August 1, 2022 • 54 mins
In the inaugural episode, X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell introduces the podcast and goes over what future episodes will be like. He also explains some pivotal concepts in language revitalization and decolonization in North America. The episode also introduces the Lingít language and culture, while also sharing key moments in the language journey that led X̱ʼunei to developing this podcast. In concludes with an interview with his three children, who he speaks to in Lingít and who reply in English, sharing their thoughts on the need for Indigenous languages and the harmful impacts of colonization. Follow Tongue Unbroken on social media at https://twitter.com/tongueunbroken, https://www.facebook.com/tongueunbroken, and http://tongueunbroken.com/
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
They tried, Colin ass try to genocide it. I'm still
here with the tongue on rope and what's the wait
to cut you? Hanne? What's up? Everybody? My name is Corney.
This is the tongue unbroken test with the Coots. We
(00:39):
are here to talk about Native American language revitalization from
the perspective of a shing it Ida Yu pick and
Sammy person. I am a professor of Alaska Native Languages
at the University of Alaska Southeast and this is brought
to you by the I Heart Media Network. So when
(01:01):
we talk about language revitalization here, we're gonna talk about
a number of different things. Sometimes we're gonna talk about
the factors that have let up two language loss and
America is a sneaky genocider. So sometimes we're gonna be
taking a look at some things that have happened, some
(01:21):
things that are currently happening, and then some things that
need to happen in order to ensure that languages survived.
Dr Michael Krauss was a linguist that worked out of
the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he said in an
article published in two thousand and nine that we stand
to lose more Indigenous North American languages in the next
(01:44):
sixty years than in the entirety of contact with European colonizers.
We need to talk about that. We need to look
at that. We need to think about the things that
we do on a day to day basis that contribute
to the genocide of Native American people's and then we
need to analyze systems, analyze ourselves, analyze our regions, and
(02:07):
figure out where we can make the changes needed to
ensure that languages live. One of our elders he said
it this way, cooking. It was his name, Cyril George.
He was cook d that's his clan from a place
(02:27):
called cuck Basket Bay across the Mountain Goon. And what
he said translates to this, my prayer will be this,
let our languages live forever. So sometimes on this podcast
we gotta talk about the rough stuff, you know, like
what what led up to this? Native American languages did
(02:50):
not fall out of use. They weren't replaced by something
that was more modern and useful. There were subjects to genocide,
ultural genocide of their people's, linguistic genocide of their languages.
We have stories that we're going to cover in this podcast,
and some of them are very tough. So we're not
(03:11):
gonna do it right up at the start because you
might just turn this thing off and go find something
just to laugh about. But we're gonna come back to
some of that stuff too. Another one of our elders,
his name is cock say Norman James. He's duck now Dy,
which is a eagle killer whale clan. The cuc Wed
(03:31):
I mentioned earlier is a raven beaver clan. We have
certain animals that represent our histories and our interactions with
the natural world and the supernatural world, and we use
those and we have Northwest Coast form line design. We
put things on totem poles, who put things on boxes,
who put things on to next. We put things on
(03:53):
everything to show who we are as a people, and
so talk sugay. Norman James, he once said to me,
how we're speaking shinge it and we're just having fun
And he said, you know, when I was younger, I
used to see the old people in my community that
was in this place called car Cross up in the
(04:14):
Yukon and Canada, which is shin get Annie and taggish An.
There's a group that's right next to us, a nation
it's called Taggish. Beautiful people up there. So Hag is
an elder, and he said, when I was younger, he
used to look at these old people in the village,
and I think all they're doing is walking around trying
(04:35):
to find someone to laugh with. Then he said, now
an old guy, and I look at myself. I'm just
doing the same thing. So sometimes we're gonna take a
look at some stuff that does take our mind off
some of the harshness of what Native American people face
on a day to day basis when it comes to
their languages, their sovereignty, their identity. And so sometimes we're
(04:57):
gonna take a look at some things that just make
us feel good, like little babies speaking our languages and
given us that medicine that we need, about adults who
are overcoming their own fears and nervousness to become speakers,
about people who who do a good thing. One of
(05:18):
the things that is robbed of our people's of America,
the United States of America. One of the things that
is robbed from people is compassion. And the reason that
compassion is robbed from people is because the founding documents
the founding documents of Federal Indian Law. So not talking
(05:40):
about the Constitution, that's talking about the Bill of Rights.
But there had to be the birth of federal Indian law,
and Federal Indian Law in the United States says we
have the right to dispossess Native American peoples, we have
the right to their land, we have the right to
their resources, and eventually we have the right to control
whether or not they live or die, as an entire culture,
(06:03):
as an entire language. So sometimes we're gonna take a
look at some of these things, the aspects of colonization, decolonization,
what all this stuff means, systemic racism, how all of
this plays a role. But this isn't just anywhere USA.
So this is located on shing get An e in
(06:24):
a place called ac the ac Quan, the people of
the little Lake. Some people might call it Juno, Alaska.
I don't know who that is. It was called ac
before it was called Juno. And the Acquan consists of
two main clans, the Yachteton, who claim a raven dog
(06:48):
salmon and the Wushkiton, who claim an eagle shark. And
so you'll notice I'm sometimes saying raven, sometimes saying eagle.
Those are the two main sides of our clans. So
the way our social structure works is it's kind of
these two main signs. There's the raven side, although if
you go to Inland sing at people, they'll call the
(07:10):
crow side. Then there's the eagle side. If you go inland,
they call it the wolf side. So those are two
opposing signs, and not that they're against each other, but
they are considered opposites. And you need to marry your
opposite as of if your male, your children will usually
be your opposite. Because our entire identity flows through our
(07:30):
mother's where matrilineal people, you are what your mother is,
that's where you inherit your identity. So sometimes we're gonna
talk about things that are local to the thing at people.
Sometimes when I talk about our beloved neighbors just to
the south, the height of people as my people as
well as my language as well, and also the same
(07:51):
shann people's. And we're going to talk about things that
we're doing together to try and help each other out.
And sometimes we're gonna talk about things that are specific
pick to thing it and what kinds of things are
going on then you know, we're gonna widen our view
a little bit, and we might look at what's going
on in Alaska, what kinds of things should be going
on in Alaska? And then sometimes we're gonna go away
(08:13):
out what's going on all across North America, what's going
on across the world. When it comes to indigenous languages.
The idea here is to have multiple sort of viewpoints
and focuses and topics. And so to get started, we're
just going to talk about living languages. What a beautiful
thing that is. There are about seven thousand languages in
(08:36):
the world, but unfortunately a lot of those languages are dying.
About of those languages are endangered. And so when we
look at endangered languages, we look at a couple of things.
We say, one, how many how many people speak it?
That gives us an idea of of sort of what
(08:58):
kinds of things to start looking beyond that. Sometimes the
numbers thing, and sometimes you might say, okay, are there
a thousand speakers or hundred one? But then other times
you might say, well, what percentage of the population speaks
because you might only have three d speakers, but maybe
there's four hundred people. So that's that's actually pretty good
(09:19):
as long as they can maintain that those levels. But
the other times we'll look at do children speak, do
parents raise the children in the language? Can children speak
the language? Or can they only understand it? Do they
not understand it at all? Has there been a generation
or more where the language has not been transmitted intergenerationally
(09:43):
intergenerational transmission, there's usually what we're looking for. We're looking
to either maintain that or to restore. So some of
the terms that we'll use when we're talking about language
revitalization sometimes depend on the health of the language. So
if the language is healthy, so I have lots of
speakers spoken in lots of places, that's spoken between generations,
(10:06):
then your focus is usually language stability, just to hold
on and maintain a place of strength. If your language
is in decline, so your your speakers, the numbers might
be low, children might not be speaking, it might not
be spoken in a bunch of different places, then we're
going to focus on language revitalization, which means we're pulling
(10:28):
it back up to a place of strength. Sometimes it's
called reversing language shift, and so language shift usually means
for indigenous peoples you are shifting from fluency and knowledge
and communication in an indigenous language and slowly shifting towards bilingualism,
(10:48):
and then slowly shifting towards mono lingualism in a colonial language.
And sometimes it's not slow. Sometimes it's just a matter
of one or two generations. So then another category exists,
which is if nobody is speaking the language currently, especially
on a day to day basis, as a means of communication.
(11:09):
What we call a medium. Is it what people use
to talk about their day, talk about what they're doing,
talk about their thoughts, their dreams, their emotions, their feelings.
If that's not happening, then we're looking at language revival,
and there are languages who are coming back, wampanag Miamia.
We look at these languages and we we sometimes will
(11:30):
talk to some people. So we're going to try and
reach out to folks and see what they got going on,
and see what kinds of things that they want to
talk to us about. When it comes to language revitalization,
that might involve some things that they struggle with, and
it might involve some things that they have figured out
to turn the corner. But the other thing that sometimes
we need to talk about is to step outside of
(11:50):
the realm of specifically languages and look at structural racism,
look at colonialism, look at things like blood quantum appropriation,
and and so these things are related because there's an
awful lot that colonialism does to devalue people, to dehumanize people,
and to erase them, especially for indigenous people. You know.
(12:14):
So the perspective that we're gonna look at here is
usually what's going on in North America, and then what's
going on in Alaska? Then what's going on and sing
it on the the land of the thing get people's
so I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're listening,
and I'm so glad that I have an opportunity to
share these moments and these thoughts today. What we're gonna
(12:38):
try and do in this episode we just did sort
of like this opening boom episode one. Here we go,
let's get started this, you know, keep the energy up
because some of this stuff is it's hard. It's hard
to look American genocide right it's face and say no,
we'll do something different from this point forward. And that
(13:00):
means we got to talk sometimes about ally ship, we
gotta talk about what people do Are you a tourist.
Do you just live in some land and not even
understand that's that there's something else there, there's an indigenous
language of that place. Do you do you know what
the language is where you live? Do you know anything
about it? Could you understand it when people said something
(13:21):
to you? Could you say something to someone else? Are
you committed to making sure that that language lives? Because
if you live in America, you slip into a role,
and the role isn't as simple as one or the other.
But in some ways, if you're not doing something about it,
(13:43):
then you're probably contributing to the death of an indigenous language.
Because this is what we have. That's what we call
the hegemony, or if you speak a different dialect than me,
the Hedgeminy, where you had this active genocide where languages
were prohibited, children were tortured for speaking their language, people
(14:05):
were shamed. There's all kinds of active movements to to
totally displace the language and to devalue it. In addition,
spiritual practices, the ability to hunt and fish and educate
your people the way you want to those are all prohibited.
Cultural ceremonies prohibited. Somebody told me the other day. It's America.
(14:27):
People have always been free to do what they want.
It is absolutely not true, especially for Native American peopils,
especially for African American people, especially for lots and lots
of people, including our l g B, t Q plus community.
But we're going to advocate for change. We're not just
gonna sit here and tell you what's wrong. We're going
(14:48):
to talk about what kinds of things need to change
and what kind of things people have changed to create
a different reality. We reject manifest destiny in all of
its forms, is orically and currently that this is what
was supposed to happen, that this is a good thing
to happen. And by this I mean the elimination, the
(15:09):
annihilation of hundreds of Native American languages at the time
of contact, feeling a well over five languages. They have
a long and rich history tied to specific places. Some
of these languages like ling get we're around when there
is the mammoth was walking around, the saber tooth tiger
(15:32):
was walking around, and so just like thinking of this stuff.
They were here, we were here, they're gone, We're still here,
and we're going to be here. So at other times
we're gonna talk to some folks. We're gonna bring some
folks in here into just have a conversation, talk story.
(15:52):
I was very fortunate too to get a PhD in
Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Cltural Revitalization from Cahakula okay
Ilklani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiietilo.
I mean wonderful, wonderful friends there, colleagues, people who have
(16:16):
unbelievable courage and ability and determination, and they have this
sink called kulan that it's it's their responsibility to share
what they have done and share the knowledge of how
they did it with others so that it can be adopted, replicated, utilized.
(16:38):
What we want to see is beautiful living languages all
across North America. If you're here, you're hanging out, you're
you're in, You're in, is a t you're with us,
We're going to be united. Will be a single thing
trying to do this stuff. So sometimes we'll be looking
(17:01):
at what do we need to be inspired, what do
we need to sort of build things systemically, and say,
thirty years from now, we're gonna be able to predict
what's going to happen because we are going to manifest
it into being, which is tough. Sometimes it's tough stuff,
but that's what we're here for. Other times, we're gonna
look right at this sneaky, ugly, terrible thing as colonialism
(17:29):
in genocide. That doesn't mean that people aren't welcome here.
We're not discriminated against people. I saw someone the other
day said, well, talking about being unvaccinated and saying we're
the most hated and discriminated groups since slavery. That kind
of stuff is garbage. I mean, you might feel bad,
(17:52):
but you don't have to use such hyperbole that you
try to diminish the incredible suffering of people's And we're
talking about ancient, ancient history. Just ain't going back to
the mammoth as well. I worked with elders ever since
I started learning to sing it. Some of them ninety
years old. Yeah, and you know they passed away a
(18:16):
few years ago. I love them. Shikshaani marche Dudson, beautiful
human being, so brave, so intelligent, so wonderful. And she
told me what happened when she went to school she
was five years old. She lived this torture. We were tortured.
So what she told me, we were tortured. And sometimes
(18:38):
we're gonna take a look at this stuff and and
we'll get some trigger warnings, and we'll also talk about
what can you do to heal from this stuff? What
can you do to move on so that the trauma
is not something you carry on a day to day basis.
It doesn't mean you just forget it, but you engage
in cultural ceremonies, you engage with generations to let go
(19:00):
of some stuff that might be holding you back as
a people. And so sometimes we're gonna look at this
stuff too, from from these different perspectives. Say, there's like
a little cup of coffee. We call it the micro
and this is individuals and families. What can they do?
What can they do to make sure that their indigenous
(19:21):
language is the language of power and use. A lot
of that comes down to choices. If you're not speaking
your indigenous language right now, you were going to have
to rearrange your life and means you have to be
around people who are speaking it and learn it, and
you have to create a whole different sense of time
and being. It's okay, you can do it. Then sometimes
(19:44):
we're gonna look at this medium cup of coffee, the meso.
And this is looking at institutions, organizations, communities, regions, what
kinds of things need to change at that level in
order to ensure that the language has survived. And this
is often normalization. And we're gonna talk about all these terms,
(20:05):
what the stuff means. You have to be a linguist
to be here. You had to you you were what
we need to keep going. Everybody's going to bring something
to the table. And you know what this table is set.
This table is set. One of my ancestors, Donna walk
coustin him and he said he had a dream. And
(20:26):
in this dream, a whole bunch of elders sitting in
this room who were passed away when he was younger,
and all their favorite foods there's waiting. That's what's going on.
All those ancestors. They're there with all those foods they've
they've made it for you, and they're looking at you.
They're saying, how could runk? How? They said, come here, grandchild,
(20:55):
come here, Come sit by us, Come sit I guess,
And we're gonna sit by them, and we're gonna sit together,
and sometimes we're gonna get ready to get up out
of our chairs. And go do something, Go change something,
go make something. You have clear a path for someone
(21:18):
that was cleared for you. We're gonna do this stuff together.
I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad this has started.
This is just the beginning. Episode one. It's gonna drop.
We got a lot more to do right now. We're
gonna go to take break. Someone's got to keep the
(21:39):
lights on. Someone's gonna keep this thing going. And they're
gonna tell you who they are right now. We're thankful
for our sponsors, thankful to my Heart Media Network. And
I'd say we even though it's right now it's just
me sitting here talking to you, but the we there's
a team behind this as people the next up Initiative
(22:03):
on a host knee Joel Monique. They put this together.
They thought, we're in the door. We're holding this door open.
We're and go get some people and bring him through
this door. And if you can make something happen, if
you can, if you have figured out a way to
do something, you hold that door open for others. Sometimes
(22:27):
the things in this world will show you this for
you. You You gotta get as much as you can. No,
this is for you. You gotta prepare it for the
future generations. That's what we're gonna do together, gonna cheech,
thank you. We're back in the minch. What's happening, baby?
(22:49):
This colonization should got you down. You gotta get on
this decolonization. It's time with languid revitalized. I should laclaus
North America, the land, the language coming back into the
hands of future generations where it all blows, drives up
and have your voices be heard. Defeat all the colonial
(23:13):
forces that try to hold you down. Uh haska has
(23:38):
our truisy a gutas our set Are you a TANKI
has too towards a gooik gitar haskaska yahkusti has ya
wood clock ah cash has ours has to eat a
(24:05):
key HOUSTI ask to your hie te ya hashiko has
our has to todayaki at the trunky sani has to
how you katangi gay woot gayet their quote claire pa
(24:33):
pas ti think it yeah, oh, welcome back. You could
(25:26):
hear them at the end of that song saying you
go one, you go one, be of brave heart, be
of brave heart. In our language and our culture. You
you yell out at people when they when they need help,
you help him out. Welcome back. So glad you're here.
(25:47):
Had to say it twice. You know you stuck around
through these parts. So what we're gonna talk about now
is the shouldn't get people. We're gonna ground this into
a specific place. I want to talk about a few
other people in all Alaska, and I want to start
by translating what I said after the break. So what
I said after the break was long ago. They tried
(26:12):
to wash it out of our mouths. They tried to
pour it just underneath the soil, our way of life,
but they couldn't defeat us. They didn't know that we're
seeds in the remains of our ancestors. We're like a forest,
(26:32):
and we're going to make sure that the language flows
through the mouths of future generations. So for a lot
of indigenous languages, what we're looking at here is can
we can we get the babies to talk? Can we
get the babies to talk? Can we get the adults
to start healing living a life that has a little
(26:53):
bit less damage to one another, damage to the self.
When we take a look at Alaska Native people, we
we see a lot of problems we see a lot
of difficulties. We see some of the highest, if not
the highest rates of suicide in the country. You be
(27:19):
of brave heart. We're gonna turn this thing around. We're
gonna we're gonna change the narrative because right now suicide
has been the leading cause of death for a last
Native youth. Its time for that to stop. So when
we come back to this song, So we've gone through
a couple of movements here in this episode. One and
(27:42):
one thing that I want to come back to is
identity chat Walter Sobeloff was an elder who lived to
be a hundred two years old. I spoke wonderful thing.
It wonderful English. It was such a kind, beautiful person.
And he told us the people who know who they
(28:02):
are don't kill themselves. Sometimes people ask me, they say, well,
what do you think is going on? And colonization it's
a hell of a thing. It's a hell of a thing.
So I was hanging out with some folks from Hawaii.
They're on the the Hookala Crew, the Pacific Island Voyaging Society.
(28:27):
One of his name is Uncle Billy, and we're just
having this conversation about colonization and the way he broke
it down. As he says, there's like these four pillars,
these four things. They eliminated the warrior societies. They made
it illegal for the men to gather to strength, trained
to do the things that they did to prepare themselves
(28:49):
to protect their communities. They raped and murdered the women.
They still do. They still do. They separate the people
from their language, and they separate the people from the land.
Then you conduct us what's called inward banishment, where you
(29:11):
cannot be yourself. It was legislated out it was illegal
to be a Native American. And what they did is
they said, now you have to be us. But then
at the same time they said you can't be us
because you're not as good as us. There's remnants of
all this stuff. There's remnants of this. As we sort
of look at how things work in education, we look
(29:33):
at that there's all kinds of echoes and ghosts from
all of this stuff of white supremacy and attempted indigenous genocide.
So let's start by rooting ourselves and shin get on me.
I am double eagle Kaganida. The language of our people
is hot kill. That's my grandmother's people. Now my grandfather's
(29:54):
people are should Get. We are Shukati. We use identify
with the ray and Saki crests are from this place
called foot Some people call it Chilkoot. So I guess
we're starting with the land. If Singe Land stretches on
the northwest coast and what is now southeast Alaska and
(30:15):
also northwestern Canada. If sing Get Annie collectively for a
state in the United States, it would be about largest
state in the United States. So it's it's a sizeable
chunk of land, a lot of people, a lot of clans,
(30:37):
a lot of migrations. Two main sort of components to
the culture, which is people who live on the ocean
and people who live in the interior. H kosh Ling
get live on the ocean, Costing get live in the interior.
So there's a bit of a cultural difference there. But
it's one language, one language with several dialects. The dialects
(31:01):
are important, but they don't prohibit people from talking to
each other at all. Sing At people. We are known
visually for chill cap blankets, woven baskets, long houses, totem poles,
dugout canoes. That's all us. That's all Northwest coast people's,
(31:21):
we traded, we intermarried, we traveled. Sometimes we find so
the thing at people's from a cultural perspective, are broken
into two different sides. So you are what your mother is.
You inherit a clan through your mother, and that clan
belongs to when in English we call a moiety, And
(31:44):
so you can be either the eagle or the wolf side,
or the raven or the crows side, and you're supposed
to marry into the opposite side. The thing at people's
we've been dealing with, We've been dealing with colonizers for
quite some time. We're looking at early to mid seventeen
(32:05):
hundreds when a lot of the contact was beginning to happen,
and then a huge shift with a war between Ka Kun,
the people of Sitka, and the Russians. Not long after that, well,
I guess maybe sixty years after that, perhaps Alaska is
(32:25):
sold to the United States and it becomes a territory
of the United States of America. So at that point
there is a shift. There's a decided shift as education
goes from bilingual education, which is what the Russians had
in a lot of places, going on to mono lingual
(32:48):
in English and then also it begins as transition of
beginning to outlaw the thing of language, to outlaw the
thling of culture. There were times in the early nineteen
hundreds where cling At people were not considered citizens of
the United States. They could not claim land, they could
not vote, they could not decide where to send their
kids to school, they did not have reservations like sometimes
(33:11):
some places in Lore forty eighth. They were able to
maintain a lot of their original communities, but they were
not able to retain their ability to speak their language.
It is well documented what has happened to our pupils
when they went to school. A lot of them experienced
(33:33):
abuse and torture, a lot of times for just being themselves.
Five year old kids going to school get picked up
by their hair shaken and stuff chemicals, rags that are soaking,
chemicals stuffed into their mouths for speaking their language, getting beaten,
getting told to go put their tongue on a frozen flagpole,
(33:56):
all kinds of stuff. And these aren't just worries from
our native people's I talked to elders who went through
this stuff, who saw this stuff, who told me about
this stuff. But there are also white school teachers who
wrote books about this to brag about what they did,
soaking rags and chemicals and stuffing it into kids mouths
(34:17):
because they're speaking their own language. So one of the
things that we need to understand in North America is
that Native American language loss is a product of American
genocide of Native American people's. It was regulated, it was enforced,
it came from government, it came from churches. And so
(34:37):
sometimes we're gonna talk in this podcast. We're gonna bring
some people in to talk to us about accountability for this.
You can't just do stuff and then watch people die
because of what you've done. So we got some work
to do, and we're going to talk as well, what's
the role of everybody here? And not every language is
(34:59):
the same. Some anguages will say you're not from our people,
you don't speak our language, is ours. Others say everybody
here should learn it. Like if you go to a
lot of different countries, you learn the language of that
country if you want to go stay there. So there's
a couple of sort of things that I tend to
(35:19):
tell people because sometimes I have colleagues where I work
and they say, I really love what you're talking about
what you're doing. I just don't know if it's for
me and what does that mean? And sometimes I say, well,
yess choices. And because of so much stuff that has
happened before you, the way things have been set up,
(35:42):
it's not just free, free flowing choice. I can just
be me and not affect other people because there's too
much stuff in motion now. So that means you could
be a tourist and just float around the land and
wander beyond by it and be somewhat oblivious to some
(36:03):
of the things that are going on, where you could
be colonizer, which in actuality is a genocider, and it's
either conscious or not conscious, meaning yeah, yeah, there should
only be English and we should get rid of these
other things. And there's still people say that today the
(36:23):
passive genocider understands what's happening but doesn't do anything. This
is sometimes called white silence. These are the there's some
things so we're gonna talk about not today today, We're
just gonna just break this ice on a We're gonna
(36:48):
start hammering the ice and sometimes I'm gonna switch to
sing it. It just it roots me into some of
my thoughts, some of the thoughts of my ancestors, and
some of the things is that there's sometimes hard to say.
So I'll say I'm and think it, because then that
will help me to say it in English. But for now,
(37:08):
we're gonna take another transition and we're gonna come back
and we're gonna do my first interview, which is with
my little babies. It's kind of mess, but you know what,
We're just getting started. We're just getting started. I am
connected to a lot of people working in languages and
a lot of different places. I got a pH d
(37:30):
in Hawai. I've got some wonderful friends and colleagues who
are there. I made friends with folks who are working
in languages all across North America, a lot of them
in Alaska, and I'm gonna reach out try and get
them to have some conversations, and we might talk about
blood quantum. We might talk about the willingness to communicate.
(37:50):
We might talk about transforming the social fabrics so that
we can elevate the prestige of our languages. And we
might talk about how do we overcome generations of trauma
from people. You know, there's other elders. She told me
(38:11):
her name is us claw. I had to call me again.
She said, you know what, nobody ever hit me for
speaking my language. But I had this one school teacher
every time I saw her. I was just a little girl.
Let's see her. She was white. Should come me over,
should say to me. You know, you people, you think
you're just as good as us, but you never will be.
(38:34):
You're a second class citizen and you always will be.
This is a colonizer standing on land that she has
no ancestral connection to, talking to a noble person who
was born of the land, of the people, of the
language talking that nonsense. And this was not an isolated incident.
(38:59):
And this was someone who was just blabbing out what
a lot of people were thinking and a lot of
people were saying, probably in smaller circles. So sometimes we're
gonna have to talk about this fake concept, this lie
that is white supremacy, and we're gonna have to look
(39:21):
at this thing in a bunch of different ways because
it's an ugly beast, ugly beast. But hang out, stick
with it. We're gonna listen to some little some kids talk.
I try not to oh my kids up too high,
but they can understand their language. They can speak it
(39:42):
don't speak of that much. We will. We'll get into
that right after we take another break, going to cheech ye.
Whatever you're doing, if you're if you're working in indigenous languages,
this is made for you, and you should give a
hold of me and we should hang out. We should
(40:02):
figure out how to fix this whole damn thing. Little
bits at time, a little bits at time, that little
tiny cup, a bigger cup, and that big old bucket
of a cup. Gonna cheee. Once I thought about a
million birds all around the world sharing their songs, thinking
(40:25):
about the ways they have lived and they're gonna live,
and this is the way yet away Yeah, cock to
see wouchi yaka to dog gonna chee. Thank you so
(40:55):
much for listening to me eighty Listening is a precious thing.
Away k team, My wife and I have tried to
raise our three children with the thing at language, and
(41:20):
so this episode is going to conclude with an interview
with them, starting from the youngest to the oldest. I'm
gonna thank you to my children. They do a lot
that we ask of them, and was very proud. We're
sending them to culture camps. They're learning with lots of
(41:40):
other kids. So I hope you come back. I hope
we could talk. I hope you'll listen more. This has
been the tongue unbroken. What set you do a sock?
My name is Goda. I am sixty years old. I
think it. Yeah, DA's the cool dot to take rush
(42:06):
in kotsai, but yeah to cut you han douche a
cat douche is cat cheese. But she gives the coupe
gus cake is yeah, she come she do? Wait? Wait hey, hey,
(42:47):
h hey hey hey she come? No come she come?
(43:14):
Shame we hey, hey hey hey what's that you do
a sock? Short guy slash? Yeah okay? Coincau dasa used
(43:40):
to do, oh okay when I say how you tank?
Because our people the good things for others and animals,
and the great cock Camans tried to damage their language
(44:03):
so they couldn't speak it. Had to ask the Google
to because less people are starting to speak it and
it's starting to pass away. Were your tangy koti a
bouti and we school and just link it um It
(44:29):
was funny. I do insati my best tie and and
so are my other friends and link rainer he has
yes one themes were, yeah, clesh a ting it just
(44:50):
let crack in York because clink it is important to
us and you've been speaking it for more than a
hundred years. A cookie yah has as the two said, ah,
(45:18):
what's a has a cool? What's our equity? You good
get in classes a tina hayti because it's important to
us and we don't want it to pass away. What
(45:45):
we're going to have to speak another language, and we've
been speaking this one for years, so it's important to
us to us a good actin c has our school.
How you pink is luchen cheese. Okay, okay, what's you
(46:09):
do a sock um? That's case. I sucked out na
chikat quand I am kayana twitch. My clinking name is
cash Case. I'm from the Dudi clan. I'm Egomy. I
(46:30):
am from chilcat Kwan and my dad it's Raven Sarty.
My dad is Raven Starfish Raven good good. Oh, my
(46:53):
dad is Raven Sakai and that makes me look adi.
And I'm from the yoke at Quamic cleannesses and chikat
yo ka Tangi is a cool um. Not many people
know our language. I think only like I don't know
(47:19):
one twelfth of the world noser language. But now I'm
using fractions, which is gonna make re start getting dizzy
and past I was at people, takty um, we need
(47:41):
our language because it's an important it's an important part
in the Alaskan culture and people have depended on us
for years for trading and other Definitely I do saout
(48:02):
ya tonk um. My dad teaches me clinker and my
teachers at school. Seeing just what you um, I feel
(48:30):
very angry and sad and heard that people thought that
they could just come and teach everyone else to talk
their language online, like only speaking their language was a
real language. It's kin nick, do you need Jehuanian? Should
(48:56):
cut school? Who's the ten schoon? Day? Were good? N well?
Two year can? I was shot, Ye, you're a teen's
(49:17):
she equity? Wash away? How you're a tangi tooti and
to as to inconnique enough. He said that once his
friend told him that his he spoke, he went to
(49:41):
school and he spoke clink it and the teacher told
him to come here, and the teacher grabbed him by
his hair and shook him around and told him he
couldn't speak clink it anymore, else she would hit him.
I'll sell you. I feel very hurt by that, because
I don't think people should be allowed to do that
(50:05):
when their language is just another real thing and our
language is just another real thing too. Has the two
uk what's clinko has to eat? I think we could
(50:27):
teach lots of people the language by having more resources
and more videos and books and more podcasts and stuff.
Who just let colink it wasa has to eat the well?
(50:53):
I would probably say that you might not need clink
it everywhere around the world these days, or even around
in Alaska, but you it might be important, and it'll
be very important to our culture, and it will be
respecting and learning our culture, and lots of people appreciate that.
(51:16):
What's so how Cortique. If we didn't have our language,
then our culture and so many other cultures in Alaska
would not be around, or they would just disappear. And
then and then I don't know what we do which
(51:44):
town yes day to us as our school doc clink
It is kind of split into two main groups that
are the eagle and the raven groups. And eagle and
then there are other animals scattering mons there there's like
(52:06):
killer whale Eagle and Stocky Raven and um, I don't
know frog Raven and beaver Eagle the raven I don't
Know's a new quickend? The Italy days China? Yeah, okay, hey,
(52:45):
then what's a new quickend? The has been kind of
Nick's away. I picked up a bumble bee baby and
my moms sits stop it goodness cheese who che I
(53:10):
decided to us at um gonness cheese spe east. That
will do for this episode, folks. Episode number one is
in the books. If you live somewhere in North America,
check out what's going on with Indigenous languages near you.
(53:32):
See how you can be supportive, See how you can
learn more, do more, say more, change more. In the meantime,
those of you working the languages keep on going. Check
in here for regular updates conversations talking about how we're
going to stabilize, revitalize, and restore indigenous languages in North America.
(53:59):
Who chawe hakatue gonna chee Yeah, The Tongue Unbroken is
part of the I Heart Media Next Up initiative. You
should check out other Next Up podcasts such as Beauty
(54:20):
Translated and Black Fat fem. There will be five more
new shows coming out from the Next Up Initiative, so
watch for those. Gonna Cheese on as Joel Monique and
you send him at day in thank you so much.
The Tongue Unbroken is produced by Daniel Goodman, Gonna Cheese
playing big. Thanks for helping me. You can find Tongue
(54:44):
Unbroken on social media and you can find me on
social media under or do Uni Danuke. I'd be happy
to help you spell those, so reach out, let's chat.
Catch you next time. Gonna Cheese
They tried, Colin ass try to genocide it. I'm still
here with the tongue on rope and what's the wait
to cut you? Hanne? What's up? Everybody? My name is Corney.
This is the tongue unbroken test with the Coots. We
(00:39):
are here to talk about Native American language revitalization from
the perspective of a shing it Ida Yu pick and
Sammy person. I am a professor of Alaska Native Languages
at the University of Alaska Southeast and this is brought
to you by the I Heart Media Network. So when
(01:01):
we talk about language revitalization here, we're gonna talk about
a number of different things. Sometimes we're gonna talk about
the factors that have let up two language loss and
America is a sneaky genocider. So sometimes we're gonna be
taking a look at some things that have happened, some
(01:21):
things that are currently happening, and then some things that
need to happen in order to ensure that languages survived.
Dr Michael Krauss was a linguist that worked out of
the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and he said in an
article published in two thousand and nine that we stand
to lose more Indigenous North American languages in the next
(01:44):
sixty years than in the entirety of contact with European colonizers.
We need to talk about that. We need to look
at that. We need to think about the things that
we do on a day to day basis that contribute
to the genocide of Native American people's and then we
need to analyze systems, analyze ourselves, analyze our regions, and
(02:07):
figure out where we can make the changes needed to
ensure that languages live. One of our elders he said
it this way, cooking. It was his name, Cyril George.
He was cook d that's his clan from a place
(02:27):
called cuck Basket Bay across the Mountain Goon. And what
he said translates to this, my prayer will be this,
let our languages live forever. So sometimes on this podcast
we gotta talk about the rough stuff, you know, like
what what led up to this? Native American languages did
(02:50):
not fall out of use. They weren't replaced by something
that was more modern and useful. There were subjects to genocide,
ultural genocide of their people's, linguistic genocide of their languages.
We have stories that we're going to cover in this podcast,
and some of them are very tough. So we're not
(03:11):
gonna do it right up at the start because you
might just turn this thing off and go find something
just to laugh about. But we're gonna come back to
some of that stuff too. Another one of our elders,
his name is cock say Norman James. He's duck now Dy,
which is a eagle killer whale clan. The cuc Wed
(03:31):
I mentioned earlier is a raven beaver clan. We have
certain animals that represent our histories and our interactions with
the natural world and the supernatural world, and we use
those and we have Northwest Coast form line design. We
put things on totem poles, who put things on boxes,
who put things on to next. We put things on
(03:53):
everything to show who we are as a people, and
so talk sugay. Norman James, he once said to me,
how we're speaking shinge it and we're just having fun
And he said, you know, when I was younger, I
used to see the old people in my community that
was in this place called car Cross up in the
(04:14):
Yukon and Canada, which is shin get Annie and taggish An.
There's a group that's right next to us, a nation
it's called Taggish. Beautiful people up there. So Hag is
an elder, and he said, when I was younger, he
used to look at these old people in the village,
and I think all they're doing is walking around trying
(04:35):
to find someone to laugh with. Then he said, now
an old guy, and I look at myself. I'm just
doing the same thing. So sometimes we're gonna take a
look at some stuff that does take our mind off
some of the harshness of what Native American people face
on a day to day basis when it comes to
their languages, their sovereignty, their identity. And so sometimes we're
(04:57):
gonna take a look at some things that just make
us feel good, like little babies speaking our languages and
given us that medicine that we need, about adults who
are overcoming their own fears and nervousness to become speakers,
about people who who do a good thing. One of
(05:18):
the things that is robbed of our people's of America,
the United States of America. One of the things that
is robbed from people is compassion. And the reason that
compassion is robbed from people is because the founding documents
the founding documents of Federal Indian Law. So not talking
(05:40):
about the Constitution, that's talking about the Bill of Rights.
But there had to be the birth of federal Indian law,
and Federal Indian Law in the United States says we
have the right to dispossess Native American peoples, we have
the right to their land, we have the right to
their resources, and eventually we have the right to control
whether or not they live or die, as an entire culture,
(06:03):
as an entire language. So sometimes we're gonna take a
look at some of these things, the aspects of colonization, decolonization,
what all this stuff means, systemic racism, how all of
this plays a role. But this isn't just anywhere USA.
So this is located on shing get An e in
(06:24):
a place called ac the ac Quan, the people of
the little Lake. Some people might call it Juno, Alaska.
I don't know who that is. It was called ac
before it was called Juno. And the Acquan consists of
two main clans, the Yachteton, who claim a raven dog
(06:48):
salmon and the Wushkiton, who claim an eagle shark. And
so you'll notice I'm sometimes saying raven, sometimes saying eagle.
Those are the two main sides of our clans. So
the way our social structure works is it's kind of
these two main signs. There's the raven side, although if
you go to Inland sing at people, they'll call the
(07:10):
crow side. Then there's the eagle side. If you go inland,
they call it the wolf side. So those are two
opposing signs, and not that they're against each other, but
they are considered opposites. And you need to marry your
opposite as of if your male, your children will usually
be your opposite. Because our entire identity flows through our
(07:30):
mother's where matrilineal people, you are what your mother is,
that's where you inherit your identity. So sometimes we're gonna
talk about things that are local to the thing at people.
Sometimes when I talk about our beloved neighbors just to
the south, the height of people as my people as
well as my language as well, and also the same
(07:51):
shann people's. And we're going to talk about things that
we're doing together to try and help each other out.
And sometimes we're gonna talk about things that are specific
pick to thing it and what kinds of things are
going on then you know, we're gonna widen our view
a little bit, and we might look at what's going
on in Alaska, what kinds of things should be going
on in Alaska? And then sometimes we're gonna go away
(08:13):
out what's going on all across North America, what's going
on across the world. When it comes to indigenous languages.
The idea here is to have multiple sort of viewpoints
and focuses and topics. And so to get started, we're
just going to talk about living languages. What a beautiful
thing that is. There are about seven thousand languages in
(08:36):
the world, but unfortunately a lot of those languages are dying.
About of those languages are endangered. And so when we
look at endangered languages, we look at a couple of things.
We say, one, how many how many people speak it?
That gives us an idea of of sort of what
(08:58):
kinds of things to start looking beyond that. Sometimes the
numbers thing, and sometimes you might say, okay, are there
a thousand speakers or hundred one? But then other times
you might say, well, what percentage of the population speaks
because you might only have three d speakers, but maybe
there's four hundred people. So that's that's actually pretty good
(09:19):
as long as they can maintain that those levels. But
the other times we'll look at do children speak, do
parents raise the children in the language? Can children speak
the language? Or can they only understand it? Do they
not understand it at all? Has there been a generation
or more where the language has not been transmitted intergenerationally
(09:43):
intergenerational transmission, there's usually what we're looking for. We're looking
to either maintain that or to restore. So some of
the terms that we'll use when we're talking about language
revitalization sometimes depend on the health of the language. So
if the language is healthy, so I have lots of
speakers spoken in lots of places, that's spoken between generations,
(10:06):
then your focus is usually language stability, just to hold
on and maintain a place of strength. If your language
is in decline, so your your speakers, the numbers might
be low, children might not be speaking, it might not
be spoken in a bunch of different places, then we're
going to focus on language revitalization, which means we're pulling
(10:28):
it back up to a place of strength. Sometimes it's
called reversing language shift, and so language shift usually means
for indigenous peoples you are shifting from fluency and knowledge
and communication in an indigenous language and slowly shifting towards bilingualism,
(10:48):
and then slowly shifting towards mono lingualism in a colonial language.
And sometimes it's not slow. Sometimes it's just a matter
of one or two generations. So then another category exists,
which is if nobody is speaking the language currently, especially
on a day to day basis, as a means of communication.
(11:09):
What we call a medium. Is it what people use
to talk about their day, talk about what they're doing,
talk about their thoughts, their dreams, their emotions, their feelings.
If that's not happening, then we're looking at language revival,
and there are languages who are coming back, wampanag Miamia.
We look at these languages and we we sometimes will
(11:30):
talk to some people. So we're going to try and
reach out to folks and see what they got going on,
and see what kinds of things that they want to
talk to us about. When it comes to language revitalization,
that might involve some things that they struggle with, and
it might involve some things that they have figured out
to turn the corner. But the other thing that sometimes
we need to talk about is to step outside of
(11:50):
the realm of specifically languages and look at structural racism,
look at colonialism, look at things like blood quantum appropriation,
and and so these things are related because there's an
awful lot that colonialism does to devalue people, to dehumanize people,
and to erase them, especially for indigenous people. You know.
(12:14):
So the perspective that we're gonna look at here is
usually what's going on in North America, and then what's
going on in Alaska? Then what's going on and sing
it on the the land of the thing get people's
so I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad you're listening,
and I'm so glad that I have an opportunity to
share these moments and these thoughts today. What we're gonna
(12:38):
try and do in this episode we just did sort
of like this opening boom episode one. Here we go,
let's get started this, you know, keep the energy up
because some of this stuff is it's hard. It's hard
to look American genocide right it's face and say no,
we'll do something different from this point forward. And that
(13:00):
means we got to talk sometimes about ally ship, we
gotta talk about what people do Are you a tourist.
Do you just live in some land and not even
understand that's that there's something else there, there's an indigenous
language of that place. Do you do you know what
the language is where you live? Do you know anything
about it? Could you understand it when people said something
(13:21):
to you? Could you say something to someone else? Are
you committed to making sure that that language lives? Because
if you live in America, you slip into a role,
and the role isn't as simple as one or the other.
But in some ways, if you're not doing something about it,
(13:43):
then you're probably contributing to the death of an indigenous language.
Because this is what we have. That's what we call
the hegemony, or if you speak a different dialect than me,
the Hedgeminy, where you had this active genocide where languages
were prohibited, children were tortured for speaking their language, people
(14:05):
were shamed. There's all kinds of active movements to to
totally displace the language and to devalue it. In addition,
spiritual practices, the ability to hunt and fish and educate
your people the way you want to those are all prohibited.
Cultural ceremonies prohibited. Somebody told me the other day. It's America.
(14:27):
People have always been free to do what they want.
It is absolutely not true, especially for Native American peopils,
especially for African American people, especially for lots and lots
of people, including our l g B, t Q plus community.
But we're going to advocate for change. We're not just
gonna sit here and tell you what's wrong. We're going
(14:48):
to talk about what kinds of things need to change
and what kind of things people have changed to create
a different reality. We reject manifest destiny in all of
its forms, is orically and currently that this is what
was supposed to happen, that this is a good thing
to happen. And by this I mean the elimination, the
(15:09):
annihilation of hundreds of Native American languages at the time
of contact, feeling a well over five languages. They have
a long and rich history tied to specific places. Some
of these languages like ling get we're around when there
is the mammoth was walking around, the saber tooth tiger
(15:32):
was walking around, and so just like thinking of this stuff.
They were here, we were here, they're gone, We're still here,
and we're going to be here. So at other times
we're gonna talk to some folks. We're gonna bring some
folks in here into just have a conversation, talk story.
(15:52):
I was very fortunate too to get a PhD in
Hawaiian and Indigenous Language and Cltural Revitalization from Cahakula okay
Ilklani College of Hawaiian Language at the University of Hawaiietilo.
I mean wonderful, wonderful friends there, colleagues, people who have
(16:16):
unbelievable courage and ability and determination, and they have this
sink called kulan that it's it's their responsibility to share
what they have done and share the knowledge of how
they did it with others so that it can be adopted, replicated, utilized.
(16:38):
What we want to see is beautiful living languages all
across North America. If you're here, you're hanging out, you're
you're in, You're in, is a t you're with us,
We're going to be united. Will be a single thing
trying to do this stuff. So sometimes we'll be looking
(17:01):
at what do we need to be inspired, what do
we need to sort of build things systemically, and say,
thirty years from now, we're gonna be able to predict
what's going to happen because we are going to manifest
it into being, which is tough. Sometimes it's tough stuff,
but that's what we're here for. Other times, we're gonna
look right at this sneaky, ugly, terrible thing as colonialism
(17:29):
in genocide. That doesn't mean that people aren't welcome here.
We're not discriminated against people. I saw someone the other
day said, well, talking about being unvaccinated and saying we're
the most hated and discriminated groups since slavery. That kind
of stuff is garbage. I mean, you might feel bad,
(17:52):
but you don't have to use such hyperbole that you
try to diminish the incredible suffering of people's And we're
talking about ancient, ancient history. Just ain't going back to
the mammoth as well. I worked with elders ever since
I started learning to sing it. Some of them ninety
years old. Yeah, and you know they passed away a
(18:16):
few years ago. I love them. Shikshaani marche Dudson, beautiful
human being, so brave, so intelligent, so wonderful. And she
told me what happened when she went to school she
was five years old. She lived this torture. We were tortured.
So what she told me, we were tortured. And sometimes
(18:38):
we're gonna take a look at this stuff and and
we'll get some trigger warnings, and we'll also talk about
what can you do to heal from this stuff? What
can you do to move on so that the trauma
is not something you carry on a day to day basis.
It doesn't mean you just forget it, but you engage
in cultural ceremonies, you engage with generations to let go
(19:00):
of some stuff that might be holding you back as
a people. And so sometimes we're gonna look at this
stuff too, from from these different perspectives. Say, there's like
a little cup of coffee. We call it the micro
and this is individuals and families. What can they do?
What can they do to make sure that their indigenous
(19:21):
language is the language of power and use. A lot
of that comes down to choices. If you're not speaking
your indigenous language right now, you were going to have
to rearrange your life and means you have to be
around people who are speaking it and learn it, and
you have to create a whole different sense of time
and being. It's okay, you can do it. Then sometimes
(19:44):
we're gonna look at this medium cup of coffee, the meso.
And this is looking at institutions, organizations, communities, regions, what
kinds of things need to change at that level in
order to ensure that the language has survived. And this
is often normalization. And we're gonna talk about all these terms,
(20:05):
what the stuff means. You have to be a linguist
to be here. You had to you you were what
we need to keep going. Everybody's going to bring something
to the table. And you know what this table is set.
This table is set. One of my ancestors, Donna walk
coustin him and he said he had a dream. And
(20:26):
in this dream, a whole bunch of elders sitting in
this room who were passed away when he was younger,
and all their favorite foods there's waiting. That's what's going on.
All those ancestors. They're there with all those foods they've
they've made it for you, and they're looking at you.
They're saying, how could runk? How? They said, come here, grandchild,
(20:55):
come here, Come sit by us, Come sit I guess,
And we're gonna sit by them, and we're gonna sit together,
and sometimes we're gonna get ready to get up out
of our chairs. And go do something, Go change something,
go make something. You have clear a path for someone
(21:18):
that was cleared for you. We're gonna do this stuff together.
I'm so glad you're here. I'm so glad this has started.
This is just the beginning. Episode one. It's gonna drop.
We got a lot more to do right now. We're
gonna go to take break. Someone's got to keep the
(21:39):
lights on. Someone's gonna keep this thing going. And they're
gonna tell you who they are right now. We're thankful
for our sponsors, thankful to my Heart Media Network. And
I'd say we even though it's right now it's just
me sitting here talking to you, but the we there's
a team behind this as people the next up Initiative
(22:03):
on a host knee Joel Monique. They put this together.
They thought, we're in the door. We're holding this door open.
We're and go get some people and bring him through
this door. And if you can make something happen, if
you can, if you have figured out a way to
do something, you hold that door open for others. Sometimes
(22:27):
the things in this world will show you this for
you. You You gotta get as much as you can. No,
this is for you. You gotta prepare it for the
future generations. That's what we're gonna do together, gonna cheech,
thank you. We're back in the minch. What's happening, baby?
(22:49):
This colonization should got you down. You gotta get on
this decolonization. It's time with languid revitalized. I should laclaus
North America, the land, the language coming back into the
hands of future generations where it all blows, drives up
and have your voices be heard. Defeat all the colonial
(23:13):
forces that try to hold you down. Uh haska has
(23:38):
our truisy a gutas our set Are you a TANKI
has too towards a gooik gitar haskaska yahkusti has ya
wood clock ah cash has ours has to eat a
(24:05):
key HOUSTI ask to your hie te ya hashiko has
our has to todayaki at the trunky sani has to
how you katangi gay woot gayet their quote claire pa
(24:33):
pas ti think it yeah, oh, welcome back. You could
(25:26):
hear them at the end of that song saying you
go one, you go one, be of brave heart, be
of brave heart. In our language and our culture. You
you yell out at people when they when they need help,
you help him out. Welcome back. So glad you're here.
(25:47):
Had to say it twice. You know you stuck around
through these parts. So what we're gonna talk about now
is the shouldn't get people. We're gonna ground this into
a specific place. I want to talk about a few
other people in all Alaska, and I want to start
by translating what I said after the break. So what
I said after the break was long ago. They tried
(26:12):
to wash it out of our mouths. They tried to
pour it just underneath the soil, our way of life,
but they couldn't defeat us. They didn't know that we're
seeds in the remains of our ancestors. We're like a forest,
(26:32):
and we're going to make sure that the language flows
through the mouths of future generations. So for a lot
of indigenous languages, what we're looking at here is can
we can we get the babies to talk? Can we
get the babies to talk? Can we get the adults
to start healing living a life that has a little
(26:53):
bit less damage to one another, damage to the self.
When we take a look at Alaska Native people, we
we see a lot of problems we see a lot
of difficulties. We see some of the highest, if not
the highest rates of suicide in the country. You be
(27:19):
of brave heart. We're gonna turn this thing around. We're
gonna we're gonna change the narrative because right now suicide
has been the leading cause of death for a last
Native youth. Its time for that to stop. So when
we come back to this song, So we've gone through
a couple of movements here in this episode. One and
(27:42):
one thing that I want to come back to is
identity chat Walter Sobeloff was an elder who lived to
be a hundred two years old. I spoke wonderful thing.
It wonderful English. It was such a kind, beautiful person.
And he told us the people who know who they
(28:02):
are don't kill themselves. Sometimes people ask me, they say, well,
what do you think is going on? And colonization it's
a hell of a thing. It's a hell of a thing.
So I was hanging out with some folks from Hawaii.
They're on the the Hookala Crew, the Pacific Island Voyaging Society.
(28:27):
One of his name is Uncle Billy, and we're just
having this conversation about colonization and the way he broke
it down. As he says, there's like these four pillars,
these four things. They eliminated the warrior societies. They made
it illegal for the men to gather to strength, trained
to do the things that they did to prepare themselves
(28:49):
to protect their communities. They raped and murdered the women.
They still do. They still do. They separate the people
from their language, and they separate the people from the land.
Then you conduct us what's called inward banishment, where you
(29:11):
cannot be yourself. It was legislated out it was illegal
to be a Native American. And what they did is
they said, now you have to be us. But then
at the same time they said you can't be us
because you're not as good as us. There's remnants of
all this stuff. There's remnants of this. As we sort
of look at how things work in education, we look
(29:33):
at that there's all kinds of echoes and ghosts from
all of this stuff of white supremacy and attempted indigenous genocide.
So let's start by rooting ourselves and shin get on me.
I am double eagle Kaganida. The language of our people
is hot kill. That's my grandmother's people. Now my grandfather's
(29:54):
people are should Get. We are Shukati. We use identify
with the ray and Saki crests are from this place
called foot Some people call it Chilkoot. So I guess
we're starting with the land. If Singe Land stretches on
the northwest coast and what is now southeast Alaska and
(30:15):
also northwestern Canada. If sing Get Annie collectively for a
state in the United States, it would be about largest
state in the United States. So it's it's a sizeable
chunk of land, a lot of people, a lot of clans,
(30:37):
a lot of migrations. Two main sort of components to
the culture, which is people who live on the ocean
and people who live in the interior. H kosh Ling
get live on the ocean, Costing get live in the interior.
So there's a bit of a cultural difference there. But
it's one language, one language with several dialects. The dialects
(31:01):
are important, but they don't prohibit people from talking to
each other at all. Sing At people. We are known
visually for chill cap blankets, woven baskets, long houses, totem poles,
dugout canoes. That's all us. That's all Northwest coast people's,
(31:21):
we traded, we intermarried, we traveled. Sometimes we find so
the thing at people's from a cultural perspective, are broken
into two different sides. So you are what your mother is.
You inherit a clan through your mother, and that clan
belongs to when in English we call a moiety, And
(31:44):
so you can be either the eagle or the wolf side,
or the raven or the crows side, and you're supposed
to marry into the opposite side. The thing at people's
we've been dealing with, We've been dealing with colonizers for
quite some time. We're looking at early to mid seventeen
(32:05):
hundreds when a lot of the contact was beginning to happen,
and then a huge shift with a war between Ka Kun,
the people of Sitka, and the Russians. Not long after that, well,
I guess maybe sixty years after that, perhaps Alaska is
(32:25):
sold to the United States and it becomes a territory
of the United States of America. So at that point
there is a shift. There's a decided shift as education
goes from bilingual education, which is what the Russians had
in a lot of places, going on to mono lingual
(32:48):
in English and then also it begins as transition of
beginning to outlaw the thing of language, to outlaw the
thling of culture. There were times in the early nineteen
hundreds where cling At people were not considered citizens of
the United States. They could not claim land, they could
not vote, they could not decide where to send their
kids to school, they did not have reservations like sometimes
(33:11):
some places in Lore forty eighth. They were able to
maintain a lot of their original communities, but they were
not able to retain their ability to speak their language.
It is well documented what has happened to our pupils
when they went to school. A lot of them experienced
(33:33):
abuse and torture, a lot of times for just being themselves.
Five year old kids going to school get picked up
by their hair shaken and stuff chemicals, rags that are soaking,
chemicals stuffed into their mouths for speaking their language, getting beaten,
getting told to go put their tongue on a frozen flagpole,
(33:56):
all kinds of stuff. And these aren't just worries from
our native people's I talked to elders who went through
this stuff, who saw this stuff, who told me about
this stuff. But there are also white school teachers who
wrote books about this to brag about what they did,
soaking rags and chemicals and stuffing it into kids mouths
(34:17):
because they're speaking their own language. So one of the
things that we need to understand in North America is
that Native American language loss is a product of American
genocide of Native American people's. It was regulated, it was enforced,
it came from government, it came from churches. And so
(34:37):
sometimes we're gonna talk in this podcast. We're gonna bring
some people in to talk to us about accountability for this.
You can't just do stuff and then watch people die
because of what you've done. So we got some work
to do, and we're going to talk as well, what's
the role of everybody here? And not every language is
(34:59):
the same. Some anguages will say you're not from our people,
you don't speak our language, is ours. Others say everybody
here should learn it. Like if you go to a
lot of different countries, you learn the language of that
country if you want to go stay there. So there's
a couple of sort of things that I tend to
(35:19):
tell people because sometimes I have colleagues where I work
and they say, I really love what you're talking about
what you're doing. I just don't know if it's for
me and what does that mean? And sometimes I say, well,
yess choices. And because of so much stuff that has
happened before you, the way things have been set up,
(35:42):
it's not just free, free flowing choice. I can just
be me and not affect other people because there's too
much stuff in motion now. So that means you could
be a tourist and just float around the land and
wander beyond by it and be somewhat oblivious to some
(36:03):
of the things that are going on, where you could
be colonizer, which in actuality is a genocider, and it's
either conscious or not conscious, meaning yeah, yeah, there should
only be English and we should get rid of these
other things. And there's still people say that today the
(36:23):
passive genocider understands what's happening but doesn't do anything. This
is sometimes called white silence. These are the there's some
things so we're gonna talk about not today today, We're
just gonna just break this ice on a We're gonna
(36:48):
start hammering the ice and sometimes I'm gonna switch to
sing it. It just it roots me into some of
my thoughts, some of the thoughts of my ancestors, and
some of the things is that there's sometimes hard to say.
So I'll say I'm and think it, because then that
will help me to say it in English. But for now,
(37:08):
we're gonna take another transition and we're gonna come back
and we're gonna do my first interview, which is with
my little babies. It's kind of mess, but you know what,
We're just getting started. We're just getting started. I am
connected to a lot of people working in languages and
a lot of different places. I got a pH d
(37:30):
in Hawai. I've got some wonderful friends and colleagues who
are there. I made friends with folks who are working
in languages all across North America, a lot of them
in Alaska, and I'm gonna reach out try and get
them to have some conversations, and we might talk about
blood quantum. We might talk about the willingness to communicate.
(37:50):
We might talk about transforming the social fabrics so that
we can elevate the prestige of our languages. And we
might talk about how do we overcome generations of trauma
from people. You know, there's other elders. She told me
(38:11):
her name is us claw. I had to call me again.
She said, you know what, nobody ever hit me for
speaking my language. But I had this one school teacher
every time I saw her. I was just a little girl.
Let's see her. She was white. Should come me over,
should say to me. You know, you people, you think
you're just as good as us, but you never will be.
(38:34):
You're a second class citizen and you always will be.
This is a colonizer standing on land that she has
no ancestral connection to, talking to a noble person who
was born of the land, of the people, of the
language talking that nonsense. And this was not an isolated incident.
(38:59):
And this was someone who was just blabbing out what
a lot of people were thinking and a lot of
people were saying, probably in smaller circles. So sometimes we're
gonna have to talk about this fake concept, this lie
that is white supremacy, and we're gonna have to look
(39:21):
at this thing in a bunch of different ways because
it's an ugly beast, ugly beast. But hang out, stick
with it. We're gonna listen to some little some kids talk.
I try not to oh my kids up too high,
but they can understand their language. They can speak it
(39:42):
don't speak of that much. We will. We'll get into
that right after we take another break, going to cheech ye.
Whatever you're doing, if you're if you're working in indigenous languages,
this is made for you, and you should give a
hold of me and we should hang out. We should
(40:02):
figure out how to fix this whole damn thing. Little
bits at time, a little bits at time, that little
tiny cup, a bigger cup, and that big old bucket
of a cup. Gonna cheee. Once I thought about a
million birds all around the world sharing their songs, thinking
(40:25):
about the ways they have lived and they're gonna live,
and this is the way yet away Yeah, cock to
see wouchi yaka to dog gonna chee. Thank you so
(40:55):
much for listening to me eighty Listening is a precious thing.
Away k team, My wife and I have tried to
raise our three children with the thing at language, and
(41:20):
so this episode is going to conclude with an interview
with them, starting from the youngest to the oldest. I'm
gonna thank you to my children. They do a lot
that we ask of them, and was very proud. We're
sending them to culture camps. They're learning with lots of
(41:40):
other kids. So I hope you come back. I hope
we could talk. I hope you'll listen more. This has
been the tongue unbroken. What set you do a sock?
My name is Goda. I am sixty years old. I
think it. Yeah, DA's the cool dot to take rush
(42:06):
in kotsai, but yeah to cut you han douche a
cat douche is cat cheese. But she gives the coupe
gus cake is yeah, she come she do? Wait? Wait hey, hey,
(42:47):
h hey hey hey she come? No come she come?
(43:14):
Shame we hey, hey hey hey what's that you do
a sock? Short guy slash? Yeah okay? Coincau dasa used
(43:40):
to do, oh okay when I say how you tank?
Because our people the good things for others and animals,
and the great cock Camans tried to damage their language
(44:03):
so they couldn't speak it. Had to ask the Google
to because less people are starting to speak it and
it's starting to pass away. Were your tangy koti a
bouti and we school and just link it um It
(44:29):
was funny. I do insati my best tie and and
so are my other friends and link rainer he has
yes one themes were, yeah, clesh a ting it just
(44:50):
let crack in York because clink it is important to
us and you've been speaking it for more than a
hundred years. A cookie yah has as the two said, ah,
(45:18):
what's a has a cool? What's our equity? You good
get in classes a tina hayti because it's important to
us and we don't want it to pass away. What
(45:45):
we're going to have to speak another language, and we've
been speaking this one for years, so it's important to
us to us a good actin c has our school.
How you pink is luchen cheese. Okay, okay, what's you
(46:09):
do a sock um? That's case. I sucked out na
chikat quand I am kayana twitch. My clinking name is
cash Case. I'm from the Dudi clan. I'm Egomy. I
(46:30):
am from chilcat Kwan and my dad it's Raven Sarty.
My dad is Raven Starfish Raven good good. Oh, my
(46:53):
dad is Raven Sakai and that makes me look adi.
And I'm from the yoke at Quamic cleannesses and chikat
yo ka Tangi is a cool um. Not many people
know our language. I think only like I don't know
(47:19):
one twelfth of the world noser language. But now I'm
using fractions, which is gonna make re start getting dizzy
and past I was at people, takty um, we need
(47:41):
our language because it's an important it's an important part
in the Alaskan culture and people have depended on us
for years for trading and other Definitely I do saout
(48:02):
ya tonk um. My dad teaches me clinker and my
teachers at school. Seeing just what you um, I feel
(48:30):
very angry and sad and heard that people thought that
they could just come and teach everyone else to talk
their language online, like only speaking their language was a
real language. It's kin nick, do you need Jehuanian? Should
(48:56):
cut school? Who's the ten schoon? Day? Were good? N well?
Two year can? I was shot, Ye, you're a teen's
(49:17):
she equity? Wash away? How you're a tangi tooti and
to as to inconnique enough. He said that once his
friend told him that his he spoke, he went to
(49:41):
school and he spoke clink it and the teacher told
him to come here, and the teacher grabbed him by
his hair and shook him around and told him he
couldn't speak clink it anymore, else she would hit him.
I'll sell you. I feel very hurt by that, because
I don't think people should be allowed to do that
(50:05):
when their language is just another real thing and our
language is just another real thing too. Has the two
uk what's clinko has to eat? I think we could
(50:27):
teach lots of people the language by having more resources
and more videos and books and more podcasts and stuff.
Who just let colink it wasa has to eat the well?
(50:53):
I would probably say that you might not need clink
it everywhere around the world these days, or even around
in Alaska, but you it might be important, and it'll
be very important to our culture, and it will be
respecting and learning our culture, and lots of people appreciate that.
(51:16):
What's so how Cortique. If we didn't have our language,
then our culture and so many other cultures in Alaska
would not be around, or they would just disappear. And
then and then I don't know what we do which
(51:44):
town yes day to us as our school doc clink
It is kind of split into two main groups that
are the eagle and the raven groups. And eagle and
then there are other animals scattering mons there there's like
(52:06):
killer whale Eagle and Stocky Raven and um, I don't
know frog Raven and beaver Eagle the raven I don't
Know's a new quickend? The Italy days China? Yeah, okay, hey,
(52:45):
then what's a new quickend? The has been kind of
Nick's away. I picked up a bumble bee baby and
my moms sits stop it goodness cheese who che I
(53:10):
decided to us at um gonness cheese spe east. That
will do for this episode, folks. Episode number one is
in the books. If you live somewhere in North America,
check out what's going on with Indigenous languages near you.
(53:32):
See how you can be supportive, See how you can
learn more, do more, say more, change more. In the meantime,
those of you working the languages keep on going. Check
in here for regular updates conversations talking about how we're
going to stabilize, revitalize, and restore indigenous languages in North America.
(53:59):
Who chawe hakatue gonna chee Yeah, The Tongue Unbroken is
part of the I Heart Media Next Up initiative. You
should check out other Next Up podcasts such as Beauty
(54:20):
Translated and Black Fat fem. There will be five more
new shows coming out from the Next Up Initiative, so
watch for those. Gonna Cheese on as Joel Monique and
you send him at day in thank you so much.
The Tongue Unbroken is produced by Daniel Goodman, Gonna Cheese
playing big. Thanks for helping me. You can find Tongue
(54:44):
Unbroken on social media and you can find me on
social media under or do Uni Danuke. I'd be happy
to help you spell those, so reach out, let's chat.
Catch you next time. Gonna Cheese
Host
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
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