of the language and how to change this thing
(16:45):
and that thing, because our verbs can get really long.
And last night I was saying in class, don't think
about it like your English brain would want you to.
You have to just look at the patterns in this
language and say, it's different, it's different, It's going to
be okay. Because sometimes I think their English brain expects
it to be a certain way, and when it isn't,
they get a little frustrated or a little disoriented. So
(17:08):
how do you navigate that back and forth between just
speaking and listening and then internalizing how the language really works.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's a very tough topic. But as language teachers we
know this, but how do I tackle this? There's silently
I know every student is saying yeah, but yeah, but
in English, the thing is okay. Let's breathe and breath out.
Breathe and breath out. Just realize the fact that we're
(17:36):
in a yuchdun environment and this is going to be
as you pik as possible. We know what, soonce we
leave this space, you know it's it's all English. The
whole university is English. Here. Let's try to find ways
to breathe in what we assume you pick is, and
that you pick is something that's it becomes when you
(17:56):
breathe and breathe out. This is a different kind of
breathing because this is home. This is nothing like anything else,
because we're here because we want to learn what wants
to come out from your soul. Whatever we learned becomes
a butt. And so if we could practice our soul
to remove ourselves from that butt. Because as students in
(18:18):
other classes, when we don't know, we like to say yeah,
but so let's not become your butters in this classroom.
But every time you think you're going to say butt, stop,
drop what you're doing and listen with your heart. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Oh well, now we're going to stop for a quick
minute here to take a little break. We're here with
Walkie Charles, the incredible director of the Alaska Native Language Center,
a council member on the Alaska Native Language Preservation and
Advisory Council, a holder of a doctorate degree, a producer
of books on teaching Upick and understanding the Yupik language,
(18:57):
an incredible human being and just a wonderful kind person.
It jeez for listening, and we'll be right.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Back cheers.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
One or two or three times to try any friends.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
You run all around without joyn You struggle, yes to day,
you struggle still today now, but you'll find a broader away.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
My brother sisters, don't you know?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I found the way to bring it back. For those
who call.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Believe in yourself, now believe in us some now dona
de collazi, we are back. One of the things that
(20:17):
we talk about now and then is a really dark
era in the history of the United States which extends
into Alaska, in which those of us who teach indigenous
languages we often want folks to know this is not
ancient history. This is a history that started at one
point and extended to a certain other point. We have
(20:40):
ancestors who have gone on who have experienced what we
call the boarding school era and in Canada is called
the residential school era, and we have people who are
alive today who are survivors of that era. It cannot
be overstated how awful it was, although some people didn't
have as terrible of an experience as others. When some
(21:04):
people talk about the boarding school era being some form
of enlightenment or bringing people to some sort of state
of improvement, those are false pieces of information that have
meant the tremendous amount of suffering that people went through
when they were removed from their homes. So one of
the things that I have talked to you about, Gumarhak,
(21:27):
is your experiences that you went through in our homelands.
So I am Senge, I teach Sengut. I'm also you
pick and you went to a school called the Wrangel Institute.
Wrangel is in Shenge Country. It's a place. Akwan is
the name of that area. But when people in my culture,
(21:49):
in Singe culture, when people suffer on your lands, you
really you owe them something. And so one of the
things I was thinking about this week is how I
consider you naw yet na Yetdi would be a child
of the Thlinget peoples, a child of the clans, because
if you were a guest in our lands, there would
(22:09):
never have been mistreatment of you. I know firsthand from
some of the things you've shared, the ways that you
have suffered on our territory. And for that I said
to a Dern, please forgive us that this happened. We
don't want you to look upon Thlinget peoples and think
about this negativity. We don't want you to come into
(22:30):
our homeland and think about pain. We want you to
think about love, the ways that we love you and
hold you up. I look at you. I consider you
a rundre, an older brother, and so I'm thankful that
you would share portions of your story here, whatever you
feel comfortable with about what you experienced, And I just
want you to know you are a shining example of
(22:53):
strength and fortitude and courage to emerge from these experiences
and becoming speaker and a teacher and a leader of
language reclamation movements.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Enough for your introduction, I'm honored. I'm I'm humbled by
your introduction and me having to share my experience, my
Rangle experience. Your words have, your kind words, your loving
(23:26):
words have led me to want to share this knowing
the fact that I'm in a safe space, and I
appreciate the fact that you consider me your brother, and
that I appreciate. Yes, I was twelve years old when
I was taken away to boarding school. My mother never
(23:47):
learned English, she never went to school, and it wasn't
until I was an adult in my thirties maybe when
she said Amumi aanpany rank lamun doing soon arichtakan ni
shuku oyakako, nakutunak When you left for a wrangle many
(24:13):
years ago, when I hear a drone of an airplane
coming towards our village that was that would come once
a week, I would hope that you were in that
plane coming back to return home, but you never did.
I don't know where wrangle is, and I didn't know
(24:35):
if you were ever going to come home. I was
stripped down bear, and my clothes, what little clothes I
had then, were marked with the number twelve. My toothbrush,
my watch, anything that they could use with a magic
marker they used to put number twelve, and my watch.
(24:57):
I remember this this metal thing that created a buzzing sound,
and they put a twelve on it, and I later
learned it was an engraver. And so from there on
my name was twelve. And the other name that I
learned was Hey. To this day, when I hear people,
(25:18):
when I hear people addressing me with that word, I
get scared because that's the one that's the only name
that they would call when they wanted to correct us.
And it seemed like everything that we did needed correcting.
And I remember that first Saturday, we were provided white
(25:40):
shirts to wear for church the following day, and we
were to iron our shirts down in the basement. I've
never touched an iron before, and I tried. I didn't
know you had to plug it in. And I pushed
(26:02):
this thing onto my shirt, and then when I thought
I was I pushed the whole shirt all the way around.
I brought it back up and it wasn't good enough.
So I cried my way down to the basement three
flights down and did it again. And after I pushed
that thing all over the shirt, I tried back up again,
(26:23):
and I learned the word wrinkled. Still wrinkled, so and
down the third time I saw a student had been
there before, and so he had to plug it in,
and he showed me how to put it in this
number here and do it slowly. I'll show you. And
on the third time, I didn't have to go back
(26:45):
to the basement. And as an adult, when I bought
my house and I got a washing dryer, and I
put my clothes in the dryer and they came out wrinkled.
This was I was an adult. I owned a house,
my very first washing dryer, and my clothes came out wrinkled.
(27:10):
I cried. I mean, it's funny how these things, these
memories pop up. But I had to learn to forgive
my dryer because it was my driver's fault. I had
to learn how to use the dryer. And there was
times when there was yeah, several times, and I didn't know.
We had a physician who was I think from Sitka
(27:34):
Mount Edgecomb Hospital who had come periodically to do physical exams.
And this is going to be graphic, but I want
to share it with you because my heart isn't in
a safe place to share with you. And so he'd
lay me an examining naked examining table and starting fondling
(27:57):
my penis and until I was erecked, and then I
thought that was part of the examination. And then there
would be I think two other times that he came
and the same thing happened. And then the third time
when that happened, I was getting scared because something about
(28:20):
what he was doing wasn't wrong. I don't know, it
didn't feel right, because his demeanor changed like I sent
some kind of weird excitement. I didn't have the term
for it. And that's when he said, oh, you don't
want to play, and that's when I know something was wrong,
but that at the same time I couldn't say anything,
(28:43):
so I never told anybody.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And I think people need to keep in mind the
isolation of a child when you remove them from their home,
and we're talking thousands of minds, we're talking about a
completely different landscape. If you go from parts of western Alaska,
the landscape is so different, the area is so different.
(29:05):
To take a child out and you have no parents,
no relatives, no guardians you can turn to for trust
and respect, and to just say is this okay? Is
that okay? And then to be dehumanized by those who
are supposed to be your teachers and caring for you,
who refer to you by a number or just hay,
and then to have this person who's supposed to be
(29:27):
a caretaker for people and help people with health. I
just want to make sure that we're keeping in mind
just how disorienting and destructive this environment was, and that
this didn't happen at every boarding school, but the chances
of it happening were high, and the odds of people
setting up situations for people to do direct harm for
(29:49):
children was not coincidental.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And there were times when I learned that speaking my
heart language was I didn't have the term for it,
but we were shunned. It was like, and that's when
I would hear hey to where I heard kids my
age from the Yupik region who would walk away from
(30:14):
the dormitories out towards the water and speak the language.
I could understand them, but it seemed like it was
too dirty for me to reproduce that language that I knew,
because it felt dirty, to where I came to a
(30:34):
point where I would miriok. I would vomit when I
heard kids speak my language. And then I would hear
kids say u nayotun grimikan, and I ignored what they said.
They'd said it seems that he could speak the language,
(30:57):
but why doesn't he? I was too scared, And I
guess in those kinds of situations we learned to fake
our way through because I wanted to be liked and
maybe if I pretended not to and to speak my language,
maybe I will be liked more. And so I really
(31:19):
worked hard to learn English to where we learn things
like nationalism. Nationalism is a frame of mind in which
an individual fields that his first loyalty is out to
his nation and nothing about my language, nothing about my culture.
But I had to learn the language of the academy.
(31:42):
I still don't know what that means today.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I admire you so much for not only is surviving
and carrying these things, but I think by sharing your story,
it allows others to connect to their own suffering. And
maybe it wasn't Maybe it was an auntie, maybe it
was an uncle, Maybe it was a parent, maybe it
was a grandparent, but you might wonder why did they suffer?
(32:08):
My father the last time he came to visit me,
I drove him to the ferry terminal so he could
go and visit my brother. And he said to me,
it was early, early in the morning. We're taking this drive,
and it's a little awkward because I know he's leaving.
We had some pretty rough times growing up with him
(32:29):
and with alcohol and with violence. And he said to me,
you know, I never really said I loved you when
you were young, but I always did. I just didn't
know that I was supposed to say it, because when
I was growing up, they didn't say it to me.
When we were in Tacot and I was so happy,
I was so happy there. But when my mom got
sick and we had to move to Anchorage. They couldn't
(32:51):
afford to keep all of us kids, so the older
kids went into a boarding school, and in the school
they horribly abused my sister and my brother, and I
tried to stop them. In a Catholic school, the nuns
and the priests, and they beat me every time I
tried to stand up to them. And I stood up
(33:12):
to them every day, and I got beaten every day,
and I was never the same since. And he died
weeks after that. This is the last conversation I ever
had with him. So when we have these conversations, we're
connecting to a pain that often Indigenous peoples have to
we feel like we're alone with these which you're never alone.
(33:32):
You reach out and you connect to others who are
doing the work, who are recovering, who are helping others.
And in these conversations we're having, we're really thinking about
how did we emerge from this, and how are we
continuing to emerge from this so that others don't have
to carry that pain. Because my father, even though his
life involved carrying so much pain and suffering, I think
(33:56):
he helped break a cycle by telling me what happened.
It took his whole life to tell me what happened,
And it took his whole I think maybe connecting with
his grandkids and seeing and becoming an Upah himself to
see that he had a chance to share this and
to say I'll take it with me when I go.
(34:16):
I want to thank you for sharing and thinking about
how you emerged from that. And so what was it
like when you came home?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Gleana Nay, I don't take it lightly. What do you
share with me? Because the emotions are exactly the same
with your father's experience. You know, we forget how to love.
We are ashamed to love because we weren't provided that.
Fortunately I had that at my own home with my
parents when I went back. I'm the youngest of the boys.
(34:48):
I never went back to school. My mom would never
see me leave again. And so I was at Rangel
for my eighth grade year, a young eighth grade year,
because I was kind of swept into that age group
because my dad was a cook in the school and
the principal said, what your little boy doing here tagging along?
(35:09):
You should be in school, And so that's how I
got and everybody was at seven eight nine years old.
I was five when I went home. My mom said,
you'll never leave again, and she said I I didn't,
I dud, you will never leave home again. And so
I went and stayed the year and I did correspondence study,
(35:33):
the hardest thing I've ever done, and I didn't like
it because I had no schedule. I was the youngest boy,
and I could split wood, and I could hunt rabbits,
I could go al some ice. I did what young
boys would do. That was my job. And so in
(35:53):
a sense, my schooling, I mean, being homes kind of
spared me from having to sit down and do all
that stuff. Thing is, what if I want to go
back to school? And it seemed that my brother, my
older brother, was doing okay in Mount Edgecomb, and so
he helped me to apply to go to Mount Edgecomb.
(36:15):
And I think by then I felt okay enough to
try leaving home again after being there a whole year,
whole school year, and so I went to Mount Edgecomb.
And I didn't know this, but I thought because they
were going to put me in as a freshman, I
was a sophomore. So I went to three years of
high school and it was a different kind of experience.
(36:36):
It's like my name wasn't Hey. I had a number,
but it was a softer number because they didn't call
me by that number and people could speak their language.
And I got into honor roll. And when I got
my driver's license, I also got my government driver's license
because I drove the school bus for the under dorms.
(36:57):
I was a student by the president. I was a
student store manager for and so my boss would call
me in my last hour last class when there's a
basketball team walking, you need to come to the store
and pick up the truck FROMJSA because they're waiting for
you the key. It was like freedom I've never had
in a school where people supported and respected me and
(37:20):
provided me a job. And so yes, it was far
away from home. It was all in English. But somehow
I was able to reframe that ugly, nasty experience that
I had in Wrangel saying that know the fact that
I will never go back there again and come to
the space where I felt recognized for who I am
(37:41):
as a human being, because I really strongly believe and
you do too, because you teach, if you acknowledge the
brilliance in your students they'll do whatever it takes to
show you that they are brilliant. And I had teachers
own edgecumb including mister Truett guild Truitt, who saw in
(38:04):
me something that I couldn't. Yes, I was still licking wounds.
I was still the youngest in my age group with
my classmates, but I felt safe and I wanted to learn.
There was a family in Sitka who took me under
their wings, and I spent weekends, Christmas, Thanksgivings with them,
(38:26):
and I just I just learned last week at Georgia
Scanis the woman who took me under her wings had
just recently died and she was from the Scanis Stepsovich
family from Sitka. And so yeah, I don't know what
that family saw in me, but I had a home.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Wow when we need it most, I think sometimes people
show up to help, some people see it, and some
people are just meant to be in that pathway that
you were walking along. We are going to take our
second break here. We've talked about serious, difficult things. So
please practice self care. Please know there are support networks
(39:06):
that are available. Be a supportive person to someone you
know who might be suffering. Be a shining light who
comes out of the direct oppression of the boarding school era.
Be a speaker, a teacher, a learner. Be a guide
post for those Be a walking stick for those who
(39:26):
might be out there just looking for help, looking for
a moment, looking to recenter themselves. Believe in yourself, and
be part of movements that are reconnecting people to the land,
to the languages, to health, to ancestors, and to future generations.
Al wuchin ka anteen, We'll be right back, folks.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Uh oh.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
You're you're had not said a cod blue oh he.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
He he he he ah kind of talk. He gives
away to say, d bo dodat he.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
He he you.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And we're back. The name of this podcast is The
Tongue Unbroken. The reason for that is because despite some incredible, inhumane,
and terrible efforts to completely eliminate indigenous languages and indigenous peoples,
we're right here. We're talking, we're teaching, we're learning, and
(41:28):
we're trying to live a little bit healthier with love
of each other, love of ourselves, which means sometimes looking
at some parts that might need a little bit of adjustment,
and you might sort of say, oh, I've been carrying
around this trauma for a long time, and you might
not need to. An Overcoming historical and individual trauma is
(41:49):
not an easy route, but it's something that can be done.
And I think Gumach is a wonderful example of how
that could happen, because going from that experience to having
a peace to being the first Alaska Native who runs
the Alaska Native Language Center, to be a teacher of
teachers of Yotun. You probably have folks out there who
(42:10):
are teaching now who you have taught them. And so
as we talk about the emergence coming out of a
place of pain and suffering, how do we encourage others
to do the same.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Well, thank you for this conversation, Kuyanahu Mumkrabukaji Nunavsni. Well,
first of all, I just want to thank you for
allowing me to continue my language, and I applaud you
for finding a space to continue sharing your language. And
(42:50):
so how do we do that? Well, when it snows
outside and there's a lot of it in Alaska, even
in Juno lately, before you go inside to the warmth
in the living environment of your home, you don't want
that snow to melt, And so what you do is
you brush it off, and you brush it off. Make
(43:10):
sure you brush everything off, everything, take your mc take
all the might you have to brush that off to
enter that space of love and warmth that is your home,
that is your family, and that's what you do. Sometimes
we have to those of us who've gone through experiences
that we wish not upon anybody else, child abuse, sexual abuse,
(43:34):
as miners, boarding school trauma and all this. The thing
is more resilient people. I'm a resilient person. And what
made me resilient is the fact that my father would say,
you jung latten gilcreako nako. Whenever someone does anything to you,
never retaliate. And what you do is you just brush off,
(43:59):
like snow, all that because it's on the surface. Don't
let it melt into your soul. Brush it off and
use your resilience to continue doing what you do best
because you have a lot to share.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Geeesh. My mother's father, his father used to tell him,
however angry you get, that should tell you how long
you should wait until you do something, because he said,
or else you're not going to be acting from your
own consciousness, your own mind, your own spirit, but you'll
be reacting to what someone else does. And this is
(44:34):
how sometimes things can go where someone tries to pull
you down into this big battle or to pull you
down into this thing that they want to be kind
of mired into. So I really love this idea of
being your own self and being non reactive. And it
doesn't mean you just let anybody do anything, but it
means you control that ego part of you that I
(44:57):
think is not really If we go into a languages
and we go into our ways of living, we see
a lot of kindness and respects and love and listening
and patience and time. And so even though there's been
this ugliness that's either from something long ago or something
right now, that doesn't mean that has to be the
(45:18):
gasoline that burns your fire.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
So one of the things that again brushing that stuff
because it can come off. Yeah, yeah, And so my
Wrangel Institute experience, I can brush it off even though
you know, there's times when I'll hear music, or I'll
smell food, or maybe a starch from something that was
just freshly ironed would remind me of that space where
(45:45):
that space where I felt uncomfortable, scared or beaten. You know,
my soul, not physically. Fortunately what they did, the physician did,
but I didn't know that. But the thing is down.
Oh meo akanon to mayako naku tou makovu. My father
(46:09):
would say that feeling that you have, don't hold on
to it. Acknowledge it, yes, but don't hold on to
it because it's going If you don't let go, it's
going to become you.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
And if you don't like, if you move past it, right,
And that means it's not like you're ignoring that this
thing happened, but you're dealing with it and releasing it
and saying that's not mine and it's not my obligation
to carry around all this harm. And I think that's
how you avoid harming others. And then your energy then
(46:45):
sort of focuses on doing things and creating things and
being is shift because a lot of our work on
a day to day basis is shifting the way that
things are right now so that our languages exist more,
restoring indigenous place names, teaching people the language, making knowledge
(47:05):
of indigenous languages an expectation in education to the point
that maybe it's a requirement talking to people, learning, continuing
to think in our language, raising children in our language
who are then not as proximal to some of that
colonial trauma and pain. They can just speak a word
(47:28):
without thinking of someone trying to stop them. They can
just engage with each other and play and have fun
in the language without worrying about being in trouble for
doing so. So as we go forward and we sort
of create this era of growth and opportunity for language
learning and language use, it's really exciting to see because
(47:51):
it takes energy and focus to say, Okay, we need
some teaching materials for our language. I can write that, Okay,
we need some new techniques to get people talking to
each other. I can help facilitate that. And so to
move to this place of being a productive, positive person
who's constantly in these realms of language use, then I
(48:13):
think people look at you. And we were talking about
this a little while ago. When you get together with
people who are doing a similar thing in a similar way,
that might be a completely different language, but you get
energy from each other to keep going.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
And thank you, and golly, this is a really really
nice conversation. Not nice, it's a powerful conversation, but you know,
it seems and I've learned this that when you're in
a safe space, you let go of your vulnerabilities and
let the real EU come out. And I'm honored to
be able to do this with a klne kristichch for
(48:49):
all that you do and for especially this, because I
think people do need to hear all this. Yeah, how
do we reframe trauma? My dad would say, if you're
going to be upset, be upset for five minutes, just
give yourself five minutes, because anger is not you or
hunger is not you, especially with feelings. If you feel
out negative feelings, time yourself five minutes because your soul
(49:11):
is too busy to be in that space. Because people
don't want to recognize you as the angry one. No,
he was just angry for five minutes, and he's right
now doing beautiful work. And then reframing my position or
my how did I pull out of that? Because my
father said, let go of what happened and hold on
(49:33):
to the best of that experience and know the fact
that you're always going to be you pick and you
never let go of that, never let go. Always acknowledge
where he came from. That experience is not where he
came from. You are upick that's what you focus on,
that which you experienced. Let go because you have more
(49:54):
to give. And so forty four years ago, I entered
the University of Alaska Fair and I saw on the
schedule ESK one on one elementary you pick. I thought,
what No. I was told not to speak my language
a few years ago, and there's a class where I
could take and I get credit for it. This is crazy.
(50:18):
And so I sat in and there was a Caucasian
teaching my language. And the more he spoke, and he
talked about the labialized front fielder, her voices fricative and
won a single fricative is beside a stop consonant and
automatic becomes voiceless. And there's all these nasals and fricatives
and stop consonant and abolative, modalis and terminais and all
(50:42):
this stuff is saying, dude, slow down, because I want
to know what you're saying, because I want to take over.
I want to know what you're saying. I want to
say what you're saying because this was a language that
was almost taken away from me and you're I'm able
to celebrate it now. You better make some room for me, buddy,
because I want to take over. I've been teaching Yupik
for the last twenty five years at the University of Alaska,
(51:04):
Fairbanks and graduating students with Ubic degrees. The language that
could have could have been taken away a moss from me.
My father made sure that I reframed in ways by
which I could find a passion and making mind to
that so that I could share. One of the shaming
things that I make created of myself is that angun
(51:28):
means man, but angun also means provider. My dad in
his dying days, I said, Dad, I'm really embarrassed for
even recognizing myself as Angun means provider because I'm not providing.
I'm not home. You know, I'm not hunting, I'm not gathering,
(51:49):
I'm not fishing. And then he said, Conrerabata Angutan, you're
providing our language. And then I said, but Dad, I
need to be home taking care of you because inevitable
is going to happen. You know, we're going to lose
you and the people in the community are going to say,
(52:09):
you know, negative things about me being away from home.
And my father said, so long as people have tongues,
it is through that that they will continue to speak,
and he raised raised his frail finger and says that
one way Oka school's Cluten school. But I've okayed you
(52:33):
to go to school because I didn't have that opportunity.
How do we share reframing of having to leave home
to these young kids from the rural Alaska who struggled
to find identity or being away from home and all
this stuff and saying it's okay, it's temporary. My father
(52:54):
would say, Imana Mantek, you know my moank is always
going to be here and so and so who's still
going to be doing such and such. That's not going
to change. But you have you have a vision. Follow
your vision because it's going to become something if you
put your effort into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Oh well atmar Oh yeah, yaha, shouldn't I. I'm so
grateful for the work that you've done, for the healing
that you've done, for the things that you've shared, for
the ways you've talked about reframing, recovering, rebuilding. The future
(53:36):
is really bright for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages contain so
much medicine and beauty. When you engage in these languages,
whether you're a new learner, you're a teacher, whether you're Indigenous,
whether you're a visitor on indigenous lands and a guest
and someone who's living there with us, you have an
(53:58):
opportunity to create pause that have changed. To watch a
child who can grow up and say a word without
fear of being punished for saying that word, who can
take the language on for another generation, so we can
build a stronger platform for things, work so much as possible,
so much as within reach, so much as achievable, and
(54:21):
we can listen directly to the words of our ancestors
and remember them. So much wisdom of the Yupic way
has been taught to you directly from your parents, through Yuchten,
and through Yuchten it gets taught to others. We're so
grateful that you folks would tune in to listen to us.
(54:41):
The Tongue Unbroken is a production of the iHeartMedia Network
and the Next Up Initiative. Though if you're out there,
think about doing good things, standing up for good people
and good causes. And if you're not, just please stay
out of the way and watch the Indigenous movements continue
to rise.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Ye gonnachieve us a spo
This episode contains detailed descriptions of a boarding school experience,
including abusive treatment and sexual abuse of a minor by
a health care professional. Personal trauma of this nature regularly
occurred during the boarding school or residential school era, which
began in eighteen sixty nine and ran until the nineteen sixties.
This era included forced separation of children from their families,
(00:23):
prohibitions of Indigenous languages and cultures, and a variety of
horrendous tortures, abuses, neglects, and the deaths of thousands upon
thousands of children. On the tongue unbroken, we give love
to those who survived, and we honor those who did not,
and we encourage widespread healing from this genocidal era. If
you would like to learn more, engage in the materials
(00:45):
from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. If
you do not know about this era, then please listen
to this episode, Educate yourself further, and then ask how
you can help. If you are a survivor or the
descendant of a survivor, practice self care and reach out
when you need help, and help others when they reach out.
Tell your story, and join programs like the Healing Voices movement.
(01:10):
We go forward with love and the strength of our ancestors.
We brush off the attempts to destroy us and rerise
up with the voices of many languages. In related movements
of reclamation. Good chiesh you go Aquan.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
They try to colonizees, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on broke and.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
A sha which to cut you on your e.
Speaker 3 (01:57):
T hat.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
Na Chris a t. You are the medicine. Welcome to
the tongue unbroken. We are here in Anchorage, Alaska, in
a little conference room that this hotel was so wonderful
to let us use. And I am here with the esteemed,
brilliant and wonderful doctor Waki Charles. It's so exciting to
(02:21):
be able to talk to you here today and to
just share some time and space. Could you introduce yourself
and talk about what you do.
Speaker 3 (02:30):
Dav I imam Anglish, hung Dog and Clue Danny Rank
Lamon Wrinkle Institute Boarding School, Lamon At, Doug DoD lit
(03:00):
Nowist Munga University of Alaska, Fairbanks, sami University of Alaska, Fairbanks,
Some Alaska Native Language Center ami As Munga well First
of all, I just want to say thank you June
for inviting me to speak with you about who I
am and what my contributions have become. I am Gumachak,
(03:24):
named after the person who assisted father Lineux in creating
this writing system for the Yupik people. In the Yupik culture,
when somebody dies and a baby is born, the baby
is provided the spirit of the person who had just died.
Gumah was a person who Ozubik, who assisted father Leniu,
a French Jesuit priest, in writing and creating the first
(03:47):
writing system of the Yupik Catholic Upik people of the
Yukon Delta. And the old folks who know this know
that they say, oh, you're still continuing your work. And
then aged twelve, and I'll talk about this so more,
as I said Hochston earlier, at age twelve, I was
taken away to boarding school. But I'll talk about that.
(04:08):
It's just a little bit. I am a professor at
the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. I'm the director of the
Alaska Native Language Center. I've lived in Fairbanks for the
last forty three years, and I'm really excited. Every year
is a really exciting year because my program, the Youpik program,
graduates people with degrees a bachelor's degree in you pick
and I have four graduating this year Canachk.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And for those who might not know, Yupik is a
language on western Alaska, and this is my father's people.
So on my father's side, I am Yupik and Sammi.
My uppo was Tim Twitchell, and his father was a
Klosek who came and ran a store and collected a
lot of masks and did a lot of pretty amazing things.
His name is Adam Hollis Twitchell. And on my mother's side,
(04:53):
I'm Kingett and I am Heide, and also on my
father's side, I'm Sammi. So walk in, I have a
lot of connections through the work that we do, which
is in language reclamation, movement building and teaching, and so
I want to start with really the positive stuff and
just really think about the work that you've done. There's
a lot of times in my day to day life
(05:15):
where I've had conversations with you and then I have
taken things back and become a better teacher because I
talk to you about how to teach people indigenous languages
So when you have someone, let's say day one, class one,
and they say doctor Waukee, I wann yorchten, how do
you get them started?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, first of all, I'd say Crenee, and I will
honor you by using your name when I call attendance,
because that is your given name. I will learn how
to spell it. I will learn how to say it
because in my classroom, your name I honor and they
know me as Gumahak. And everybody else who comes in
(05:58):
with their epic names, and if they had been misspelled
in previous years by other their teachers, we write them
properly in the class. There are people who come in
who are non Yupik and they want a Upik name.
I said, write it in your journal and give it
to me, and I will call my family. In two days,
I will provide them their names. Well, depending on we
(06:20):
know what it takes or how long it takes for
me to connect with my family. And there's a story
that I'd like to share because it's really really powerful.
There was a Caucasian girl who was in my class
who has since then received a PhD and is director
or curator of the museum in Juno So. But she
(06:41):
was going to school getting her PhD. She wanted to
take Upik because that was going to connect her with
her study her PhD. And so I asked her what
year and what month were you born, because it doesn't
matter what day, but she wrote, I was born. I
was born July eleven, nineteen seventy three. That was the
(07:03):
day that my brother's body was found floating in the river.
And immediately I gave her my brother's name. Wow, today
she is my brother and she has my brother's Yupik name,
And so that's how powerful naming is in my culture.
(07:24):
I don't look at her as doctor curator, she's my brother.
And you pick people do not do gender. So you
have like Kumaha, the person I'm named after was a woman.
But in you pick even the Yupik words, Yupik sentences
like lukok could mean she was eating, or he was eating,
(07:44):
or it was eating. And that's what's so beautiful about
Yupik is that you know, set everything aside and just be.
And so once I learned the students Yupik names, that
those are the names I call them by every day,
and it's such a celebration every day to allow my
students to hear their name, and I'd say nay, and
(08:05):
he'll say uni hua because he'll have to respond, yeah,
he's clinked. But then if he's going to respond, he's
going to respond in you pick Onihua. And then the
other thing that I say is welcome to yotun one
oh one, an emotionally charged class. Some of us come
to this room knowing the language already. Some of us
(08:27):
are you pick, but we've not provided the opportunity to
learn our language because of the history of our parents
or our grandparents. And there's those of you who are
confused because are scared because you've never heard you pick before.
So there's lots of emotions that flow through here, and
if we could see them in real life, I wonder
(08:48):
how many colors I would be just floating in this
room about the emotions that are happening. So I honor
those emotions and know the fact that this room, this
space here is the safest place for you to learn
your heritage language that you weren't provided or if you
are provided to the language, this is the place where
(09:08):
you're going to strengthen your ability to use the language
in ways it's proper. Because I honor the language. I
was provided the skills to learn so that I could
share with you the most proper way of learning and
delivering the language to those who need it. And so
it's going to be a lot of work. But know
(09:29):
the fact that even if you make a mistake in
this room, I'm going to say asbah and asebah is
I think our Jewish brothers and sisters would say mazel tov.
So you're gonna hear asekhbah when you misspell a word.
You're going to hear asekbah when you mispronounce a word,
because we're gonna we're gonna fix it together. We're gonna
(09:52):
these are this this room, and these times are opportunities
to learn together because you're not here alone. You come
with an empty slate, and that slate sometimes gets messy
because we don't know. And so know the fact that
whether you know the language or you not know, for
those who know the language, for those of you who
(10:13):
know the language, please recognize that these people who don't
know are the ones who are struggling but had the
passion to learn something that which they wouldn't otherwise. And
so welcome to you in one oh one, and let's
learn about how to use baby words. And this is
semester one and it's only fifteen weeks, but we have
(10:34):
lots to learn and will take the time to do this.
I'm not going to go any faster than I breathe,
and you're going to hear me say, we'll get there
when we get there. You didn't get it today. We'll
get there when we get there. You will feel it
when you get there. I don't care how long it takes,
but you'll get there when you get there.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Good cheesh, crayon. I can really relate to that. I
think a classroom is an incredibly sacred space. It's a
safe space, it's a place to There's a lot of
people who sometimes have trauma affiliated with coming to the language.
It could be coming back to it, it could be
coming for the first time, and you don't know that student.
You might not know their backstory and what's happening and
(11:14):
all the things going through their mind. I love what
you were sharing about names and connections because the language
connects us and it keeps us moving, and it helps
to expand our mind into this universe where we know
our ancestors, and our ancestors were waiting for us to
come to them, and I think about this. I had
(11:34):
a student who said, you know, this is my third semester,
and I really thought about this in my second semester
because we took our winter break and we came back
and we come in and everybody's hugging each other and
they're saying hi and no disrespect to chemistry. But that
wasn't happening in my chemistry class. There was an identity
(11:55):
that's formed in this place where you're talking about an
indigenous language that just keeps going, and Yuchten is one
of the strongest languages in Alaska. Our ancestors on that
side were really able to endure so much and hold on.
And one of the things I always think about is
when a student really becomes they get really close to
(12:17):
becoming a speaker, and I think there's a little bit
of fear and hesitation sometimes to really let go of
English and just go and stop translating and just go
for it. And so I really like how you're encouraging
folks to just be comfortable, to be okay, and to
let them know that we have time and it's okay.
If it takes a while to grasp a concept, to
(12:40):
remember a word, to remember a name, to remember a story.
Because these pieces come in such an interesting way, and
so as students are getting really close to just full
on becoming speakers, they kind of hesitate sometimes when they're
just getting ready to just start really talking, because maybe
they doubt themselves. Like I've seen a lot of students,
(13:02):
is that I'm not going to say it right, and
then they do.
Speaker 3 (13:05):
Here's I think where I celebrate what I do. Not
only do I attempt to make a safe environment for
my students to learn, but there's so much repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition,
And I'll have them say it really, really really quietly,
(13:26):
and not have them say it really loudly. I'd have
them repeat I had and how would your grandmother say?
And then they would do the grandmother voice? Or how
about your up? But when he's mad, how would he say?
Oh you go kinds of things? Or what a shy
little girl? And so use any voice, And we practice,
(13:48):
and we practice because it's not book you pick. Yeah,
it's out of a book that we're learning you, but
I want to make it ours and use any kind
of and how would you say it when you're excited
to go and so use whatever your soul wants to expel,
because again, this is our language. It's not like computer science.
(14:12):
Computer science is a system's language. This is our language.
And we hold on to those unconsciously agreed upon sort
of socio linguistic and cultural rules that nobody's ever going
to take away from us because they've always been here.
It's about time that we have this opportunity to bring
all that out. And so whatever it takes and to
(14:36):
let go or to fly out of that nests you know,
and you're ready anyway, I keep saying that every day
we'll get there. When we get there and look at that,
look at that, and so we have maybe a non
you big saying that for the first time. It say
oh wow, let's stop drop what you're doing. And I
would like you guys to just start clapping because I
(14:57):
just heard from so and so. And speaking of which,
I had this kid six foot three I think or
six foot six, blonde hair, blue eyes, and I saw
him at a one year celebration of life at one
of my niece's daughter's celebration, but died in a car crash.
And so this kid was there who happened to be
(15:19):
friends with my niece, and this was first year, you pick,
first semester, and so his name is Ramcluk and he
had come before I did, and he was only sitting
against the wall with a plate of food. And so
I saw him against the wall with a plate of food.
I said, oh, no, I didn't say anything. I just
said gramachluk and he waved and said hi to me.
(15:41):
And then a few moments later I heard him going,
oh louder, I mean, like really loud. And when my
students do something or produce a sound, I immediately say,
way to go, a way to go, as bah, you're
practicing you pick? He goes, no, there's a bone stuck
(16:01):
in my throat. And that's funny because with that side,
I say, look, how do you take the bone out
out of your throat? Net? And he didn't even think that.
It just happened naturally, and I mistook it for practicing.
You pick is cheese.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
And one of the conversations that I have on here
with different language teachers is this balancing act that we
sometimes do between speaking and listening and being in the
language and just not overthinking how it works. And then
this other moment where we're sort of talking about the
structure of the language and how to change this thing
(16:45):
and that thing, because our verbs can get really long.
And last night I was saying in class, don't think
about it like your English brain would want you to.
You have to just look at the patterns in this
language and say, it's different, it's different, It's going to
be okay. Because sometimes I think their English brain expects
it to be a certain way, and when it isn't,
they get a little frustrated or a little disoriented. So
(17:08):
how do you navigate that back and forth between just
speaking and listening and then internalizing how the language really works.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
It's a very tough topic. But as language teachers we
know this, but how do I tackle this? There's silently
I know every student is saying yeah, but yeah, but
in English, the thing is okay. Let's breathe and breath out.
Breathe and breath out. Just realize the fact that we're
(17:36):
in a yuchdun environment and this is going to be
as you pik as possible. We know what, soonce we
leave this space, you know it's it's all English. The
whole university is English. Here. Let's try to find ways
to breathe in what we assume you pick is, and
that you pick is something that's it becomes when you
(17:56):
breathe and breathe out. This is a different kind of
breathing because this is home. This is nothing like anything else,
because we're here because we want to learn what wants
to come out from your soul. Whatever we learned becomes
a butt. And so if we could practice our soul
to remove ourselves from that butt. Because as students in
(18:18):
other classes, when we don't know, we like to say yeah,
but so let's not become your butters in this classroom.
But every time you think you're going to say butt, stop,
drop what you're doing and listen with your heart. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Oh well, now we're going to stop for a quick
minute here to take a little break. We're here with
Walkie Charles, the incredible director of the Alaska Native Language Center,
a council member on the Alaska Native Language Preservation and
Advisory Council, a holder of a doctorate degree, a producer
of books on teaching Upick and understanding the Yupik language,
(18:57):
an incredible human being and just a wonderful kind person.
It jeez for listening, and we'll be right.
Speaker 3 (19:06):
Back cheers.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
One or two or three times to try any friends.
Speaker 4 (19:25):
You run all around without joyn You struggle, yes to day,
you struggle still today now, but you'll find a broader away.
Speaker 5 (19:43):
My brother sisters, don't you know?
Speaker 4 (19:47):
I found the way to bring it back. For those
who call.
Speaker 1 (19:55):
Believe in yourself, now believe in us some now dona
de collazi, we are back. One of the things that
(20:17):
we talk about now and then is a really dark
era in the history of the United States which extends
into Alaska, in which those of us who teach indigenous
languages we often want folks to know this is not
ancient history. This is a history that started at one
point and extended to a certain other point. We have
(20:40):
ancestors who have gone on who have experienced what we
call the boarding school era and in Canada is called
the residential school era, and we have people who are
alive today who are survivors of that era. It cannot
be overstated how awful it was, although some people didn't
have as terrible of an experience as others. When some
(21:04):
people talk about the boarding school era being some form
of enlightenment or bringing people to some sort of state
of improvement, those are false pieces of information that have
meant the tremendous amount of suffering that people went through
when they were removed from their homes. So one of
the things that I have talked to you about, Gumarhak,
(21:27):
is your experiences that you went through in our homelands.
So I am Senge, I teach Sengut. I'm also you
pick and you went to a school called the Wrangel Institute.
Wrangel is in Shenge Country. It's a place. Akwan is
the name of that area. But when people in my culture,
(21:49):
in Singe culture, when people suffer on your lands, you
really you owe them something. And so one of the
things I was thinking about this week is how I
consider you naw yet na Yetdi would be a child
of the Thlinget peoples, a child of the clans, because
if you were a guest in our lands, there would
(22:09):
never have been mistreatment of you. I know firsthand from
some of the things you've shared, the ways that you
have suffered on our territory. And for that I said
to a Dern, please forgive us that this happened. We
don't want you to look upon Thlinget peoples and think
about this negativity. We don't want you to come into
(22:30):
our homeland and think about pain. We want you to
think about love, the ways that we love you and
hold you up. I look at you. I consider you
a rundre, an older brother, and so I'm thankful that
you would share portions of your story here, whatever you
feel comfortable with about what you experienced, And I just
want you to know you are a shining example of
(22:53):
strength and fortitude and courage to emerge from these experiences
and becoming speaker and a teacher and a leader of
language reclamation movements.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Enough for your introduction, I'm honored. I'm I'm humbled by
your introduction and me having to share my experience, my
Rangle experience. Your words have, your kind words, your loving
(23:26):
words have led me to want to share this knowing
the fact that I'm in a safe space, and I
appreciate the fact that you consider me your brother, and
that I appreciate. Yes, I was twelve years old when
I was taken away to boarding school. My mother never
(23:47):
learned English, she never went to school, and it wasn't
until I was an adult in my thirties maybe when
she said Amumi aanpany rank lamun doing soon arichtakan ni
shuku oyakako, nakutunak When you left for a wrangle many
(24:13):
years ago, when I hear a drone of an airplane
coming towards our village that was that would come once
a week, I would hope that you were in that
plane coming back to return home, but you never did.
I don't know where wrangle is, and I didn't know
(24:35):
if you were ever going to come home. I was
stripped down bear, and my clothes, what little clothes I
had then, were marked with the number twelve. My toothbrush,
my watch, anything that they could use with a magic
marker they used to put number twelve, and my watch.
(24:57):
I remember this this metal thing that created a buzzing sound,
and they put a twelve on it, and I later
learned it was an engraver. And so from there on
my name was twelve. And the other name that I
learned was Hey. To this day, when I hear people,
(25:18):
when I hear people addressing me with that word, I
get scared because that's the one that's the only name
that they would call when they wanted to correct us.
And it seemed like everything that we did needed correcting.
And I remember that first Saturday, we were provided white
(25:40):
shirts to wear for church the following day, and we
were to iron our shirts down in the basement. I've
never touched an iron before, and I tried. I didn't
know you had to plug it in. And I pushed
(26:02):
this thing onto my shirt, and then when I thought
I was I pushed the whole shirt all the way around.
I brought it back up and it wasn't good enough.
So I cried my way down to the basement three
flights down and did it again. And after I pushed
that thing all over the shirt, I tried back up again,
(26:23):
and I learned the word wrinkled. Still wrinkled, so and
down the third time I saw a student had been
there before, and so he had to plug it in,
and he showed me how to put it in this
number here and do it slowly. I'll show you. And
on the third time, I didn't have to go back
(26:45):
to the basement. And as an adult, when I bought
my house and I got a washing dryer, and I
put my clothes in the dryer and they came out wrinkled.
This was I was an adult. I owned a house,
my very first washing dryer, and my clothes came out wrinkled.
(27:10):
I cried. I mean, it's funny how these things, these
memories pop up. But I had to learn to forgive
my dryer because it was my driver's fault. I had
to learn how to use the dryer. And there was
times when there was yeah, several times, and I didn't know.
We had a physician who was I think from Sitka
(27:34):
Mount Edgecomb Hospital who had come periodically to do physical exams.
And this is going to be graphic, but I want
to share it with you because my heart isn't in
a safe place to share with you. And so he'd
lay me an examining naked examining table and starting fondling
(27:57):
my penis and until I was erecked, and then I
thought that was part of the examination. And then there
would be I think two other times that he came
and the same thing happened. And then the third time
when that happened, I was getting scared because something about
(28:20):
what he was doing wasn't wrong. I don't know, it
didn't feel right, because his demeanor changed like I sent
some kind of weird excitement. I didn't have the term
for it. And that's when he said, oh, you don't
want to play, and that's when I know something was wrong,
but that at the same time I couldn't say anything,
(28:43):
so I never told anybody.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
And I think people need to keep in mind the
isolation of a child when you remove them from their home,
and we're talking thousands of minds, we're talking about a
completely different landscape. If you go from parts of western Alaska,
the landscape is so different, the area is so different.
(29:05):
To take a child out and you have no parents,
no relatives, no guardians you can turn to for trust
and respect, and to just say is this okay? Is
that okay? And then to be dehumanized by those who
are supposed to be your teachers and caring for you,
who refer to you by a number or just hay,
and then to have this person who's supposed to be
(29:27):
a caretaker for people and help people with health. I
just want to make sure that we're keeping in mind
just how disorienting and destructive this environment was, and that
this didn't happen at every boarding school, but the chances
of it happening were high, and the odds of people
setting up situations for people to do direct harm for
(29:49):
children was not coincidental.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
And there were times when I learned that speaking my
heart language was I didn't have the term for it,
but we were shunned. It was like, and that's when
I would hear hey to where I heard kids my
age from the Yupik region who would walk away from
(30:14):
the dormitories out towards the water and speak the language.
I could understand them, but it seemed like it was
too dirty for me to reproduce that language that I knew,
because it felt dirty, to where I came to a
(30:34):
point where I would miriok. I would vomit when I
heard kids speak my language. And then I would hear
kids say u nayotun grimikan, and I ignored what they said.
They'd said it seems that he could speak the language,
(30:57):
but why doesn't he? I was too scared, And I
guess in those kinds of situations we learned to fake
our way through because I wanted to be liked and
maybe if I pretended not to and to speak my language,
maybe I will be liked more. And so I really
(31:19):
worked hard to learn English to where we learn things
like nationalism. Nationalism is a frame of mind in which
an individual fields that his first loyalty is out to
his nation and nothing about my language, nothing about my culture.
But I had to learn the language of the academy.
(31:42):
I still don't know what that means today.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
I admire you so much for not only is surviving
and carrying these things, but I think by sharing your story,
it allows others to connect to their own suffering. And
maybe it wasn't Maybe it was an auntie, maybe it
was an uncle, Maybe it was a parent, maybe it
was a grandparent, but you might wonder why did they suffer?
(32:08):
My father the last time he came to visit me,
I drove him to the ferry terminal so he could
go and visit my brother. And he said to me,
it was early, early in the morning. We're taking this drive,
and it's a little awkward because I know he's leaving.
We had some pretty rough times growing up with him
(32:29):
and with alcohol and with violence. And he said to me,
you know, I never really said I loved you when
you were young, but I always did. I just didn't
know that I was supposed to say it, because when
I was growing up, they didn't say it to me.
When we were in Tacot and I was so happy,
I was so happy there. But when my mom got
sick and we had to move to Anchorage. They couldn't
(32:51):
afford to keep all of us kids, so the older
kids went into a boarding school, and in the school
they horribly abused my sister and my brother, and I
tried to stop them. In a Catholic school, the nuns
and the priests, and they beat me every time I
tried to stand up to them. And I stood up
(33:12):
to them every day, and I got beaten every day,
and I was never the same since. And he died
weeks after that. This is the last conversation I ever
had with him. So when we have these conversations, we're
connecting to a pain that often Indigenous peoples have to
we feel like we're alone with these which you're never alone.
(33:32):
You reach out and you connect to others who are
doing the work, who are recovering, who are helping others.
And in these conversations we're having, we're really thinking about
how did we emerge from this, and how are we
continuing to emerge from this so that others don't have
to carry that pain. Because my father, even though his
life involved carrying so much pain and suffering, I think
(33:56):
he helped break a cycle by telling me what happened.
It took his whole life to tell me what happened,
And it took his whole I think maybe connecting with
his grandkids and seeing and becoming an Upah himself to
see that he had a chance to share this and
to say I'll take it with me when I go.
(34:16):
I want to thank you for sharing and thinking about
how you emerged from that. And so what was it
like when you came home?
Speaker 3 (34:24):
Gleana Nay, I don't take it lightly. What do you
share with me? Because the emotions are exactly the same
with your father's experience. You know, we forget how to love.
We are ashamed to love because we weren't provided that.
Fortunately I had that at my own home with my
parents when I went back. I'm the youngest of the boys.
(34:48):
I never went back to school. My mom would never
see me leave again. And so I was at Rangel
for my eighth grade year, a young eighth grade year,
because I was kind of swept into that age group
because my dad was a cook in the school and
the principal said, what your little boy doing here tagging along?
(35:09):
You should be in school, And so that's how I
got and everybody was at seven eight nine years old.
I was five when I went home. My mom said,
you'll never leave again, and she said I I didn't,
I dud, you will never leave home again. And so
I went and stayed the year and I did correspondence study,
(35:33):
the hardest thing I've ever done, and I didn't like
it because I had no schedule. I was the youngest boy,
and I could split wood, and I could hunt rabbits,
I could go al some ice. I did what young
boys would do. That was my job. And so in
(35:53):
a sense, my schooling, I mean, being homes kind of
spared me from having to sit down and do all
that stuff. Thing is, what if I want to go
back to school? And it seemed that my brother, my
older brother, was doing okay in Mount Edgecomb, and so
he helped me to apply to go to Mount Edgecomb.
(36:15):
And I think by then I felt okay enough to
try leaving home again after being there a whole year,
whole school year, and so I went to Mount Edgecomb.
And I didn't know this, but I thought because they
were going to put me in as a freshman, I
was a sophomore. So I went to three years of
high school and it was a different kind of experience.
(36:36):
It's like my name wasn't Hey. I had a number,
but it was a softer number because they didn't call
me by that number and people could speak their language.
And I got into honor roll. And when I got
my driver's license, I also got my government driver's license
because I drove the school bus for the under dorms.
(36:57):
I was a student by the president. I was a
student store manager for and so my boss would call
me in my last hour last class when there's a
basketball team walking, you need to come to the store
and pick up the truck FROMJSA because they're waiting for
you the key. It was like freedom I've never had
in a school where people supported and respected me and
(37:20):
provided me a job. And so yes, it was far
away from home. It was all in English. But somehow
I was able to reframe that ugly, nasty experience that
I had in Wrangel saying that know the fact that
I will never go back there again and come to
the space where I felt recognized for who I am
(37:41):
as a human being, because I really strongly believe and
you do too, because you teach, if you acknowledge the
brilliance in your students they'll do whatever it takes to
show you that they are brilliant. And I had teachers
own edgecumb including mister Truett guild Truitt, who saw in
(38:04):
me something that I couldn't. Yes, I was still licking wounds.
I was still the youngest in my age group with
my classmates, but I felt safe and I wanted to learn.
There was a family in Sitka who took me under
their wings, and I spent weekends, Christmas, Thanksgivings with them,
(38:26):
and I just I just learned last week at Georgia
Scanis the woman who took me under her wings had
just recently died and she was from the Scanis Stepsovich
family from Sitka. And so yeah, I don't know what
that family saw in me, but I had a home.
Speaker 1 (38:45):
Wow when we need it most, I think sometimes people
show up to help, some people see it, and some
people are just meant to be in that pathway that
you were walking along. We are going to take our
second break here. We've talked about serious, difficult things. So
please practice self care. Please know there are support networks
(39:06):
that are available. Be a supportive person to someone you
know who might be suffering. Be a shining light who
comes out of the direct oppression of the boarding school era.
Be a speaker, a teacher, a learner. Be a guide
post for those Be a walking stick for those who
(39:26):
might be out there just looking for help, looking for
a moment, looking to recenter themselves. Believe in yourself, and
be part of movements that are reconnecting people to the land,
to the languages, to health, to ancestors, and to future generations.
Al wuchin ka anteen, We'll be right back, folks.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Uh oh.
Speaker 5 (40:08):
You're you're had not said a cod blue oh he.
Speaker 4 (40:26):
He he he he ah kind of talk. He gives
away to say, d bo dodat he.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
He he you.
Speaker 1 (41:05):
And we're back. The name of this podcast is The
Tongue Unbroken. The reason for that is because despite some incredible, inhumane,
and terrible efforts to completely eliminate indigenous languages and indigenous peoples,
we're right here. We're talking, we're teaching, we're learning, and
(41:28):
we're trying to live a little bit healthier with love
of each other, love of ourselves, which means sometimes looking
at some parts that might need a little bit of adjustment,
and you might sort of say, oh, I've been carrying
around this trauma for a long time, and you might
not need to. An Overcoming historical and individual trauma is
(41:49):
not an easy route, but it's something that can be done.
And I think Gumach is a wonderful example of how
that could happen, because going from that experience to having
a peace to being the first Alaska Native who runs
the Alaska Native Language Center, to be a teacher of
teachers of Yotun. You probably have folks out there who
(42:10):
are teaching now who you have taught them. And so
as we talk about the emergence coming out of a
place of pain and suffering, how do we encourage others
to do the same.
Speaker 3 (42:24):
Well, thank you for this conversation, Kuyanahu Mumkrabukaji Nunavsni. Well,
first of all, I just want to thank you for
allowing me to continue my language, and I applaud you
for finding a space to continue sharing your language. And
(42:50):
so how do we do that? Well, when it snows
outside and there's a lot of it in Alaska, even
in Juno lately, before you go inside to the warmth
in the living environment of your home, you don't want
that snow to melt, And so what you do is
you brush it off, and you brush it off. Make
(43:10):
sure you brush everything off, everything, take your mc take
all the might you have to brush that off to
enter that space of love and warmth that is your home,
that is your family, and that's what you do. Sometimes
we have to those of us who've gone through experiences
that we wish not upon anybody else, child abuse, sexual abuse,
(43:34):
as miners, boarding school trauma and all this. The thing
is more resilient people. I'm a resilient person. And what
made me resilient is the fact that my father would say,
you jung latten gilcreako nako. Whenever someone does anything to you,
never retaliate. And what you do is you just brush off,
(43:59):
like snow, all that because it's on the surface. Don't
let it melt into your soul. Brush it off and
use your resilience to continue doing what you do best
because you have a lot to share.
Speaker 1 (44:13):
Geeesh. My mother's father, his father used to tell him,
however angry you get, that should tell you how long
you should wait until you do something, because he said,
or else you're not going to be acting from your
own consciousness, your own mind, your own spirit, but you'll
be reacting to what someone else does. And this is
(44:34):
how sometimes things can go where someone tries to pull
you down into this big battle or to pull you
down into this thing that they want to be kind
of mired into. So I really love this idea of
being your own self and being non reactive. And it
doesn't mean you just let anybody do anything, but it
means you control that ego part of you that I
(44:57):
think is not really If we go into a languages
and we go into our ways of living, we see
a lot of kindness and respects and love and listening
and patience and time. And so even though there's been
this ugliness that's either from something long ago or something
right now, that doesn't mean that has to be the
(45:18):
gasoline that burns your fire.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
So one of the things that again brushing that stuff
because it can come off. Yeah, yeah, And so my
Wrangel Institute experience, I can brush it off even though
you know, there's times when I'll hear music, or I'll
smell food, or maybe a starch from something that was
just freshly ironed would remind me of that space where
(45:45):
that space where I felt uncomfortable, scared or beaten. You know,
my soul, not physically. Fortunately what they did, the physician did,
but I didn't know that. But the thing is down.
Oh meo akanon to mayako naku tou makovu. My father
(46:09):
would say that feeling that you have, don't hold on
to it. Acknowledge it, yes, but don't hold on to
it because it's going If you don't let go, it's
going to become you.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (46:24):
And if you don't like, if you move past it, right,
And that means it's not like you're ignoring that this
thing happened, but you're dealing with it and releasing it
and saying that's not mine and it's not my obligation
to carry around all this harm. And I think that's
how you avoid harming others. And then your energy then
(46:45):
sort of focuses on doing things and creating things and
being is shift because a lot of our work on
a day to day basis is shifting the way that
things are right now so that our languages exist more,
restoring indigenous place names, teaching people the language, making knowledge
(47:05):
of indigenous languages an expectation in education to the point
that maybe it's a requirement talking to people, learning, continuing
to think in our language, raising children in our language
who are then not as proximal to some of that
colonial trauma and pain. They can just speak a word
(47:28):
without thinking of someone trying to stop them. They can
just engage with each other and play and have fun
in the language without worrying about being in trouble for
doing so. So as we go forward and we sort
of create this era of growth and opportunity for language
learning and language use, it's really exciting to see because
(47:51):
it takes energy and focus to say, Okay, we need
some teaching materials for our language. I can write that, Okay,
we need some new techniques to get people talking to
each other. I can help facilitate that. And so to
move to this place of being a productive, positive person
who's constantly in these realms of language use, then I
(48:13):
think people look at you. And we were talking about
this a little while ago. When you get together with
people who are doing a similar thing in a similar way,
that might be a completely different language, but you get
energy from each other to keep going.
Speaker 3 (48:26):
And thank you, and golly, this is a really really
nice conversation. Not nice, it's a powerful conversation, but you know,
it seems and I've learned this that when you're in
a safe space, you let go of your vulnerabilities and
let the real EU come out. And I'm honored to
be able to do this with a klne kristichch for
(48:49):
all that you do and for especially this, because I
think people do need to hear all this. Yeah, how
do we reframe trauma? My dad would say, if you're
going to be upset, be upset for five minutes, just
give yourself five minutes, because anger is not you or
hunger is not you, especially with feelings. If you feel
out negative feelings, time yourself five minutes because your soul
(49:11):
is too busy to be in that space. Because people
don't want to recognize you as the angry one. No,
he was just angry for five minutes, and he's right
now doing beautiful work. And then reframing my position or
my how did I pull out of that? Because my
father said, let go of what happened and hold on
(49:33):
to the best of that experience and know the fact
that you're always going to be you pick and you
never let go of that, never let go. Always acknowledge
where he came from. That experience is not where he
came from. You are upick that's what you focus on,
that which you experienced. Let go because you have more
(49:54):
to give. And so forty four years ago, I entered
the University of Alaska Fair and I saw on the
schedule ESK one on one elementary you pick. I thought,
what No. I was told not to speak my language
a few years ago, and there's a class where I
could take and I get credit for it. This is crazy.
(50:18):
And so I sat in and there was a Caucasian
teaching my language. And the more he spoke, and he
talked about the labialized front fielder, her voices fricative and
won a single fricative is beside a stop consonant and
automatic becomes voiceless. And there's all these nasals and fricatives
and stop consonant and abolative, modalis and terminais and all
(50:42):
this stuff is saying, dude, slow down, because I want
to know what you're saying, because I want to take over.
I want to know what you're saying. I want to
say what you're saying because this was a language that
was almost taken away from me and you're I'm able
to celebrate it now. You better make some room for me, buddy,
because I want to take over. I've been teaching Yupik
for the last twenty five years at the University of Alaska,
(51:04):
Fairbanks and graduating students with Ubic degrees. The language that
could have could have been taken away a moss from me.
My father made sure that I reframed in ways by
which I could find a passion and making mind to
that so that I could share. One of the shaming
things that I make created of myself is that angun
(51:28):
means man, but angun also means provider. My dad in
his dying days, I said, Dad, I'm really embarrassed for
even recognizing myself as Angun means provider because I'm not providing.
I'm not home. You know, I'm not hunting, I'm not gathering,
(51:49):
I'm not fishing. And then he said, Conrerabata Angutan, you're
providing our language. And then I said, but Dad, I
need to be home taking care of you because inevitable
is going to happen. You know, we're going to lose
you and the people in the community are going to say,
(52:09):
you know, negative things about me being away from home.
And my father said, so long as people have tongues,
it is through that that they will continue to speak,
and he raised raised his frail finger and says that
one way Oka school's Cluten school. But I've okayed you
(52:33):
to go to school because I didn't have that opportunity.
How do we share reframing of having to leave home
to these young kids from the rural Alaska who struggled
to find identity or being away from home and all
this stuff and saying it's okay, it's temporary. My father
(52:54):
would say, Imana Mantek, you know my moank is always
going to be here and so and so who's still
going to be doing such and such. That's not going
to change. But you have you have a vision. Follow
your vision because it's going to become something if you
put your effort into it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Oh well atmar Oh yeah, yaha, shouldn't I. I'm so
grateful for the work that you've done, for the healing
that you've done, for the things that you've shared, for
the ways you've talked about reframing, recovering, rebuilding. The future
(53:36):
is really bright for Indigenous peoples. Indigenous languages contain so
much medicine and beauty. When you engage in these languages,
whether you're a new learner, you're a teacher, whether you're Indigenous,
whether you're a visitor on indigenous lands and a guest
and someone who's living there with us, you have an
(53:58):
opportunity to create pause that have changed. To watch a
child who can grow up and say a word without
fear of being punished for saying that word, who can
take the language on for another generation, so we can
build a stronger platform for things, work so much as possible,
so much as within reach, so much as achievable, and
(54:21):
we can listen directly to the words of our ancestors
and remember them. So much wisdom of the Yupic way
has been taught to you directly from your parents, through Yuchten,
and through Yuchten it gets taught to others. We're so
grateful that you folks would tune in to listen to us.
(54:41):
The Tongue Unbroken is a production of the iHeartMedia Network
and the Next Up Initiative. Though if you're out there,
think about doing good things, standing up for good people
and good causes. And if you're not, just please stay
out of the way and watch the Indigenous movements continue
to rise.
Speaker 3 (54:59):
Ye gonnachieve us a spo
Host
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com