At the other end of his life span, as all the elders have died off, Johnny finds himself linguistically isolated once again. “I have to talk to myself,” he explains. “There’s nobody left for me to talk to. All the elders have passed on, so I talk to myself…. That’s just how it is.” Johnny brought tears to the eyes of the Sundance audiences with his story, and he has become a highly visible and eloquent spokesman for dying Native American languages. “Sometimes I cry,” he says. “It’s not just the language that’s dying, it’s the Chemehuevi people themselves.” Johnny has made efforts to pass the language on to his own children and others in the tribe. “Trouble is,” he explains, “they say they want to learn it, but when it comes time to do the work, nobody comes around.”
FROM FIRST CONTACT TO WAL-MART
The Washoe people of Nevada live just a short drive from heavily touristed Lake Tahoe, a body of water they consider sacred, called in their language Da ow a ga, “Giver of Life.” Washoe ancestors cared for these lands for millennia in a sustainable manner, harvesting acorns and elderberries, cutting willow shoots to weave baskets, using controlled burning techniques to refresh grazing lands for animals, setting willow-branch fish traps in the streams. In a Washoe origin myth, cattails turned into people: some became Miwok, others Paiute, and still others Washoe. The myth reveals a belief in relations not only among kindred tribes but also between plants and people.2
I visited the Washoe in 2007, invited by linguist Dr. Alan Yu, who has devoted years to cultivating a close collaboration with the Washoe elders and documenting their language. In a double-wide trailer that served as the Washoe cultural center, we sat down with tribal elder Ramona Dick.3 With the camera rolling, Ramona enthralled us with the story of her grandmother, who witnessed the arrival of the first white people in Nevada, coming over the mountains. She reminisced about a childhood when Lake Tahoe was pristine, and when the local monster “Tahoe Tessie” was seen to trouble the waters. She explained why pine nuts are sacred to her people, and how they have become com-modified and ruined, now sold at the local Wal-Mart but lacking in flavor. Tribal youngster Danny, a younger speaker in his 20s, joined the dialogue to talk about his efforts to keep and teach the language, and how it is connected to nature and basket-weaving and other aspects of life.
Ramona’s story of first contact with white people—told in the style of a typical Washoe oral narrative—went like this:
My grandmother said, when the white people came, they saw them because there was a trail you know where you go over [Highway] 88, over that, it was just a little trail. And she said the white people came over with their wagons and you know how they brought some cows with them and they came on horses. And they were surprised to see white people, you know, and they had their hats on and you know how they used to dress, and when they saw them she said they were so surprised they just stood and watched them, you know, when they passed by. That’s the first time that she saw white people, she said, when they came over on their trail….
And she said that’s when she saw them, when the white people came…. And they settled, and she said when they came to see them they brought…them gifts, flour and some other stuff. That’s where the first time they start learning how to eat the white man’s food, is what she told me….
Washoe elder Ramona Dick (born 1933 or 1934), shown here in Nevada, 2007.
And some of the men started to kinda help, you know, the white men, when they were starting to settle in, and that’s how they worked and they got, like, material and the beads and stuff that they started to use, that’s how they came into that, you know, the beads that they used…. That’s when the Indians started working for the white people when they, you know, start building their settlements, wherever they picked their lands. I didn’t see it, but that’s what she told me, that’s what her grandfather, and when she was with her father, my great-grandfather, and her mother, when they all saw the white people when they first came. So, you know, they got to see that, I didn’t, but she told me that they saw the white people when they first came.
From that moment, cultural change crashed in upon the Washoe with lightning speed. Ramona Dick’s lifetime spans memories of first contact and traditional acorn collecting, on one end, to near complete assimilation into modern American society on the other. Much of this acculturation was foisted upon the Washoe; the children were sent to boarding schools, and their language choices coerced. To understand why the language had been largely abandoned, Alan asked about Ramona’s experiences in elementary school:
ALAN: And were all the people at the school Washoes?
RAMONA: Yeah, they were all Indian kids.
ALAN: So did they all speak Washo then?
RAMONA: No. There was a lot of kind of older ones, well, a lot of the younger ones, too. But our teacher always told us, you know, that we couldn’t talk our language, we had to learn English. That’s what they always said to my sister when she went to boarding school in Stewart. She said they were told not to speak their language, because they were there to learn how to speak English. My father said when he went to school here, him and his friends, he said, they all talked Washo and they would laugh ’cause they would say things funny and you know, the teacher didn’t like that, he told them not to do that anymore [laughs]. But I think the reason why a lot of the Indian kids never really kept up with their language was because they were told not to speak their language.
ALAN: But your school didn’t do that to you?
RAMONA: Well, we spoke out of the school, but not in the school. When we went out for recess or lunch or wherever we’d get together, it was kind of fun to talk. A lot of the kids didn’t really know what you were saying, so it was kinda fun, you know [chuckles]. But they always thought, you know, when you speak your language they think you’re talking about them. I think that’s why they didn’t want you to speak your language…. We all talk Washo, and then we would laugh and people that come in, you know, think we’re talking about them and they’ll say, “What did they say?”
We also interviewed Danny about Washo’s future in his generation. As Danny told us: “The way I see language now is that we’re kinda grasping at straws, trying to save what we can. The old people, they’re all going. We just had two of them pass away not too long ago…. They’re the ones that should be teaching this. I don’t feel I should be the one going out doing it. And the people, they don’t want to learn, or they don’t have interest in our culture and our language, it seems like. Only a little bit over here and a little bit over there. And, it seems like, they’re waiting till the last minute, and by the time they wanna try to learn it, it’s gonna be too late.”
“It’s different for me,” Danny said with a sigh, “’cause I’ve always been interested in my culture. But there’s a lot of the nonnative influence in the younger people, and they don’t wanna learn or do, like, how they used to do. ’Cause the way they used to, like, get food and stuff like that, it wasn’t easy. It was hard work. And sometimes they don’t like how it tastes, like our acorn biscuits. It’s kinda bitter if you don’t…you have to acquire a taste for it. When I was little I used to spit it out,” he said, laughing.
All the time we were talking, Danny held in his hands woven strands of straw and bark that he braided for basketry. I asked him, “How do you connect traditional activities, like basket-making, to language-learning?”
“It’s all the same,” he replied. “We talk about the baskets, what kind of different baskets they are, the tools that you use, what the other stuff is called. And when I teach a basket class, I don’t like them to speak in English. The words, like for an awl when you make a bowl basket, that’s called a mibi’, and that’s what I teach them to call it. And your knife is taowi’, and that’s what they gotta call it. So every class I teach, is all, there’s language there, because our culture and our language is all one and the same, you can’t have one without the other.”
Alan asked Danny, “If you were an elder for a day, and it we
re completely up to you how to go about trying to revitalize and preserve the language, what do you think would be the best way to go about doing things like that? What’s your vision for Washo?”
“Hmmm. We’d need an immersion type thing. My brother had an idea that you take some teenagers and put them in a house with two elders that spoke the language and just have the elders talk to them in nothing but Indian. That would be the fastest way to learn it. ’Cause the way I learned to talk Washo was real hard. I learned it one word at a time, in the beginning. And just in the past two years I started putting it together. And then it’s a certain way that you’ve got to put it together—you don’t talk like you talk in English. And then there’s little, just little sounds that changes the word or changes the tense or whatever. The more I hear it, the more I understand it and I speak it better. So when I’m around my elders and we’re out by ourselves I try to have them talk to me and I talk to them or I ask them, ‘Would you say it like this, or how would you say it?’
“Growing up,” Danny recalled, “we used to have our slang words and stuff like that. What we called the ‘dirty words’ when we were little kids.” He laughed. “They’re not dirty words, they’re just body parts and functions and whatnot. But when you’re little, you think that’s bad.
“They taught us to count in Head Start…body parts and stuff like that. And then I went away to Reno and I came back when I was in high school, and these kids, they didn’t even know how to count. When they were trying to talk about a nonnative person and say d’bo’o, they said it real funny. I remember, like, ‘What’d you say?’ Just how they said it. And I said, ‘Oh, you mean d’bo’o’. ’Cause I grew up saying that, and it sounds crazy when they said that to me.
“It’s frustrating,” Danny said about the attitudes of his peers. “I wish that people would try to preserve it now while there’s people that still talk it, grew up talking it. ’Cause when it’s gone, it’s gone, and you’re not gonna get it back. Those CDs that we have from Jacobson’s collection, they’re all in Indian. If you don’t speak the language, you’re not gonna know what they say. And they’re gonna be of no use to people next.
“Lately, my aunt Dinah’s been making me pray. And I don’t feel right doing that, because we’re supposed to stand behind our elders, and so I always tell her, ‘No, you’re supposed to do it, you do it and I’ll go along with you.’ And, it’s really, like, I feel real loneliness, when I’m praying. When they’re not there with me, I don’t know, it’s just kinda like, well what am I doing?”
I wondered whether there was a particular place or occasion for Washoe prayers. Ramona had told us the day before that they prayed to the pine nuts when collecting them. I asked Danny about it.
“The way they used to do it,” he explained, “was when they felt the need for it. Usually when you wake up in the morning, you wash your face and you pray. Or when you go out and gather something, you gotta talk to that, whatever it is you’re gathering, and you talk to it and tell it why you need it…. It’s whatever comes to you at the moment. But it’s usually just, like, so we’ll feel good and get along and be strong and not sick and stuff like that. But, like, if you’re praying for something specific, you’ll just talk about that.”
Wrapping up the interview, I asked Danny if some things are easier to talk about in Washo than in English, or maybe vice versa, easier in English. I thought perhaps he could identify ideas or concepts special to Washo but alien to English.
Danny did not hesitate: “Jokes. When you tell a joke in Indian, it just sounds really funny, it’s really vivid. And then if you translate it into English, it don’t sound right. And then, like, to get mad, that’s best to talk in English when you’re mad, ’cause our language don’t really have a lot of stuff for that.”
Leaving the Washoe land, we marveled at how much the elders and Danny had shared with us in just a few short days of interviewing. I recalled the laughter—the ability of the Washoe to laugh at simple things like the mispronunciation of words, and also to see irony in profound things like the destruction of their culture, their acorn trees, their Lake Tahoe by an invading culture. Ramona recalled that someone had once asked her if Lake Tahoe could be saved. “Yes, if you get rid of the white people,” she reported having said, in jest, but also revealing a deeper sense of responsibility for what has happened to the Washoe. As Danny noted, indifference and lack of interest can kill the language, and few young Washoe seem to share his sense of urgency. But Danny’s energy and vision can also go a long way. Since he is a young man, Washo may still be with us, not only in recordings made by concerned linguists like Alan but also in Danny’s mind, and on his fingers as he weaves baskets, for decades to come.4
HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT
Lots of people in Pennsylvania speak Lenape every single day, when they say local place-names like Pocono, which means “a stream between mountains” Neshaminy, “two streams” or Wissahickon, a “catfish stream” that runs through Philadelphia.5 Without even knowing it, these daily commuters read and speak ancient Lenape words, many describing local rivers and landscapes. In contrast to the millions who unknowingly utter Lenape words, only a handful consciously speak the language.
Lenape has already been declared extinct by experts, and the tribe itself is fragmented between disparate bands in Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Canada, and Wisconsin. Among these groups, contested claims to authenticity sometimes arise. The Oklahoma band points to its historical pedigree and official status as the survivors of forced migrations westward from their eastern homeland. But some Lenape stayed behind, hid, blended in, intermarried, or assimilated. Remaining in the traditional homeland of the Delaware Valley, their descendants also claim Lenape bloodlines. Some of the Oklahoma Lenape folk discount their eastern cousins, suggesting that they have a lesser claim on Lenape identity. But miraculously, and hiding in plain sight, the Eastern Lenape have managed to keep not only their traditions but also their native tongue in their hearts and minds.
Even while leading scholars declared it extinct, Lenape persisted. Chief Bob “Red Hawk” Ruth grew up not far from Philadelphia with a secret: He speaks Lenape. As assistant Lenape chief Shelley DePaul describes it, Bob grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania, on a farm. His father was Native American, and his mother was not. His family stayed fairly self-contained in their home area. “Lenape family units comprise a community which shares the same beliefs,” Shelley notes, “and so in Bob’s community, elders would travel for miles, because they were close to his family, and they would teach and persevere their culture…. The Lenape people that speak the language know important words like familial words, prayers, and directions.”
Bob Red Hawk belies the pernicious myth of the “vanishing Indian” and shows that Native American cultures have not disappeared, as some may have wished, but have evolved. As they become newly assertive and confident in their cultural values, their neighbors may be surprised. Most Pennsylvanians believe that there are no local Indians. Even people who may have attended Lenape High School in Medford, New Jersey (the school website shows a blonde cheerleader wearing an Indian feather headdress), may suppose that other than a school mascot, all the rest lies in the dust of history. How surprised would they be to hear Chief Bob stand up in Philadelphia, right on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, and offer a prayer in Lenape?
Though the official count of Lenape speakers is only about three, that number is now growing, thanks to a bold experiment being carried out at Swarthmore College by Shelley DePaul. As a former schoolteacher, Shelley has devoted years to compiling and studying all available archival records of Lenape, often written in illegible (except to specialists) phonetic symbols. She traveled many miles to collect knowledge from the elders, organizing it into textbooks, committing it to memory.
“What I’m finding from most families that still maintain the language,” Shelley says, “is that they maintain important words, such as the words for the directions, the word for creator, certain pray
ers. They know familial words for mother, brother, father.”
Decades of dedication led to Shelley’s current ability to converse in the language, to say prayers, blessings, plain old everyday talk, and even bad words. Shelley also worked with Bob Red Hawk and others to ensure Lenape’s adaptation to 21st-century life. As Shelley notes: “There has been modernization of the language by creating new words to apply to technology or modern things: ‘brain in a box,’ dumhokus, for computer; shukal for sugar. There are two ways the Lenape have created words, to borrow the word and just change the pronunciation or to make up a completely new word.”
In 2009, a select group of Swarthmore College students enrolled in Shelley’s newly formed Lenape class. For the first time ever, Lenape was being taught at an institution of higher learning in the Lenape homeland, the Delaware Valley. It was a historic occasion. The table in the seminar room was piled high with cultural artifacts—baskets, animal pelts, bead necklaces, and the like. The students grappled with the immense complexity of Lenape verb forms. Their efforts did not go unnoticed by the Lenape diaspora, and they had a positive impact. Shelley recalls telling the Lenape in Canada and Wisconsin about the Swarthmore students’ efforts: “I’ve shown the work that the kids are doing and they [the Lenape in Canada] were amazed! [People] think Native Americans often have this defective attitude like, ‘No, our language is just gonna die,’ and it brings tears for them to see—and I’m tearing up right now because I’m amazed at the work that these kids are doing…. So it does feed back into the community the work that they’ve done.”6
Shelley DePaul, assistant chief of the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania, teaches Lenape to students at Swarthmore College, 2009.
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