The Dominion - Vancouver Island

Hishuk Ish Tsawalk: Everything is One

stephlaw — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 09:08:04 +0000

Recovering an Indigenous language in Canada

MONTREAL—Kathy Robinson is a language warrior. At the age of 81, she is one of the last two fluent native speakers of Tseshaht (pronounced “tsi-sha-aht”), a language once popularly spoken on the west coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.

Tseshaht is not the only language indigenous to Canada that is at risk of disappearing.

Of the 50 Indigenous tongues in Canada, most are in danger of extinction. Globally, the last speaker of a language dies every two weeks. There are at least 2,500 endangered languages and dialects destined for extinction in the next 100 years, according to the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger.

“This all happened because of residential schools; we’ve almost lost everything,” said Elder Robinson when asked why her language is disappearing. “We’ve pretty well lost our language, except for a few that kept it.”

Elder Robinson said the residential school system played a huge role in diminishing the number of speakers of Native languages because Indigenous children were forced to speak English. Now, Robinson is fighting to keep her Native language alive.

“I’d just like to leave behind what I know, so the next generation will know this,” said Robinson, who is a mother of 10 daughters.

The Tseshaht people are one of 14 Nations that make up the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council.

Robinson has devoted the last 33 years of her life to creating language materials for the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations. Learning from her elders, she developed the foundations of the Tseshaht curriculum that is still used at the local Tseshaht community school. The school is called Haahuupayak, which means “a tool (yak) for teaching with love (haa huu pa)."

Over the decades, Robinson has revived dances, songs and stories for her community's children that are based on her early memories and on ethnographic interviews found in linguist Edward Sapir’s notes, which she has spent 15 years translating and analyzing.

Two of her daughters, Jessica Stephens and Katherine Robinson, are also involved in language revitalization. Jessica is a member of he First Peoples’ Heritage, Language and Culture Council (FPHLCC), which developed FirstVoices.com, an online language documentation and education resource.

“[My mother] brought along all her old memories to the children and teachers,” Stephens explains. Her mother started by translating simple objects from English to Nuu-chah-nulth. She then got excited about puppets, which led to translating all the English nursery rhymes, colours, numbers, animals and “everything on earth” into her language.

“There wasn’t any real money back then for a First Nations curriculum. My mother and her co-worker worked long, hard and cold hours to get this done,” Stephens said. “They worked for peanuts but their commitment and passion forged them on.”

Today, First Nations languages are taking on new forms. The FirstVoices team in British Columbia, of which Elder Robinson’s daughter Katherine is part, provides online tools to enable First Nations communities to preserve their Indigenous languages in digital form. New media tools now provide a new pathway for transmitting and conserving oral cultures threatened by extinction.

Soon First Nations people will be able to send text messages to each other in Indigenous languages—thanks to an innovative mobile application that FirstVoices will launch on April 22. It will be available in BC’s 34 languages, which include 60 dialects.

The new texting application, called FirstVoices Chat, is generating a huge buzz among First Nations youth.

“Access to the applications on mobile devices has really sparked an interest in youth to get involved with language. They are going to be able to text everyday in their own language,” said Peter Brand, FirstVoices Co-ordinator.

FirstVoices Chat is one of several new mobile apps that provide multimedia First Nations dictionaries and phrase collections with audio recordings, images and video. The apps are a mobile extension of language collections archived by First Nations communities at FirstVoices.com. They incorporate touch-screen keyboards that use the unique characters for each of the 34 Indigenous languages of BC, as well as an English keyboard.

FirstVoices also runs a language program called The Language Tutor, which has been implemented in several schools in BC. The software offers computer-based language learning courses that are tailored for specific First Nations cultures. Parents have used it in collaboration with local teachers to create successful language immersion environments in several communities.

"It's very exciting to see the new generation of language champions emerging right in front of us," said Peter Brand.

Jessica Stephens said her mother recognizes how essential computers are for revitalizing their language and developing new materials, but that taking computer courses brought up a lot of her mother’s fears from her experience in residential school.

“Her fear was up and she was resistant, but she had to go if she wanted her language to have a chance,” Stephens said. “So she overcame her fear and learned.”

“She liked it and was confused by it, but she kept typing and today she is an efficient computer geek,” Stephens added. “My mom is always on the computer translating the stories. She remembers the people who she is translating. She knows them and has talked to them so it is like she is the link. She loves, absolutely loves translating their notes.”

Elder Robinson is celebrated in her community for having contributed so much of her energy to create a Tseshaht dictionary, books of traditional mythology, collections of song lyrics and children’s stories.

Michael Kelly, a member of the Elders Team from the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, shares Robinson’s belief that residential schools and other historic assimilatory practices are the root cause of the demise of many Indigenous languages.

“When I came back from six years at residential school, I was like a stranger in my own family,” Kelly said.

For Kelly, six years was long enough to lose everything he once had.

“I used to be able to understand our language as a child,” he said. “When my mother died, when I was nine years old, I went to residential school and I was forbidden to speak it; I was a heathen if I spoke it.”

Kelly, along with 22 other elders from different communities in BC, are currently taking part in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s events scheduled in First Nations communities throughout 2012.

Kelly, in an interview in the city of Port Alberni, Vancouver Island, affirmed that the first step towards Indigenous language revitalization in Canada is the healing among the elders who survived residential schools.

“They come in with a lot of anger and guilt,” said Kelly of many First Nations elders. “'Why did I let this happen to me when I was so young?' They’ll blame themselves, and the priests and brothers and prefects, who taught us how to be guilty and think we are not worth anything, and that we are nothing more than drunken Indians.”

But that anger and guilt might be somewhat relieved for those sharing their stories—often for the first time—and by having their voices heard and their experiences validated, Kelly said.

“The pain does not go away,” said Kelly. “The healing is really important so they don’t have to walk around with their heads hanging down, not trusting people, afraid of who they are.”

Stephens affirmed that although healing is important for the elders, it is not an easy process.

“Spiritual healing can only take place when the elders are ready for it. It is a romantic thought that we open this healing door and they all walk in. Life is not like that. Some will never walk in, others will peek in, while still others will take a quick glance, feel too much fear, pain and shame and run far away. The severely wounded can’t even go near the door. Some people wish that we could just heal ourselves quickly and maybe it would go away and they wouldn’t have to hear it again.”

Anna Luisa Daigneault is an anthropologist and language activist from Montreal. She currently works for the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages in the US and is involved with several language revitalization projects in Peru, Paraguay and Chile.

Kathy Robinson

Sea Fare

Moira Peters — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 19:26:08 +0000

Cooking, Nuu-chah-nulth style

TRADITIONAL TERRITORY OF SNUNEYMUXW FIRST NATION (NANAIMO, B.C.)–At first glance, despite its unfamiliar title, Čamus looks like most other cookbooks. However, Čamus is a cookbook that is about more than just cooking. Čamus is about food, nature and language; it is a reflection of a culture, a way of life, and about preserving that way of life.

On the cover is a slice of moist salmon fillet arranged on a bed of leeks, celery leaves and the leaf of a skunk cabbage. A few sprigs of green onions are laid across the fish. Below, photos of berries, crab, sea urchin and mussels indicate that seafood and nature’s foods will be prominent in the Nuu-chah-nulth style cookbook. Good taste is also important. Čamus (chum-us) is an adjective meaning the satisfaction of being well-fed.

The cookbook contains recipes from the 17 Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations found on the west coast of Vancouver Island and the Makah First Nation of Washington State. In addition to the Indigenous cuisine, the reader is also introduced to the culture, language, and philosophy of the Nuu-chah-nulth.

Tom Happynook, President of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council, laments the drift away from the traditional foods. Although many elders still value the nutritional and medicinal benefits of the traditional Nuu-chah-nulth diet, eating traditionally is less common among young people.

There is scientific research linking eating traditional foods with eliminating obesity, heart disease, diabetes and other afflictions that plague Indigenous Peoples. This, says Happynook, “should be enough incentive to turn to our customary foods. Healthy people equals healthy communities.”

Happynook holds that eating is part of one’s cultural identity: “If we are to preserve our Nuu-chah-nulth-ness we must eat Nuu-chah-nulth foods.”

Dawn Foxcroft, spokeswoman for Uu-a-thluk (Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council Fisheries), sees “a lot of movement [projects, identified needs] in the communities towards a more traditional diet, eating foods from our territories and learning how to harvest and manage these resources.”

“With the cookbook we are also trying to promote the use of the resources—their use in a sustainable and respectful way—so that Nuu-chah-nulth people will go out into our territories and learn about harvesting, learn about management and the value of who they are and where they are from," says Foxcroft. "Also, we want people to go out with their families and learn how to harvest and where to harvest; this is one of the ways that keeps the culture alive and strong.”

Čamus includes a Nuu-chah-nulth Seasonal Round, a wheel that explains the territorial locales, months of the year and foods that are available for harvesting.

The cookbook cautions shellfish harvesters to check for water closures and never to harvest from water suspected of containing pollution.

Good food comes from a cared-for environment. Uu-a-thluk is devoted to the sustainability and management of the aquatic environment.

Each recipe in Čamus has a list of ingredients with instructions for combining and cooking. The cookbook is divided into three sections: ocean (with 39 fish-based recipes), beach (11 recipes) and land (15 recipes). The ocean-based recipes are tilted toward salmon (there are 15 salmon recipes); predictable, given the west coast locale and the long-intertwined history of the Nuu-chah-nulth people and salmon.

Many salmon lovers hold strong preferences between wild Pacific salmon and farmed salmon. Foxcroft finds, however, that consensus is lacking among the different Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations on this issue.

Consensus is not lacking about seafood. Fish, chiton, clam, oyster, mussel, barnacle and sea urchin recipes are found in Čamus. The land section carries recipes for duck, elk and deer. There are also recipes for the popular fried bread bannock (sapnin).

There are some meatless recipes, but Čamus is not a cookbook geared to vegetarians.

The book is an invitation to the adventurous. Some of the ingredients will be outside the average person's food repertoire—for example, salal, fish head, chitons, marinated alaria and gooseneck barnacles. Two recipes even feature whale meat: whale jerk candy and whale in the middle.

Like berries? There is also a seasonal berry chart for salmonberries, salal berries, bog cranberries, thimbleberries, huckleberries, wild strawberries, raspberries and blackberries.

The cookbook is peppered with tips like: “Salal berry leaves make a good antacid. Chew the leaf and suck juice from it.”

For the sun-dried berry candy recipe, Mamie Charles of the Hesquiaht First Nation remembers, “We used to use skunk cabbage [timuut] leaves for drying the berries, instead of cardboard.”

The Nuu-chah-nulth recipes indicate a non-wasteful, conservation ethic.

Says Foxcroft, “Nuu-chah-nulth people, like many other First Nations people, traditionally use all of an animal. I think that it is about respect for the animal and the connection to food and where the food is from. For example, when you prepare salmon, people use all of it; people eat the head, eyes, cheeks and skin. Where other people may throw away the salmon head, for many Nuu-chah-nulth it is a treat. Traditionally, the bones were put back in the river or ocean where they came from.”

Čamus offers much: from photos (black-and-white and colour) and illustrations to Nuu-chah-nulth vocabulary with each recipe and a phonetic alphabet at the back of the cookbook; there are sections devoted to canning salmon and underground baking; there is a recipe for kelp chips and a page devoted to kelp facts.

If the aphorism “you are what you eat” is valid, then Čamus is a great way to gain insight into the Nuu-chah-nulth people and at the same time reward one’s health and palate.

Bon appétit!

Kim Petersen is the Original Peoples Editor at The Dominion.

Gooseneck Barnacles

Vancouver Media Co-op Tour, Days 1-2

Maya Rolbin-Ghanie — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 04:59:17 +0000

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Picture 1: The Vancouver Media Co-op tour kicked off in Victoria BC at the Camas Bookstore and Infoshop. About a dozen people showed up, and in spite of technical difficulties which prevented us from showing the Media Co-op's promo video (filmed in Halifax during our February tour), the discussion was a success, as folks were enthusiastic and interested in finding ways of supporting and collaborating with the Media Co-op on independent media projects that are already up-and-running in Victoria. An organizer from Indymedia Victoria attended the event and gave an update of events after the talk. Another organizer there is starting a news site called B Channel News in response to Victoria's mainstream A Channel.

Picture 2: After Victoria we headed to Nanaimo to speak to people at Radio Malaspina(CHLY), the town's campus community station. Four people came out, but they were incredibly enthusiastic and spent some time brainstorming ways that Nanaimo could fit into the Vancouver Media Co-op picture.

Picture 3: After the talk in Nanaimo we were interviewed on the Popular Participation Movement (PPM) news show. The PPM is a a group that mobilizes against war and empire. Most notably, they have staged theatrical demonstrations for four years in a row now to oppose Nanaimo's annual Empire Day celebration. The following morning, the Media Co-op snagged an interview on CBC Victoria news.