The Language is Life Conference for California Indian Languages

By Alison Owings

“If I can learn it, anyone can learn it,” said Richard Bugbee, getting a roomful of laughs at the Marin Headlands Institute.  Although he is Luiseno, he was talking about learning to speak Kumeyaay.  “Immersion is the way to go.”

The sentiment was repeated often in the early April three day Language is Life Conference sponsored by AICLS: Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival.  Immersion – especially using AICLS’s “master apprentice program” — is one of the best ways to learn.  To eat, you better learn the words for food.

Bugbee, a member of the AICLS board of directors, was one of dozens of speakers who addressed hundreds of participants – students and scholars and teachers who are working passionately to preserve – and in some cases, trying to restore — California’s Native languages. 

The mood throughout this 8th Language is Life conference held under sunny skies seemed a mixture of pleasure (teaching toddlers to talk their tribal language… even when mom and dad are only a step ahead themselves), frustration (why are casinos not funding Native language efforts more?), and a race against time.  Nancy Richardson Steele (Karuk) said when she was young, there were some 200 Karuk speakers in her tribe.  Recently, only 11 were left.

Not only are such treasures dying out, they – and people who manage to learn their Native language later – face the indignity of not being officially credentialed by Calilfornia authorities as language teachers.  (See Sidebar, “Certification of Native Speakers.”)

Nobody (at least in the sessions I attended) said learning a Native language is easy, that is, if you are no longer a toddler.  Leo Canez (Karut/Yurok/Tohono O’odham) recalled making “excuse after excuse after excuse” not to learn, until one day hearing elders speaking among themselves, and realizing he did not know what they were saying.  He was thinking of all his good Native deeds, including working for the Seventh Generation Fund, but the elders were apparently unimpressed.  They wanted to know, What are you doing for your own people in your village? 

“I call that the `elder hammer,’” he said to more laughter.  As a consequence, Canez made three hours of recordings with one elder, put them in ipod format, and is now teaching Yurok at Humboldt State University. 

Elders!  They are the repositories of the languages, yes, but they certainly can be intimidating, said Stan Rodriguez, instructor of Kumeyaay at Kumeyaay Community College.  He recalled talking first with his tribal elders, before starting to teach.  “I got roasted and basted.”  They also paid little attention to his curriculum plan.  “Shut up, and listen to how we talk.”  Finally, he developed his own style, such as having students read Dr. Seuss books in Kumeyaay.  To learn the language of cooking, he brought in Coleman stoves, and had students prepare a meal of “Spam and commodity cheese.”  He even had students play Jeopardy in Kumeyaay, as well as also Family Feud.  “We called it rez rumble.” He brought in a vacuum cleaner and sheets, so students could learn the language of cleaning a house.  That was a problem: no word for vacuum cleaner.  He huddled with the elders, who came up with a word that means “thing that sucks up dirt.” 

While Rodriguez stressed innovation, and repetition, other speakers touted technology.  Dan Harvey, a non-Native software designer (”I get computers to do stuff.”) demonstrated, to oohs and aahs, a free downloadable program he developed to teach students not only to learn their own language, but to develop their own multiple-choice lesson plans.  As an aside, Harvey urged Native youth to consider careers in computer science, “a good field” in which Natives are underrepresented.

Inee Slaughter of the Indigenous Languages Institute demonstrated her group’s programs, adding that her “language geek guy” was able to design keyboards and fonts for each language, and could also transcribe the marks developed by linguist/anthropologist J.P. Harrington.  “Wowwwww,” breathed the audience. 

Former Salinan chairman Gregg Castro demonstrated how to access the Smithsonian’s National Anthropological Archives and retrieve data for language instruction.  He cautioned, in compressing CDs to mp3 files, sometimes compression loses changes in tone and  inflection.  It’s still worth the effort, he said, adding that he has five grandchildren under the age of four, and is the first person in a half a century in the family to sing them a lullaby in their own language.

What of languages with no more Native speakers at all?  That dilemma is addressed in the “Breath of Life” program, initiated by L. Frank (Tongva/Ajachemem).  In various sessions at the AICLS conference, she was in turns serious and joking, saying at one point, as she and others try to learn a Native language for which there’s no Native speaker, left,  “Nobody knows if you’re not saying it right.”  And, “you don’t worry about Native speakers dying out.”  (See Sidebar, The Keynote Speakers.)

Participants to the conference came from all over the state and beyond. Conference director Marina Drummer counted some 25 tribal affiliations, including Miwok, Maidu, Nisenan, Wintun,  Wiyot, Washoe, Tongva, Lakota, Elem Pomo, Luiseno, Yurok, Salinan, Ohlone,Chumash, Wukchumni, Tachi, Kawaiisu, Wailaki, Yowlumni, Achumwai, Hupa, Karuk, Cherokee, Quechan, and Mono.

Amid many, many stories, and simple ideas (tape the word for “teeth” on your bathroom mirror), the overarching sentiment was simple.  The effort to learn one’s language is important, the timing urgent.  And as Stan Rodriguez reports, the effort works.  “It’s like planting seeds, it may take months, but all of a sudden you have a little plant,” he said, remembering a time when he “realized all of a sudden, I was speaking Kumeyaay for two and a half hours!”

Education, and the right for Native languages to be a part of it, is one of the biggest issues facing language revitalization.  Sarah Supahan and Carole Lewis gave a presentation on the problem of certification for speakers, virtually none of whom have teaching credentials.  The “No Child Left Behind” policies are making it increasingly difficult for these language teachers, who have the rarest and most valuable knowledge – their tribal language – and yet are at best second-class staff, and at worst, not allowed to teach at all.  Supahan, Lewis and their colleague Marnie Atkins are fighting a battle now to follow several other states in establishing alternative credentialing procedures for Native language teachers, and to keep the current policy of allowing Native American languages that are taught in the schools of Humboldt County to fulfill the “foreign language” requirement for college entry.  (Changing the term “foreign language” would also be a good idea, they argue!)  Unfortunately, they are meeting with opposition from the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

One of the conference’s keynote speakers was Cody Pata, who is part Hawaiian and part Nomlaki, and has done credit to both his languages.  A well-known Hawaiian singer, Pata is also the Nomlakis’ tribal linguist (as he said humbly, “No-one else was interested – that’s why I got to hold that title.”)  Beginning at one of the early “Breath of Life” workshops, Pata became a skilled linguist, gathering all the information he could find on Nomlaki, and using techniques of linguistic reconstruction through comparison with related languages to expand the available vocabulary further.  The audience was impressed with Pata’s linguistic accomplishments, but for encores they wanted more Hawaiian chants.

The other keynote speaker was Ryan Wilson, past president of the National Indian Education Association.  “There is a fight now about who controls Indian education,” he said, “And language has a lot to do with it.”  Wilson was one of the the people responsible for the development of the Esther Martinez Native American Languages Preservation Act, which would support Native American immersion schools, the best hope of developing a new generation of fluent speakers.  When one senator placed a hold on the bill, Wilson and other proponents spoke to the Navajo code talkers, who were going to Washington.  The code talkers visited the senator, and one said “Years ago our country asked us to use our language as a weapon to help fight a war to save the liberties that we ourselves didn’t even have.  We raised the flag at Iwo Jima.  Now we are asking you to lift up our language like we lifted up the flag.”  The next day, the senator lifted the hold, and the Senate passed the bill.

(c) News from Native California, Fall, 2008

Posted on November 6th, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Uncategorized