January 23, 2024 • 71 mins
In episode 2, we are joined by Shodzi'dzo:wa:’ Damian Webster and Montgomery Hill who do amazing work in the Seneca and Tuscarora languages. We talk about their languages, communities, and work, and then give perspectives on what it takes to create speakers, and then talk about what it takes to keep going and not quit while doing this type of work. Keep on going, keep on believing, keep being the dream of your ancestors.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
They tried to colonizes, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on broke and hotlin gonna choose
you wait to cut you on Ya hutting a show
in the Haya takutziyayata. This is the tongue unbroken. We're
(00:41):
coming to you on the road and we're with two
very special guests here. We're going to talk about their
language program, what kinds of things they're doing, how people
might learn languages, and how we can be creating new
speakers in this era while we're trying to also decolonize
(01:02):
and manage programs and manage our lives and not go
crazy and not quit. So we're I'm excited. We're in
a hotel room. We just did a one day symposium
on languages, and so I'll let my two special guests
introduce themselves and we're going to get right to our topics.
Gonna cheese ya scan guego so know the walk got going.
(01:31):
Nate Nanny, John Good gig he those shown end us
Wonde Ny hold on Towny, hand on stok YAsO Nanny.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And the hand on the stock. Don't guess Nate Nanny
the gig die yet Ko walks home Gianna Wakiya naso
uh nate Na and a song got the stone jake
and he walked and they went and we caught he
(02:09):
said done. So my name is so Zitzowa, and I
said that my nation is Seneca Wa got the people
of the Great Hill and turtle clan gan Dan. I
live in Joan Good, which is called Akron. Some people
call that Hayong Gang. And then I grew up in Buffalo.
(02:34):
So do show where? Do show where? Between the bass
woods is the term for that, So there must have
been a lot of basswood in the area back in
the day when they named the town. I'm the director,
So doan dust on of Hanan Town, which is our
language program out at Tonawanda, and we have K three
(02:59):
uh pre K and then we have an adult full
fledge adult language program that's been going since twenty seventeen
and I've been directing there for In a couple of days,
it's going to be my seven year anniversary, So you know,
it's been pretty good. A lot of interesting work since
moving home, and what a difference being home versus trying
(03:24):
to learn from far away in New Mexico, Wisconsin, North Dakota.
Just being home is it's been a lot and a
lot of people have made themselves available to me in
my learning journey. So I'll just say that much right
now to get us started.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
It's awesome and Grilchieshan upcoming seven year anniversary, Like I
think this kind of work. You do it, and you
do it and you do it next thing. You know,
it's been five years and it's gonna be ten. And
then there's sports. I think that do get easier, but
then there's parts that are always just challenging and that
comes with being in communities that are struggling and being
(03:59):
with people that are struggling and trying to really create
a lot of shifts. So the cheese for sharing with.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Us, tent that's gonna have Montgomery Hill got that? Got you?
Etti on that? Gane decent that that what now? U
beak her? Not walk yeah? Hot? Like hell I get hot?
Ohch what got now? We asked the hot yeah hot
with that got god name? We asked top what air
(04:28):
on that?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Were you.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
On that?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
You with these?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
What airwell on that? Coasta? Hotanka got you trad that
when it has not well? He said not walk yeah hot,
Hey when a he got guy doctor walking in that
you do not care an quill on that ossin asse
(05:05):
diag guisa is h gary. I got hotet had to
hasten the hot dett. So Hello, my name is Montgomery Hill.
I am an assistant professor at University of Buffalo in
(05:27):
UH Indigenous Studies. I got my PhD in linguistics actually
from here from U B Well. I finished my dissertation
maybe end of twenty nineteen, and I was awarded my
dissertation my doctorate in twenty twenty. So and a little
bit more about me personally, I guess uh I live
(05:49):
on the Test Coordination UH territory. I'm over there by
loose in New York on the Niagara Escarpment. So I'm
I'm a member of the Tuest Coordination. I'm a citizen
of the Tuest Coordination, and I'm a member of the
Beaver Clan. I'm thirty three years old, and I've been
studying or been a part of language revitalization, like learning
(06:10):
how to speak our language, starting from like five years
old when I was first exposed to it in pre K.
We didn't really have language in my home. My dad's parents,
my grandma and Grandpa were multi lingual in our languages,
and that was actually a common situation back then for
(06:34):
our people to have knowledge of multiple of our languages,
and it's actually the case now even as people are studying.
It's a lot of our Tuscarora speakers now, a lot
of our adult learners actually went and did a year
of the Mohawk language training first, and that really enabled
(06:54):
I think their speaking ability, their confidence, and really strengthened
their identity is like indigenous people. So I'm really thankful
for that opportunity that that happened, and I'm thankful for
you for having me on the show now, Cheesh.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So, as language teachers and as language learners, as language scholars,
some of the things that I think keep me up
at night anyways, is how on earth do we make
new speakers right? And so when you have languages that
are used in fewer and fewer places, when you end
up with fewer and fewer people to talk to. Now,
I usually don't like to look at everything just in
(07:34):
terms of like what are we losing, but just sometimes
one of the patterns that emerges is we want people
to really understand how our language works. But if you
just explain your language all day every day. Then you
have people who could tell you how it works. But
then you say, look out the wind to tell me
what you see or respond to this language thing. Let
me ask you a question about how your days going,
(07:56):
how you feeling, what do you think about this thing?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What's your face?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Were kind of dog or just what whatever? The type
of thing you know? Where was the where was the
buffalo wing invented? Right? And so like as we talk
about those types of things. One of the things that
we want to do. Going back to something that doctor
Pilo Wilson said to us over at University of hawai
yat Hilo Kai, he said, the goal of language revitalization
(08:25):
is to protect the speakers you have well, making new ones,
and ensure that your language is the language of power
in you. So my question to you, folks is tell
us a little bit more about your language, and then
tell us how what's your what's your approach to making
sure that people can understand your language and can speak
(08:47):
your language?
Speaker 4 (08:48):
All right?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So I to walk go on.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Seneca language or the Seneca voice is the westernmost
language of the Roquoian dialects. So we have the six nations. Right,
we have Us and the Tuscarora, the Cayugas, on Adagas, Oneidas,
and Mohawks. And then you have the other Iroquoian languages
(09:14):
like Cherokee that that also share what we do even
now here on right here on and yeah, wyant. So
Seneca is the one on the west side of the Confederacy.
So Senecas are labeled sometimes as the keepers of the
western door and even that though that actually refers to
(09:35):
two chiefs, Donny Hogatwa and Gonna Eat Dewhee are the
keepers of that western that dark doorway. But we're the
westernmost language, so we've gone through the most morphological changes.
A long time ago, our language used to sound more
like Mohawk. But over the years, the Senecas were kind
of conquerors and just took over took whatever they wanted,
(09:57):
and as as a result that they absorbed a lot
of tribes. Then when they absorbed those tribes, they had
to they had like training camps to how to make
them Seneca. And as they did that, the influences from
the languages that other people came from had an effect
on Seneca, and there were changes made to shorten the
(10:20):
language so our language is a polysynthetic language, and I'm
sure Manti can get more into it because he's a
linguist about all the finer points of Iroquoian languages. But yeah, Seneca,
it's got its own little things. The morphological changes are
pretty interesting. It's just there's one thing all the other
(10:43):
languages still have is the yes no question particle. So
even listening to your your classes and hearing that you
guys have like a geh after a yes no question,
like Cayuga has geh, the other languages have gone what
do they have? And they you know? And Seneca, for
whatever reason, is the only one who just dropped it
(11:06):
out of the out of the way. And I have
a lot of people ask me, how the heck do
you ask a yes no question in your language without
the yes no particle we make, do you know? And
even that's a process. If we're talking about creating speakers,
that's that's a multifaceted question, right. I think over the
(11:26):
pandemic listening to second language acquisition specialists, listening to your
podcast and a variety of others. The goal has to
be communication, And sometimes I saw people get hung up
more on drilling paradigms, linguistic explanations, and breakdowns, which all
(11:47):
have their own place, like I'm not going to lie.
Those have been beneficial to me and how I work
in my language learning. But the goal is communication, you know,
so comprehensible input mean ative activities and tasks to formulate
actual speech, not the textbook you know, language that nobody
(12:11):
ever actually speaks in. So getting down to brass tacks
using everyday vocab, we have a curriculum we adopted and modified,
but there's other liberties we take with that where we
do get into everyday events, watching TV, eating food, going
(12:32):
to eat, going places. Where'd you go last night? Did
you do anything this morning? Those are all everyday topics
just to get a conversation going. So, even though that's
not necessarily a part of the unit we're on, it's
still everyday vocab. So we're going to show them how
to use it or at least make it part of
the vernacular. And right now, maybe we're not going to
(12:53):
get into all the breakdowns of what goes on because
there are there's more advance. If we're going to do
a progression, you're going to come across things that are
kind of considered more advanced in the everyday vocab, but
there's still no getting around them. So we'll just show
you how to use them with good input, and when
we get to it later, that's when we'll give you
(13:15):
some of the breakdowns and how it works and the
ins and out. The biggest thing, too, is pushing yourself
as an educator, as a speaker, yourself to really always
push to know the ins and outs of your language.
The finer point for me making myself vulnerable to my
students and always letting them know that when I'm working
(13:36):
with this language with you, I tell my students, I'm
not telling you this as if I've grown up speaking
the language or that I've known this for twenty years.
I've made all the same mistakes you did along the way,
and I'm sharing my mistakes with you so that you
can you can learn from that. You know, we can
learn a lot from each other, And that's why I
listen to your podcast, a lot of other people's podcasts.
(13:59):
People share experiences in this big job that we have,
and there's so much you can learn. A lot of
things overlap. We go through a lot of the same situations.
So making yourself vulnerable to your students. Letting them know
that you're not perfect, you're learning along as well, and
creating a safe learning space for them is big and
(14:23):
I've seen it make a big difference with the more
recent cohorts that we've had, and I think that goes
a long way into fostering an environment where speakership and
communication and grow. And the group that I just had graduate,
even the ones who didn't finish and only did the
first year, they communicate really well, and I think that's
(14:47):
just a small part of it. Monty can piggyback off
of that and share his experiences as well.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Now, Damien for sharing your thoughts on creating speakers. I
think what you were talking about there right was the
adult immersion programs that we have going on on a
lot of our territories right now. These adult immersion programs
I think are really exceptional and they have been proven
to create speakers, which is one of the things that
(15:15):
just it's just really amazing about it. It uses I
guess I would say unconventional methods, which is which I
mean to say, is like it's not anything that people
were really doing before or really had thought about before,
and that specifically we're paying our students to learn our
languages six to eight hours a day. So each year,
(15:37):
the goal like the so the Root Word method and
then the Unglewana and joe Qua style adult immersion program,
you have about one thousand and eighty hours a year
of immersion is the goal. And the reason that you
do that is because there's nowhere in the whole world
(15:57):
that you can go and only be surround in one
of our languages. Right, So you want to go you
want to learn Italian, you go to Italy, Right, you
want to learn Arabic, you go multiple places in the
Middle East, right, Hindi you go to India. There's all
these all these sorts of opportunities. So in reality, I
(16:20):
think one of the main things that you have to
do to create speakers is to create an environment where
you can you can make speakers. And I think it
also goes the other way too. So what I mean
by that is, well, part of what it takes to
make speakers is you have to have people that are
(16:41):
willing to speak. So if you don't have if you
have people that aren't really talking that much in English,
it's not like them learning another language is gonna suddenly
give them a bigger voice or anything like that. Right,
It's it's not this sort of magically transformative power, right,
It's something and this is like a little cheesy, right,
(17:02):
but like the power is in you right to make
that decision to use the language. And so yeah, so
deciding deciding to be a speaker, right, that's something that's
out of any teacher's control. There's there's only so much
you can do about someone that has sort of resigned
themselves to never get past a certain level of fluency.
(17:27):
And on the flip side, I mean it's also true,
like you can imagine, like you want to be able
to write a dissertation in your language, and it's like, well,
maybe we should have a little bit more realistic goals.
Maybe just you know, be able to live your day
to day life and teach your kids and be able
to have like little conversations with your kids and be
(17:47):
able to negotiate bedtime, be able to negotiate what you're eating, right,
or even just like make commentary at the store and
things like that. And honestly, like a lot of it
is just to be encouraging and appreciative of any language
that emerges as it emerges. So I know, from my
own experience, like speaking with my own kid, A lot
(18:10):
of the time, the language comes out when they want something,
so they're like, you know, a dusk one we style,
like could you give me some money?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And it's like there, of course they're going to ask
that in mohawk, right, and especially you know in like
this polite form, right, so you always say a wad
of the gone like would it be possible? It will
be possible, you know, and uh, you know they're kind
of buttering you up, right, but they that that in itself,
you being susceptible to that is a form of giving
(18:44):
power to the language. You're they're able to achieve something
that they want and acquire something that they want with
the language, right. And that's I think one sort of
facet of power, as we talk about it is we
conceive it, right, the ability to get get yourself, to
satisfy yourself, to satisfy these needs or wants. That's like
the one aspect of power. And then you know that
(19:06):
ties into language, and then appreciating any sort of language
that you get, and appreciating any sort of language that
you get is also its own sort of power. So
I go and get gas from one particular gas station
because I can say naw to the guy pumping my
gas and he'll always say yeah, back, you know what
(19:28):
I mean. And so that in itself, I think is
just a really rewarding experience, you know, because you can
do the whole getting your gas pumped without any more
than that. Really, you know, you put out the twenty dollars,
you get Okay, yeah, I want twenty dollars a gas. Right,
you just say once he's done with it, you say yaw,
he says yeah, and you're on with your day. Look,
(19:49):
we just did one hundred percent exchange of tusc Aurora
and I got my gas, right, I guess.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So like this power, this power of gratitude to it
is like the flip side, right, the being thankful for
what you acquired, the being thankful for what you get
cognitive reframing.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
You could be like, oh, well that was only two
words that you guys expote, or you know, you think
about it. Hey, we just had a full on interaction
in the language. I took care of everything, all my
needs and it went off without a problem. So that
is like like a third aspect of like power with
(20:30):
respect to language and that's what it's ultimately about. Right.
You're learning there's language to empower yourself. Right, You're not
looking to learn the language like make yourself worse than anything. Right.
You know, the idea is like, oh, yeah, I'm going
to learn the language because I think in some way
it's going to be better for me and or it's
(20:51):
going to be better for my kids, it's going to
be better for my community and anything like this. And
I think that that also turns it into a joint effort,
a collaborative effort. And so you kind of even even
if we're getting into notions of power and everything like
this and being able to get what you want, you're
(21:13):
still having to constantly negotiate everything with everybody else, Right,
And that's I think with what language gives us this
ability to sort of like negotiate, collaborate, express It does
all these really complicated things. But they these complicated things
aren't like the way that they manifest themselves, aren't necessarily
(21:34):
complex themselves. They just like they can just be that
simple interaction of here, you put out your hand with
the twenty dollars, he takes it. You say now' for
pumping and pumping the gas and he says, yeah, and
you're on with You're on with your day, right. I
think that was about That's about where I was going
with that. Yeah, it's like that. So the power of
(21:55):
cognitive reframing with respect to language is one way to
make a speaker, the of like recognizing your own power,
this ability to use the language to achieve what you want.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, well, well the first question is only like the
hardest question there is, right, just like how do you
do the thing?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So, but yeah, this is all right on as we
think about what it takes to create speakers to keep
going to think of a world where we have I
remember us in Hewwiti and someone said, it's not like
I remember when it was exactly, but I just remember
this general time when I didn't know every single person
who spoke Hawaiian, and I thought, wow, that's what I
(22:37):
really want, is just to like have people like And
then just I think a few months ago, I went
to the post office in Juno and someone walked by
and they said, your kok's a teen.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I was like, oh, good cheese, and.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
They walked off, and I thought, I don't know who
that person was, right, And so it's it's beginning to
happen with us as like as the language spreads and
as we remove some of the stigmas about like it
has to be perfect or I have to be at
this level, then we start to see these impacts. So
I know you just got a thought. But if we're
gonna make new speakers, we've got to make listeners as well.
(23:14):
So we're thankful that you all are listening to this.
Gonna cheese. We need to take a quick break, but
before we do, I want you to visualize wherever you're
at in your language journey, whether you're learning on your own,
teaching someone learning from a whole bunch of people, in
a cohort, leading a cohort, directing a language program, just
think of one thing that's been in your way lately
(23:38):
and just watch it vaporize before your eyes, and just
think of like just overcoming that one obstacle. And so
the obstacles are there, but I think what's bigger than
that is the success that's going to be on the
other side of that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
One or two or three times you try any de
not brids you run all around without your head.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Struggle.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yes, to day you struggle still today now, but you'll
find a broader away my brother and sisters, don't you know.
I found the way to bring it back for those
who came. Believe in yourself now believe in us somehow,
(24:48):
but not deep color nothing, and we're back. So I
asked the question about what does it take to make speakers,
which is kind of jumping in the water before we
even weighe down into getting to the deep end, because
(25:11):
we didn't even talk about what is a speaker? And
I've got a few thoughts to share and then I'll
turn over to you folks to sort of share your ideas.
So there's a number of different things that are just
rolling around my brain right now, and one is my
experience as a language teacher is a lot of people
are reluctant to ever call themselves a speaker. They'll just
say I'm just a learner. And I really like to
empower students to say you are a speaker. If you're
(25:34):
using this language, you are a speaker of the language.
And I don't like to use the word fluent because
I think that stops us from considering ourselves part of
this language community. So I like to use the word fluency,
like to say you could just keep stepping on up,
keep going up up up, and that way we could say, oh,
you're right here, work on these things. You're right here,
work on these things. And we also I try to
(25:57):
communicate with adults what I also heard from Pelah Wilson,
which was you learn an artificial form of the language
at first, because you've got to break in all these
chunks so people can digest it. You're just learning the
names of things, and you're learning these little phrases, and
then next thing, you're learning these bigger parts, and you
have to first thing it anyway, so you have to
put all these parts together, and then they're not fully
(26:19):
contracting in your mind and interacting the way they would
if you'd been speaking your whole life. So for adults,
we try to just really let our adults know it's
okay if you don't sound like a high fluency speaker
right away. And then we try to talk to our
language speakers who grew up with the language and say,
you're going to hear some adults speaking and it's going
to sound really different than you think it should, but
(26:41):
really try to focus on encouraging them and receive what
they're sharing with you and talk back to them, because
if they can see that, you understand what they're trying
to do. That light's a fire. It keeps that fire burning.
And so as we think about like what a speaker is,
we also have these I have lots of thoughts as
well about how do you keep people going, how do
(27:02):
you get them to naturalize their language a bit because
a friend of mine, Tinakpungy, he said, I speak my
grandmother's language, but I don't speak like my grandmother. That
doesn't mean he's not trying. It just means he gives
himself room to grow in the language, which I think
is also important to let our people claim it as
their own and let our people live in this space
where they can play and make mistakes. And I just
(27:26):
repeatedly tell my students there are no mistakes in language learning.
It's all just language learning. So continuing these thoughts on
making speakers and what defines a speaker, and how do
you keep people motivated to especially to go really into
the deep dive zone beyond memorization, beyond all these things
(27:48):
to say, you can't read it off a piece of paper.
You got to go and respond to what you're hearing.
What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
So as far as what I consider a speaker, I
think of my Oneida teacher, Sally Hoaked Leander Danforth out
in Oneida, Wisconsin. He's in his upper sixties now, and
even you know, he's a second language speaker. He's a
really good second language speaker of Oneida language. And he's
(28:16):
always said that he doesn't ever consider himself as this
like fluent speaker, and he'll never call himself this high
level speaker. But what he did say is he said,
I can speak and people understand me. People can talk
to me and I understand them, and I can formulate
responses and we can carry on a conversation. And that's
(28:39):
where he is about that, Like, that's where he kind
of draws the line, is like I'm able to communicate
back and forth with other speakers of Oneida and Mohawk,
you know, And he kind of leaves it up to
other people to say, you know, if you want to
label me a speaker because of that, okay, But he
understands that he's still in the learning process all the time.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think of your little bear Cheyenne Elder, who I
work with on the board of directors for the Indigenous
Language Institute. One of his lectures, he said, you'll never
reach this point where you say I now know all
the words of the Cheyenne language.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And I thought, yeah, anybody right, You're never going to
say that I know all the words of the twing
It language or the you know, Garuda language. I now
know everything about it, you know. So it is this
ongoing process of being able to express yourself. I took
a class, a Native languages class at und Out in
Grand Forks, North Dakota, and that's what they talked about
(29:40):
was to have the ability to tell a story on
the fly. The teacher said, if you can tell a
story on the fly, just out of the blue, off
the cuff, I think that's a pretty good indicator of
that you're able to be a speaker. And I always
aspired that. When he said that, I thought, wow, you know,
he's right. And he even kind of broke down. He's like, uh,
(30:01):
you know, you come across these people who they get
on the stage or the classroom or wherever they can
bust out their whole intro. You know their name, their age,
their clan, where they're from, you know, and it gives
you this impression like, oh, wow, wow, you're you're a
the Nay speaker. Wow you're a Dakota speaker. You sound fluent.
(30:23):
You know, we talk about that F word, right. And
what they don't realize is these these like that's all
they've done, is it's it's become a script in their
head and it's a routine and they can bust it
out anytime they want. I had asked one of my
friends at time, I said, are you able to introduce
your wife? He said no. I said, can you introduce
your son? He said nah. I had never learned how
(30:44):
to do that. So just something as simple as being
able to like take your whole intro and make everything
in the male form, make everything in the female form,
Like to us who've been in the language game, like,
that's a really simple change, you know, and it's totally teachable.
But somebody who's memorizing that script, it's just a routine
for them. So I know a lot of languages have
(31:07):
the ceremonial addresses, and some of them, in our culture,
they're short enough that you can you can memorize some
of them. And I noticed that sometimes when I went
to one of the schools up at six nations. They
are the kids. They could do these addresses for thirty minutes,
and I was so impressed that they talked for thirty
minutes straight. Later on in the week, I'm asking them
(31:31):
all these words, how do you say this? How do
you say that? And they're going, well, I'm not actually
a speaker, you know. I said, yeah, but you were
just talking for a half hour straight yesterday, like cleterally,
you can, you can really carry on and he said, no,
those are like that's different, that's different. What I did
you know? I don't. And then now that I think
(31:54):
back to it, like I never really remember those kids
having dialogue back and forth in the language. Everything was English,
but when it came to those memorized speeches, they could
they could go on and on and on. So I
came up with this term speechers. There's speakers and there's speechers,
you know, and we have some people who are speechers
and they're really good speechers, and you know, you have
(32:17):
these people who've never delved into language at all, right,
like they just stay on the outside. They're just like
I'm not going to do it. That's somebody else's job.
And when they hear the speechers go, they're like, man,
he's a really good speaker. Go ask him. He's a speaker,
you know, not knowing the difference between somebody who knows
how to memorize and somebody else to who knows how
(32:37):
to just do it on the fly. And so it
is again about communicating on the fly. We have these
little games. Once I get my students going, I'll hand
them announcements. So we have a sing that everybody comes
together and they share social dance songs while women's dance songs,
and then there's a big social in the fall in
(32:58):
the spring. And every time I had a there's little
things that happen. So hey, there's kids running in and
out of the bathroom and they're leaving the water on
and sticking toilet paper on the wall. You know, everybody
needs to watch their kids, you know. Or somebody lost
a red cell phone in the men's room. If you want,
if it's yours, come up here and describe it and
(33:19):
we'll give it back to you. This is an on
the fly announcement R. So I'll give them a card
and say here, make the announcement. Some of them their
first instinct is to translate everything in there. And you
never gave us this word, but I'll say, just convey
the message. That's all you need to do. Tell them
there's a loss phone, tell them what color it is,
(33:40):
tell them how they can get it back. However, whatever
is within your ability to do that, you know, And
I'll mix up the announcements. The faith keepers are going
to be selling benches and drums at the cook house
on Saturday to raise money. Or the lacrosse game go,
(34:02):
you know, it starts at six, goes till eight there go.
Can you do that on the fly, you know, And
that's what we try to do with an opening address
where we give thanks. There is a path that you
do have to try to follow in that, but there's
also room for you to create and express yourself on
(34:24):
that path.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
If we're talking about the trees, there's a lot of
stuff you can say about the trees. If it's a
certain time of year, if there's certain things going on
in the world, you can add as much as you want,
or you can keep it really basic. There's different expressions
that you know. You can use a factual expression or
you can use a state of expression and they convey
(34:46):
the same meaning and you can keep your opening kind
of fresh. So I think what makes a speaker is
being versatile, being able to communicate your feelings, what you see,
what you feel well, what's going on around you, and
being very versatile at the drop of a hat. That's
(35:07):
one of the big pieces. And I'll hand it off
to Monty.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So, yeah, one of the I kind of remembered what
I was going to say earlier and what I wanted
to say earlier. Is part of becoming a speaker or
what a what a speaker is is this ability to
create your own speaking environment, right, so you turn you're
(35:30):
able to turn the environment that you're in from an
English one into a Tusco or one into a Seneca
one into a clean one, right. And that's and that's
the idea of the confidence to be able to do that.
And it's not necessarily very easy. It's in fact it's easy.
It's easier to go right to English, right, especially you
(35:52):
know you're practicing, you're learning. You're like, oh, well, just
give me the translation for this, give me the translation
for that, or anything like that. It's sort of like, no,
we're going to keep it in our speaking tradition and
the tusk for a speaking tradition, right, Because I think
one of the things too, that defines are it's a
little bit about it's a little bit about more than
(36:13):
just language, right, It's about a whole attitude, about your worldview,
about your perspective on things, and it is a it's
a transformative thing, I think, becoming a speaker and recognizing
yourself as such. And at the same time, though, it's
difficult to balance that with the same idea. What I
was talking about earlier, and I think Lance touched on
(36:36):
this too, were like, even if you're using one or
two words of our language, you're also a speaker. And
I don't think that these are contradictory ideas. What I
think is that it points to the fact that the
term speaker might be insufficient to describe or point at
the phenomenon that we're dealing with in language revitalization, right,
(36:59):
because like you look at these things and they're both valid.
They're both you know, you're learning, Like let's just say,
instead of greeting people with hello, you just start using
twan everywhere. I could probably start doing that in my
Indigenous studies apartment and people would figure it out right well.
And and I think part of that too would be
(37:22):
because being in an Indigenous studies department, people would be
more inclined to be accepting of it right and be
willing to go with it and be willing to understanding it.
But you're not necessarily also going to find that everywhere,
which is I think also a little bit part of
(37:43):
the struggle. I don't know, I don't have any solutions
for that, but I think that something you just need
to need to be able to confront. And I'm not
talking like, you know, like racist white people not liking
Indigenous languages. I'm talking like people in your own community
that get up that you're speaking right, or why are
you using this word? Or you're trying to show that
(38:05):
you're better than me, like anything like this is a
lateral violence or this this perception of lateral violence, right,
And that's something that you also have to deal with,
deal with as a speaker, what it means to be
a speaker. But I mean there's good stuff about it too.
There's good stuff about it too. So this ability, I
(38:27):
think what it is also is being able to give
what you have to others, and I think that is
part of then you know that goes hand in hand
with what's the creating the environment. But to be able
to say, okay, well, I'm going to teach you how
to do this. I'm going to teach you how to
say hello, and then that's what we're going to do
from now on. Right, I'm going to teach you how
(38:49):
to say call that a car or call that you
know with threat tat, and that's what we're going to
do from now on.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I'll do it as long as you do it, and
we both know what we're doing, and then I can
learn it in your language, you can learn it in mind.
Then we could just use it with use these languages
with each other, right, and both be understood. So I
think too, Yeah, being a speaker comes with a responsibility
of like also open mindedness, this sort of this sort
of idea. A lot of our communities back then were
(39:19):
definitely multi lingual. There was a lot of trading going on.
We exchanged languages, we exchange cultures, we exchanged ideas, and
this sort of stuff was this was happening. It's not
like we were all fighting each other all the time, right,
they were. I'm pretty sure there were also, you know
times at times of peace, right, and you see that,
I mean I think I think it stands. It's like obvious.
(39:41):
But also you can like go look in the archaeological record, right,
and you can see actual evidence, you know, if you
if you want to be all scientific about it, right,
we we actually are like, okay, well, how do these
beads from the Gulf of Mexico get all the way
up to New York?
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (39:58):
How does that happen? People have there has to be
a way for these you know, they don't they don't
just grow wings imply there. Right, we didn't have Amazon
back then, right, you had to do it, do it
the hard way, you know. And that and that involves language,
that involves communication, that involves dealing with each other in
a in some way or form. So yeah, it's I think,
(40:23):
but yeah, a lot about a lot about that and
and so basically respecting difference too is also like what
is at the core of it. And that respecting difference
is also something that Lance was talking about too, with
the fact that you don't really need to constantly be
correcting other people if you can understand, he said, if
(40:44):
you can understand what they're saying, and you can respond
to them. Then that's good because they're gonna they know.
I don't like, I don't know how many of you
listening are are have been the speaker. But you know,
when you're like, oh that was bad, you know what
I mean, something comes out of your mouth and you're like, oh,
that was you know, but imagine some of that coming
(41:07):
out of your mouth and you're saying, thinking, oh, that
was like god awful, like I can't believe. And then
but the person you're talking to goes, oh, yeah, like
I have I have I have a cat too, right,
And you're like, oh, I guess it wasn't I guess
it couldn't have been that bad. I'll try better next time.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
That was pretty embarrassing, but you know, he at least
figured out, like, you know, we're talking about cats and
who has what and everything like that, you know. And
you know, I haven't gotten really into like the child
acquisition to language acquisition learning, but it really seems to
me that humans are very capable of self correction.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
That seems like a in a in a capability. So
just allowing yourself this like to be like childlike in
this way again, right, and to and to be not
only be understanding to yourself, but be understanding to others
around you. Yeah, so there's so there's a lot about
being a speaker that I don't think even necessarily involves language, right,
(42:07):
And I guess you could even point, I don't know,
you could blame colonialism. I think you know, at least
part of it. You could put you know, like eighty
eighty percent colonialism, twenty percent other problems, right, and these
sort of way colonial mentalities that have been put into us. Right,
(42:30):
so as you're adopting these things, are like you're afraid
to let go of them? Just be Oh, actually no,
I'm decolonizing myself by letting go of these things, right,
So I think, Yeah, to me, that's what it's about
being the speaker.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
And cheesh, thanks to both of you. And time is
a colonial construct. And it's also time to take our
second break.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So we'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Her eel he bore ah, you're you're not said ho
cod bo h her eo are oh kind of talk
(43:46):
he gives away to dat.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Welcome back to the Tongue Unbroken. We're here with se
de Want, Damien Webster, and Montgomery Hill, who are doing
wonderful work in the Seneca and Tuscarora languages here on
Hudna Shone Lands the East Coast. I just have so
much admiration for indigenous peoples of the East Coast, this
whole area for absorbing so many like the first huge
(44:37):
waves of colonial destruction really just washed up upon this
side of the continent. And so to see folks holding
onto their language and to keep going is just really
energizing and exciting. And I know that we're on the
cusp of I think tremendous change across North America as
we look at what can we do, how can we
(44:59):
keep going? And so there's a couple of things I
want us to sort of think about and talk about here,
which is I've sometimes said, you know, if everybody who
started learning our thing get language, kept going, we'd have
a thousand speakers right now, but we got thirty, you know,
And so that that's alarming to see so many people
that start but don't take it all the way and
(45:21):
for some reason, you know, and we know a lot
of the reasons. We've talked about colonial violence, we've talked
about violence against women, we've talked about unhealthy situations, lack
of strong language, environments, over corrections, there's on and on on,
And one thing that we have talked about as well
is if you just focus on those negative things, it's
hard to see what the brighter sides could be. And
(45:42):
I think for me, I get overly paranoid that everything's
a colonial trick and everything's something here to distract us
or to dissuade us. But I also like the quote
from Maudi scholar Moana Jackson, who says, to paraphrase, one
of the most harmful things that colonialism did to us
is to get us to lose faith in ourselves. So
(46:04):
I think indigenous solutions are what we need. But I
guess my question to you is how do you inspire
folks to keep going? And how do you keep going yourself?
When you see, you know, we do have rates of success,
but sometimes we have to look and think where did
those people go and why did they leave? And what
(46:25):
kind of was there something I could have done to
hold on to them before they walked away from this
thing that we were all doing together. But I'm hoping
for messages of inspiration and hope and not to just
you know, be all super bummed out about what didn't happen.
But as we build these programs that are stronger and stronger,
we want to make sure that the people who walk
(46:45):
away are fewer and fewer, because they will say, I
knew this was where I needed to be, and once
I got there, I felt the love, and I felt
like I belonged, and I felt like we knew each other.
And that's what we go for with our language programs.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Awesome. Yeah, when it comes to longevity and inspiration for others, oh,
there's so much to unpack. I think all you listeners
out there, wherever you're at in your language learning, whichever
language you're trying to study and make a part of
your life, you realize at some point that that language
(47:22):
is bigger than all of us. It's older than I
don't care how old you are. The language is bigger
than you are. If you're a title holder, the language
is still bigger than you are. You know, you're a
part of something bigger than all of us. And that
sounds so cliche, but it actually it is bigger than
all of us. So, you know, I'm coming up on
(47:43):
seven years at my job, and one of the things
I told myself is you're going to have some tough
times in this job, and you're going to be challenged,
and it's it's kind of sad to tell yourself that,
but I got to be realistic about it too, like
you're going to be challenged, and when the challenges came,
(48:03):
it's really easy to pump yourself up when you're in
your car and you're laying in bed. You know, it's
a whole other thing when it's right in your face
and everything's going off right now, you're in the thick
of it. Your anxiety is up, you're wondering what's going
to happen. And there were those moments where I thought
the same worth it, man, this is you know what
(48:23):
I think. I just want to go back to making
subs or I want to go load boxes in a
truck or not worry about all this. And I had
to take that moment because you guys are going to
have these breaking points in your language journey where it's
just this is too hard. This isn't what I thought
it was going to be. So the beast is staring
you down like it's right in your face, and that's
(48:44):
what I thought to myself. I was like, look at you,
look at you. The difficulties here, the difficulty you said
that what's going to come is here, and it's looking
you right in the face right now, and your first
thought is you want to give up and walk away.
So you got to pull your pants up and you
gotta trudch forward and don't forget while you're here, don't
(49:07):
forget what you're fighting for. When we talk about colonialism
and what happened to our people, it wasn't this one
time event, right, it's this ongoing process to try to
eradicate us and eradicate who we are and us in
the modern day. Like some of us are so far
(49:28):
removed from that. I mean, there's some stuff that's real recent, right,
Like it's still it's still not that far back. And
I think it's always important to remember what our ancestors
went through to carry on what is still here for
us today.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
So over here we talk about the seven generations and
that the people seven generations from now that you're never
going to meet should be able to enjoy the things
that you enjoy right now, right, And if you take
it backwards, those people that were never going to meet
us and who we are, they held on, They held
(50:05):
strong when the boarding schools came like you could see
they have those They don't care if they got their haircut,
if they got slapped in the ear, if they had
their tongue pierced with a nail. Something in their head
was like, I'm still going to talk my language. I'm
still going to keep speaking. You're not going to stop
me from passing on this language. And it's like you
(50:26):
should honor those people for doing that. When I got
back seven years ago, my teacher was doing funeral addresses.
These funeral rites are generations old. These are old old ways.
I've gone to a condolence of where we raise a leader.
This is like a pre contact ceremony. They're using these
(50:49):
expressions and songs and this whole process that predates America,
predates Canada, and somebody had the wherewithal to hold it
strong so that it's still here today. Like it's really
a testament to sit there and watch a leader get
raised all day and just like wow, this is like
(51:11):
people have seen this for generations. You know, I can't
imagine what did this look like a hundred years ago,
two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, And it's
we're still doing it today. We're still sending people home
the way our people send people home. So you're holding
on to something just way bigger. And it's almost like
once you join this movement and once you decide to
(51:34):
really give yourself to learning the language, it's like you
jump in this like stream of consciousness that has to
carry forward too, right, So then it's like, well, what's
going to be your contribution?
Speaker 1 (51:46):
You know?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Is the language going to continue on because of you?
Or are you going to be one of the reasons why?
It makes it a lot more difficult, you know. And
I always remember sitting in my kitchen and Santa Fe
the radio station up in Six Nations. They would play
social music on Wednesday nights and I would stream it
on my computer. But one night I tuned in and
(52:09):
they weren't playing music. They had a I think it
was Jake Thomas talking. It had to be him, so
he said, if you don't want your language and your
culture to continue, then that's where it'll stop with you.
And that just struck a chord, Like I grabbed a
note card right away and I wrote it down and
I taped it to my wall, and I told myself, God,
(52:32):
dang it, all right, it's not going to stop with me.
You know, I have two little girls here that I
have an opportunity to give them something that I didn't
have growing up. You know, I didn't have parents that spoke.
I didn't have grandparents or aunties or uncles that spoke
the language. You know, I knew. I grew up knowing
like four words, and language was never on my radar.
(52:52):
Even I told my daughter, she's seventeen, I said, language
wasn't on my radar when I was seventeen. I never thought, hey,
I should learn my language, you know, and you just
never know what you're going to do to inspire them, right.
So there was a point too where I thought, I'm
never really going to be a speaker. I'm never going
(53:13):
to have that level of fluency or proficiency like those
ones that came before us, and maybe why should I
bother doing it? But then we heard Tom Porter, a
Mohawk elder. He said, don't ever underestimate when you plant
those seeds what's going to come up and grow on
the other side. You never know what's going to come
(53:35):
out of that, so you have to give it a chance.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
So when I heard that, I said, you know what,
I'm going to give it a chance. Maybe I will
never be a speaker of this language, but let's see
what it does for my daughters. And so we use
a lot of phrases when we got in the car shopping, eating,
bad time, bedtime. And once you know it, they start
(53:59):
producing language on their own. They start learning how to
conjugate things on their own that I didn't even think
they would pick up because kids just do that, right.
And I'm sitting there listening to them use it and
it comes out of them, and I'm just like, man,
that's because I didn't underestimate the efforts of what I
(54:21):
could do. And I was just listening to a podcast
over here, this guy named ojik well Jibwe guy, another
podcast called The Language, and that's what he said. He goes,
I had this myth in my head that I don't
want to pass the language on to my kids until
I have it perfect, until I'm perfectly using the F
word fluent myself. And he said, I thought I thought
(54:44):
I would pass on this imperfect language to them, and
I don't want to do that, so I'm going to wait.
And he says, looking back on it, there's so much
I could have given to them, anyways, even in an
imperfect state or whatever, they would have had so much more.
He goes, I see all these other people who give
their kids the language. The just make adjustments along the way,
and we do that, like you have the ability to
(55:07):
change things. I changed my jump shot.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
It took a lot of work, but I changed my
jump shot. And you can change things. So there was
a book I came across that In the book it
looked like it said gano oh w and next to
it it said I love you, and I never I
never could find that in none of any other resources.
So I was like, oh, man, I found it. I
can tell my kids I love them. And Seneca we
(55:34):
start saying gon know oh quah quah so kayaw wuk
is like daughter, right, gun know oh u kawak and
they would say guno oh quah hotni. And we just
kept saying that for the longest time, back and forth
to each other whenever we had to leave or whatever.
And then I got a track somebody sent me these
language tracks, and there's a speaker on there she goes,
gon wha, I love you. I was like, oh, that's
(55:56):
different going on. Well, all of a sudden, I learned too,
like go like me to you and know what is
the root. I was like, oh, me to you, I
love you, going on qua. So I had to go
to my daughter's I said, hey, we've been saying this
word the wrong way. It's not gonna oh why it's
going They're like really, I said, yeah, we just got
to fix it. And you know, to their credit, they
(56:18):
just rolled right with. They were like, okay, going on
quahtani go no qua kawak and we just we just
fixed it, you know. And and like Manty said earlier,
like kids have the ability, people have any ability to
self correct and so that's what we did. So if
you're out there thinking like, you know what, I got
to be perfectly good in my language, no, just like
give them what you can now, give it to them
(56:39):
while they're they can absorb their their minds are fresh
and open and see where it goes. Don't underestimate your efforts,
you know, and you're part of the future of your language.
And there's nothing more beautiful than that to uh, to
hear children speak the language. That's a rare occurrence for me.
(57:00):
I'll tell you what. There's there's one you know, June
did a presentation earlier today where he said we had
our first birth speaker in over sixty years. And I
started thinking about that because there's this little girl in
Catteraugus named Mira, and years ago when she started being
able to talk and her mom went through the language program,
there would be these little videos and you would hear
(57:22):
her just that's the first little kid I ever heard
just Seneca just poured from her mouth, linguistically, really good,
just stringing together sentences like nothing. It was the most
beautiful sound I've ever heard to hear children. I thought,
(57:42):
I wonder how long that's been that If she's the
first birth speaker of Seneca in I don't know how
many years, you know, and the effort it takes to
do that, it's beautiful. And one of my friends in
South Dakota, like he's raising his boys and his daughter
like their first language Lakota speakers. It's beautiful to watch
the videos of his boys just interacting La Clotta. And
(58:06):
it's possible for everybody believe in that dream, you know,
that's what we're doing. We're dreaming, dreaming the impossible dream.
But at the same time, like maybe it is impossible,
but I'm still gonna do it anyways. You know, we're
gonna go down swinging if it's if it's gonna go,
it's gonna go. But we're not going to go down
without fighting. I really enjoy being on the program, and
(58:29):
it's been awesome listening to a lot of your podcasts
and your shows and your classes you put on. I
was Tellingne today tonight that I feel like I developed
a relationship with his former classes because I listened to
so many classes. It's been really cool. So it's awesome
being on the podcast. I listened to all of season one,
and I really appreciate you giving me the time to
(58:50):
be on the show so way. So it now we
the things that keep me keeping on. I think one
of the main things would probably be stress management first up,
because you know, we get talking about the language and
how important it is, and that's a really big weight,
(59:13):
and I think you know that's something that you have
to It never really gets lighter, like in fact, as
you start to acquire more languages, you start to acquire
more knowledge. I feel like you actually, you know, it
gets heavier in the sense that you feel a more
(59:34):
significant responsibility to share what it is that you've collected
and I know and I think that's true, and I think, uh,
it's just something you really have to work on making
yourself accustomed to. And I mean it's a lot of it.
It's just like working out that you got to you
got to listen to your body, right. You really have
(59:57):
to be like, well, I've been going hard. I've been
like getting in the gym four times a week, and
this week, I really I'm just like I can't get
myself to go. And it's like I'm going, Okay, well
i'll go to bed and I'll wake up tomorrow and
i'll go.
Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I'll go. Then you wake up tomorrow and you're like,
I don't want to go, and then you know that happens,
that could happen, that happened to me. Actually I don't.
I don't know less a couple of weeks ago and
you know, I was like, you know what, I'm just
gonna see how long it is. It's good, how long
this break is. Before you know, I was like, I'm
(01:00:36):
a wake up and I'm excited to go. And it
only took a week. And sometimes, you know, I think
taking that break is exceptionally important. You know, your body
is telling you things right, you're and then in the
same way, I think like your mind is telling you
things too. But the important thing is you don't take
(01:00:58):
the break indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
The idea, The idea is you come back right, you
get I mean you might get defeated or feel defeated,
or feel rejected or this or that, or come up
with any sort of excuse, but those you have to
also recognize, like are those excuses or legitimate reasons?
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
So you know, and there are legitimate reasons. Let's say,
you know, there's like it's a genuinely unhealthy environment in
your language program. You know, that's not unheard of, and
that's something like a reality, especially as we're dealing with
the ugly process of decolonization and lateral trying to heal
from lateral violence and everything like that that happens, I
(01:01:42):
mean really even relationships with other speakers, you know, all
these sorts of things. So there are I think, like
legitimate reasons for you know, not wanting to participate. At
the same time, like not all languages are communities are
like that, So we'll find a find another one and
help them, right, And that's something that we can all do, uh.
(01:02:05):
For each other. So yeah, so they's just like a
bunch of ways to well, I guess actually that's what
I did. So we were having problems, uh, I guess
like getting to the point of full on conversational tusc
Aurora and once actually it was really great. It was
(01:02:26):
myself and a number of other people from my community,
uh from the Tuscoor Nation went through the Mohawk Immersion
program when it was offered in Buffalo, and we had
a bunch of people in UH, one in each of
the three cohorts. And from there we were actually were
able learning mohawks related language. We were able to sort
(01:02:49):
of transform ourselves into speakers, into into like having these
ful on conversations. We it, we got we found training.
We kind of well, we did take a detour, right
or and in some sense or yeah, we did something else.
We were doing something else, we were learning something else.
(01:03:11):
So and that's the idea, right is Okay, yeah, take
your break, and but just make sure to come back,
you know. I think that's that's the number one thing.
And like I, like I said, is take as long
as you actually as you actually need, right or maybe
you can go find something else to do while you're
(01:03:32):
waiting for your community to change, for this program to change,
for maybe people leave. You know, the people creating toxic
environments usually don't aren't able to stick around in any
particular environment for an extended period of time. Usually, you know,
most of the time, you would hope, but uh, you know,
(01:03:54):
you just got to be aware of the situation and
sort of just be like be a excited find that
excitement again, right, And when you don't have the excitement,
I mean, sometimes you do have to push through when
you don't have that excitement. But there's a difference between like,
you know, okay, so sometimes you wake up and you're
(01:04:15):
like ready to go, and sometimes you wake up and
be like, ah, I mean it is a gym day,
so I better go, right, And that's fine too. And
then even there's like, oh man, I'm gonna how about today.
I'm going to go, but like only I'm not going
to do squats today, right, you know, I'm not going
to do I'm not going to do this thing that
(01:04:37):
I really you know, you make make a deal with yourself, right,
or you get to be like, Okay, well today's going
to be my got I'm going to go, but I'll
let myself have the teat day today, right, just like
you're you know, it's a it's a constant negotiation with yourself.
It's stress management, and you know that requires you to
be very self aware. I think that's I if that's
(01:05:00):
a big struggle I think for anybody nowadays. Uh So,
I think it's also good then to have like a
support network of people that know you too, so they
recognize that you're sort of like acting stressed out or
you know, they're kind of seeing that you need a
break if you can't see it yourself. So cultivating cultivating
(01:05:23):
that is really important. And it's really important too in
the sense of becoming a speaker, because what's the point
of learning a language if you're not going to be
talking anybody?
Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
And I mean, I guess it's so. I mean, you
could do it for five you know. It's it's iffy, right,
it's iffy. I guess you know. I guess I can't
judge you if you just want to like learn a
language and then never talk to anyone in it. I
get like, there's nothing I don't think unethical about it.
(01:05:55):
It's just you know, a little weird. But uh, you
know this idea that you know, part of being a
speaker and part of doing this sort of work is
you're cultivating a community also to to engage in it with. Right,
And I think, you know, like the real treasure is
like the journey or what is that? The actual reward
(01:06:16):
is the journey and the friends on the way or
something like that. It's like it's like one of the Yeah,
it's not the destination, it's the journey. Thank you do
me now? Like I knew, Yeah, I don't do platitudes.
I's just like, you know, well not very often anyway.
I just did one. But I'm trying to you know.
(01:06:37):
I mean we're at the self help portion of the show,
so it's like we've got to indulge a little bit.
But yeah, So moving on to the stress management, surrounding
yourself with a good support group, listening to yourself and
the sense of both your body and your brain spiritually too,
Like if you just burned out, don't don't do it
(01:06:59):
and just just make sure to come back to it. Yeah,
be gentle with yourself, be understanding with yourself. This is
none of this stuff is easy, well some of I
mean some of it is easy, right, you just open
you open a book, you open up your dictionary, and
like look at it, like ten minutes, fifteen minutes a day. Right,
that's like something that's easily accomplishable. But that only kind
(01:07:21):
of pays off if you already are like a speaker
or stuff like that. But the point is you can
any sort of incremental progress towards the goal is still progress, right,
And even if you're not going to be able to
make progress your language, I don't know, there's other communities, right,
(01:07:42):
there's attractive speak people that speak other languages. You know,
you can go find some motivation there, any number of things, right,
talking about going back to tradition, Yeah, so I guess
that'd be sort of my like my recommendations there about
what kind of can keep you on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
We're going to cheese to both of you. This has
been the Tongue Unbroken. Season two, Episode two is in
the books in Buffalo, New York, home of a lot
more than Buffalo Wings and sports teams, home to wonderful, strong,
growing language programs. So life is complicated. Things are rarely
(01:08:27):
just one thing or the other. But there's spectrums. Way
on one side is the monster. Way on one side
is the medicine. Keep your focus on the medicine. Be
the medicine, be the light, be the change. All right,
change makers. We'll catch next time. Going to cheese to
both of you, Yeah Oha, going to cheese. What a
(01:08:48):
wonderful opportunity to spend with some amazing folks who are
thinking about language revitalization on their home territories. I want
to give thanks to Kambui Oh, the g ME and
the Lincoln Center for hosting the North Star Conversations on Boundlessness,
which helped me get to the East Coast, and the
(01:09:10):
University at Buffalo for hosting a seminar on technology and
Indigenous language revitalization. This podcast would not exist without the
Next Up initiative through the iHeartMedia Network. And I want
to give a special shout out to Joel Monique and
Mia Taylor for being super producers for the Tongue Unbroken.
(01:09:35):
We will be back next week. We'll be back every
week for about fourteen more weeks to talk about decolonization
and language revitalization in North America. So the closing message
here as usual, stick with it. Believe in yourself, believe
in each other, do it with kindness, do it with love,
(01:09:57):
Think about the things that you want to leave seven
generations from now. Always think about the future. Always think
about what you can do to help people who have
been through boarding schools, relocations from their home to non
Indigenous families, prohibitions of language, ways of life, ways of being.
(01:10:24):
Identifying with the self is medicine. Identifying with your ancestors
is medicine. Identifying with the land is medicine. Identifying with
future generations is medicine. We're building a future where Indigenous
languages not only exist, but thrive and are known by
(01:10:46):
the people who live on those lands. Colonization, as we
know it is ending in terms of something that annihilates
Indigenous ways of being and knowing. So gonna cheese for
all your work, Gonna choose for your belief, for your
hopes for being the dream of your ancestors. Keep going.
(01:11:08):
We'll be back next week to talk about this some
more Gonna cheese.
Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Yeah, Oh what
They tried to colonizes, try to genocide. Yet we're still
here with the tongue on broke and hotlin gonna choose
you wait to cut you on Ya hutting a show
in the Haya takutziyayata. This is the tongue unbroken. We're
(00:41):
coming to you on the road and we're with two
very special guests here. We're going to talk about their
language program, what kinds of things they're doing, how people
might learn languages, and how we can be creating new
speakers in this era while we're trying to also decolonize
(01:02):
and manage programs and manage our lives and not go
crazy and not quit. So we're I'm excited. We're in
a hotel room. We just did a one day symposium
on languages, and so I'll let my two special guests
introduce themselves and we're going to get right to our topics.
Gonna cheese ya scan guego so know the walk got going.
(01:31):
Nate Nanny, John Good gig he those shown end us
Wonde Ny hold on Towny, hand on stok YAsO Nanny.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
And the hand on the stock. Don't guess Nate Nanny
the gig die yet Ko walks home Gianna Wakiya naso
uh nate Na and a song got the stone jake
and he walked and they went and we caught he
(02:09):
said done. So my name is so Zitzowa, and I
said that my nation is Seneca Wa got the people
of the Great Hill and turtle clan gan Dan. I
live in Joan Good, which is called Akron. Some people
call that Hayong Gang. And then I grew up in Buffalo.
(02:34):
So do show where? Do show where? Between the bass
woods is the term for that, So there must have
been a lot of basswood in the area back in
the day when they named the town. I'm the director,
So doan dust on of Hanan Town, which is our
language program out at Tonawanda, and we have K three
(02:59):
uh pre K and then we have an adult full
fledge adult language program that's been going since twenty seventeen
and I've been directing there for In a couple of days,
it's going to be my seven year anniversary, So you know,
it's been pretty good. A lot of interesting work since
moving home, and what a difference being home versus trying
(03:24):
to learn from far away in New Mexico, Wisconsin, North Dakota.
Just being home is it's been a lot and a
lot of people have made themselves available to me in
my learning journey. So I'll just say that much right
now to get us started.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
It's awesome and Grilchieshan upcoming seven year anniversary, Like I
think this kind of work. You do it, and you
do it and you do it next thing. You know,
it's been five years and it's gonna be ten. And
then there's sports. I think that do get easier, but
then there's parts that are always just challenging and that
comes with being in communities that are struggling and being
(03:59):
with people that are struggling and trying to really create
a lot of shifts. So the cheese for sharing with.
Speaker 3 (04:04):
Us, tent that's gonna have Montgomery Hill got that? Got you?
Etti on that? Gane decent that that what now? U
beak her? Not walk yeah? Hot? Like hell I get hot?
Ohch what got now? We asked the hot yeah hot
with that got god name? We asked top what air
(04:28):
on that?
Speaker 4 (04:30):
Were you.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
On that?
Speaker 3 (04:35):
You with these?
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Now?
Speaker 3 (04:38):
What airwell on that? Coasta? Hotanka got you trad that
when it has not well? He said not walk yeah hot,
Hey when a he got guy doctor walking in that
you do not care an quill on that ossin asse
(05:05):
diag guisa is h gary. I got hotet had to
hasten the hot dett. So Hello, my name is Montgomery Hill.
I am an assistant professor at University of Buffalo in
(05:27):
UH Indigenous Studies. I got my PhD in linguistics actually
from here from U B Well. I finished my dissertation
maybe end of twenty nineteen, and I was awarded my
dissertation my doctorate in twenty twenty. So and a little
bit more about me personally, I guess uh I live
(05:49):
on the Test Coordination UH territory. I'm over there by
loose in New York on the Niagara Escarpment. So I'm
I'm a member of the Tuest Coordination. I'm a citizen
of the Tuest Coordination, and I'm a member of the
Beaver Clan. I'm thirty three years old, and I've been
studying or been a part of language revitalization, like learning
(06:10):
how to speak our language, starting from like five years
old when I was first exposed to it in pre K.
We didn't really have language in my home. My dad's parents,
my grandma and Grandpa were multi lingual in our languages,
and that was actually a common situation back then for
(06:34):
our people to have knowledge of multiple of our languages,
and it's actually the case now even as people are studying.
It's a lot of our Tuscarora speakers now, a lot
of our adult learners actually went and did a year
of the Mohawk language training first, and that really enabled
(06:54):
I think their speaking ability, their confidence, and really strengthened
their identity is like indigenous people. So I'm really thankful
for that opportunity that that happened, and I'm thankful for
you for having me on the show now, Cheesh.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So, as language teachers and as language learners, as language scholars,
some of the things that I think keep me up
at night anyways, is how on earth do we make
new speakers right? And so when you have languages that
are used in fewer and fewer places, when you end
up with fewer and fewer people to talk to. Now,
I usually don't like to look at everything just in
(07:34):
terms of like what are we losing, but just sometimes
one of the patterns that emerges is we want people
to really understand how our language works. But if you
just explain your language all day every day. Then you
have people who could tell you how it works. But
then you say, look out the wind to tell me
what you see or respond to this language thing. Let
me ask you a question about how your days going,
(07:56):
how you feeling, what do you think about this thing?
Speaker 3 (07:59):
What's your face?
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Were kind of dog or just what whatever? The type
of thing you know? Where was the where was the
buffalo wing invented? Right? And so like as we talk
about those types of things. One of the things that
we want to do. Going back to something that doctor
Pilo Wilson said to us over at University of hawai
yat Hilo Kai, he said, the goal of language revitalization
(08:25):
is to protect the speakers you have well, making new ones,
and ensure that your language is the language of power
in you. So my question to you, folks is tell
us a little bit more about your language, and then
tell us how what's your what's your approach to making
sure that people can understand your language and can speak
(08:47):
your language?
Speaker 4 (08:48):
All right?
Speaker 3 (08:50):
So I to walk go on.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
The Seneca language or the Seneca voice is the westernmost
language of the Roquoian dialects. So we have the six nations. Right,
we have Us and the Tuscarora, the Cayugas, on Adagas, Oneidas,
and Mohawks. And then you have the other Iroquoian languages
(09:14):
like Cherokee that that also share what we do even
now here on right here on and yeah, wyant. So
Seneca is the one on the west side of the Confederacy.
So Senecas are labeled sometimes as the keepers of the
western door and even that though that actually refers to
(09:35):
two chiefs, Donny Hogatwa and Gonna Eat Dewhee are the
keepers of that western that dark doorway. But we're the
westernmost language, so we've gone through the most morphological changes.
A long time ago, our language used to sound more
like Mohawk. But over the years, the Senecas were kind
of conquerors and just took over took whatever they wanted,
(09:57):
and as as a result that they absorbed a lot
of tribes. Then when they absorbed those tribes, they had
to they had like training camps to how to make
them Seneca. And as they did that, the influences from
the languages that other people came from had an effect
on Seneca, and there were changes made to shorten the
(10:20):
language so our language is a polysynthetic language, and I'm
sure Manti can get more into it because he's a
linguist about all the finer points of Iroquoian languages. But yeah, Seneca,
it's got its own little things. The morphological changes are
pretty interesting. It's just there's one thing all the other
(10:43):
languages still have is the yes no question particle. So
even listening to your your classes and hearing that you
guys have like a geh after a yes no question,
like Cayuga has geh, the other languages have gone what
do they have? And they you know? And Seneca, for
whatever reason, is the only one who just dropped it
(11:06):
out of the out of the way. And I have
a lot of people ask me, how the heck do
you ask a yes no question in your language without
the yes no particle we make, do you know? And
even that's a process. If we're talking about creating speakers,
that's that's a multifaceted question, right. I think over the
(11:26):
pandemic listening to second language acquisition specialists, listening to your
podcast and a variety of others. The goal has to
be communication, And sometimes I saw people get hung up
more on drilling paradigms, linguistic explanations, and breakdowns, which all
(11:47):
have their own place, like I'm not going to lie.
Those have been beneficial to me and how I work
in my language learning. But the goal is communication, you know,
so comprehensible input mean ative activities and tasks to formulate
actual speech, not the textbook you know, language that nobody
(12:11):
ever actually speaks in. So getting down to brass tacks
using everyday vocab, we have a curriculum we adopted and modified,
but there's other liberties we take with that where we
do get into everyday events, watching TV, eating food, going
(12:32):
to eat, going places. Where'd you go last night? Did
you do anything this morning? Those are all everyday topics
just to get a conversation going. So, even though that's
not necessarily a part of the unit we're on, it's
still everyday vocab. So we're going to show them how
to use it or at least make it part of
the vernacular. And right now, maybe we're not going to
(12:53):
get into all the breakdowns of what goes on because
there are there's more advance. If we're going to do
a progression, you're going to come across things that are
kind of considered more advanced in the everyday vocab, but
there's still no getting around them. So we'll just show
you how to use them with good input, and when
we get to it later, that's when we'll give you
(13:15):
some of the breakdowns and how it works and the
ins and out. The biggest thing, too, is pushing yourself
as an educator, as a speaker, yourself to really always
push to know the ins and outs of your language.
The finer point for me making myself vulnerable to my
students and always letting them know that when I'm working
(13:36):
with this language with you, I tell my students, I'm
not telling you this as if I've grown up speaking
the language or that I've known this for twenty years.
I've made all the same mistakes you did along the way,
and I'm sharing my mistakes with you so that you
can you can learn from that. You know, we can
learn a lot from each other, And that's why I
listen to your podcast, a lot of other people's podcasts.
(13:59):
People share experiences in this big job that we have,
and there's so much you can learn. A lot of
things overlap. We go through a lot of the same situations.
So making yourself vulnerable to your students. Letting them know
that you're not perfect, you're learning along as well, and
creating a safe learning space for them is big and
(14:23):
I've seen it make a big difference with the more
recent cohorts that we've had, and I think that goes
a long way into fostering an environment where speakership and
communication and grow. And the group that I just had graduate,
even the ones who didn't finish and only did the
first year, they communicate really well, and I think that's
(14:47):
just a small part of it. Monty can piggyback off
of that and share his experiences as well.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
Now, Damien for sharing your thoughts on creating speakers. I
think what you were talking about there right was the
adult immersion programs that we have going on on a
lot of our territories right now. These adult immersion programs
I think are really exceptional and they have been proven
to create speakers, which is one of the things that
(15:15):
just it's just really amazing about it. It uses I
guess I would say unconventional methods, which is which I
mean to say, is like it's not anything that people
were really doing before or really had thought about before,
and that specifically we're paying our students to learn our
languages six to eight hours a day. So each year,
(15:37):
the goal like the so the Root Word method and
then the Unglewana and joe Qua style adult immersion program,
you have about one thousand and eighty hours a year
of immersion is the goal. And the reason that you
do that is because there's nowhere in the whole world
(15:57):
that you can go and only be surround in one
of our languages. Right, So you want to go you
want to learn Italian, you go to Italy, Right, you
want to learn Arabic, you go multiple places in the
Middle East, right, Hindi you go to India. There's all
these all these sorts of opportunities. So in reality, I
(16:20):
think one of the main things that you have to
do to create speakers is to create an environment where
you can you can make speakers. And I think it
also goes the other way too. So what I mean
by that is, well, part of what it takes to
make speakers is you have to have people that are
(16:41):
willing to speak. So if you don't have if you
have people that aren't really talking that much in English,
it's not like them learning another language is gonna suddenly
give them a bigger voice or anything like that. Right,
It's it's not this sort of magically transformative power, right,
It's something and this is like a little cheesy, right,
(17:02):
but like the power is in you right to make
that decision to use the language. And so yeah, so
deciding deciding to be a speaker, right, that's something that's
out of any teacher's control. There's there's only so much
you can do about someone that has sort of resigned
themselves to never get past a certain level of fluency.
(17:27):
And on the flip side, I mean it's also true,
like you can imagine, like you want to be able
to write a dissertation in your language, and it's like, well,
maybe we should have a little bit more realistic goals.
Maybe just you know, be able to live your day
to day life and teach your kids and be able
to have like little conversations with your kids and be
(17:47):
able to negotiate bedtime, be able to negotiate what you're eating, right,
or even just like make commentary at the store and
things like that. And honestly, like a lot of it
is just to be encouraging and appreciative of any language
that emerges as it emerges. So I know, from my
own experience, like speaking with my own kid, A lot
(18:10):
of the time, the language comes out when they want something,
so they're like, you know, a dusk one we style,
like could you give me some money?
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Right?
Speaker 3 (18:22):
And it's like there, of course they're going to ask
that in mohawk, right, and especially you know in like
this polite form, right, so you always say a wad
of the gone like would it be possible? It will
be possible, you know, and uh, you know they're kind
of buttering you up, right, but they that that in itself,
you being susceptible to that is a form of giving
(18:44):
power to the language. You're they're able to achieve something
that they want and acquire something that they want with
the language, right. And that's I think one sort of
facet of power, as we talk about it is we
conceive it, right, the ability to get get yourself, to
satisfy yourself, to satisfy these needs or wants. That's like
the one aspect of power. And then you know that
(19:06):
ties into language, and then appreciating any sort of language
that you get, and appreciating any sort of language that
you get is also its own sort of power. So
I go and get gas from one particular gas station
because I can say naw to the guy pumping my
gas and he'll always say yeah, back, you know what
(19:28):
I mean. And so that in itself, I think is
just a really rewarding experience, you know, because you can
do the whole getting your gas pumped without any more
than that. Really, you know, you put out the twenty dollars,
you get Okay, yeah, I want twenty dollars a gas. Right,
you just say once he's done with it, you say yaw,
he says yeah, and you're on with your day. Look,
(19:49):
we just did one hundred percent exchange of tusc Aurora
and I got my gas, right, I guess.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (19:57):
So like this power, this power of gratitude to it
is like the flip side, right, the being thankful for
what you acquired, the being thankful for what you get
cognitive reframing.
Speaker 1 (20:07):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:08):
You could be like, oh, well that was only two
words that you guys expote, or you know, you think
about it. Hey, we just had a full on interaction
in the language. I took care of everything, all my
needs and it went off without a problem. So that
is like like a third aspect of like power with
(20:30):
respect to language and that's what it's ultimately about. Right.
You're learning there's language to empower yourself. Right, You're not
looking to learn the language like make yourself worse than anything. Right.
You know, the idea is like, oh, yeah, I'm going
to learn the language because I think in some way
it's going to be better for me and or it's
(20:51):
going to be better for my kids, it's going to
be better for my community and anything like this. And
I think that that also turns it into a joint effort,
a collaborative effort. And so you kind of even even
if we're getting into notions of power and everything like
this and being able to get what you want, you're
(21:13):
still having to constantly negotiate everything with everybody else, Right,
And that's I think with what language gives us this
ability to sort of like negotiate, collaborate, express It does
all these really complicated things. But they these complicated things
aren't like the way that they manifest themselves, aren't necessarily
(21:34):
complex themselves. They just like they can just be that
simple interaction of here, you put out your hand with
the twenty dollars, he takes it. You say now' for
pumping and pumping the gas and he says, yeah, and
you're on with You're on with your day, right. I
think that was about That's about where I was going
with that. Yeah, it's like that. So the power of
(21:55):
cognitive reframing with respect to language is one way to
make a speaker, the of like recognizing your own power,
this ability to use the language to achieve what you want.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
Yeah, well, well the first question is only like the
hardest question there is, right, just like how do you
do the thing?
Speaker 4 (22:16):
Right?
Speaker 1 (22:16):
So, but yeah, this is all right on as we
think about what it takes to create speakers to keep
going to think of a world where we have I
remember us in Hewwiti and someone said, it's not like
I remember when it was exactly, but I just remember
this general time when I didn't know every single person
who spoke Hawaiian, and I thought, wow, that's what I
(22:37):
really want, is just to like have people like And
then just I think a few months ago, I went
to the post office in Juno and someone walked by
and they said, your kok's a teen.
Speaker 3 (22:50):
I was like, oh, good cheese, and.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
They walked off, and I thought, I don't know who
that person was, right, And so it's it's beginning to
happen with us as like as the language spreads and
as we remove some of the stigmas about like it
has to be perfect or I have to be at
this level, then we start to see these impacts. So
I know you just got a thought. But if we're
gonna make new speakers, we've got to make listeners as well.
(23:14):
So we're thankful that you all are listening to this.
Gonna cheese. We need to take a quick break, but
before we do, I want you to visualize wherever you're
at in your language journey, whether you're learning on your own,
teaching someone learning from a whole bunch of people, in
a cohort, leading a cohort, directing a language program, just
think of one thing that's been in your way lately
(23:38):
and just watch it vaporize before your eyes, and just
think of like just overcoming that one obstacle. And so
the obstacles are there, but I think what's bigger than
that is the success that's going to be on the
other side of that.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
So we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
One or two or three times you try any de
not brids you run all around without your head.
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Struggle.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Yes, to day you struggle still today now, but you'll
find a broader away my brother and sisters, don't you know.
I found the way to bring it back for those
who came. Believe in yourself now believe in us somehow,
(24:48):
but not deep color nothing, and we're back. So I
asked the question about what does it take to make speakers,
which is kind of jumping in the water before we
even weighe down into getting to the deep end, because
(25:11):
we didn't even talk about what is a speaker? And
I've got a few thoughts to share and then I'll
turn over to you folks to sort of share your ideas.
So there's a number of different things that are just
rolling around my brain right now, and one is my
experience as a language teacher is a lot of people
are reluctant to ever call themselves a speaker. They'll just
say I'm just a learner. And I really like to
empower students to say you are a speaker. If you're
(25:34):
using this language, you are a speaker of the language.
And I don't like to use the word fluent because
I think that stops us from considering ourselves part of
this language community. So I like to use the word fluency,
like to say you could just keep stepping on up,
keep going up up up, and that way we could say, oh,
you're right here, work on these things. You're right here,
work on these things. And we also I try to
(25:57):
communicate with adults what I also heard from Pelah Wilson,
which was you learn an artificial form of the language
at first, because you've got to break in all these
chunks so people can digest it. You're just learning the
names of things, and you're learning these little phrases, and
then next thing, you're learning these bigger parts, and you
have to first thing it anyway, so you have to
put all these parts together, and then they're not fully
(26:19):
contracting in your mind and interacting the way they would
if you'd been speaking your whole life. So for adults,
we try to just really let our adults know it's
okay if you don't sound like a high fluency speaker
right away. And then we try to talk to our
language speakers who grew up with the language and say,
you're going to hear some adults speaking and it's going
to sound really different than you think it should, but
(26:41):
really try to focus on encouraging them and receive what
they're sharing with you and talk back to them, because
if they can see that, you understand what they're trying
to do. That light's a fire. It keeps that fire burning.
And so as we think about like what a speaker is,
we also have these I have lots of thoughts as
well about how do you keep people going, how do
(27:02):
you get them to naturalize their language a bit because
a friend of mine, Tinakpungy, he said, I speak my
grandmother's language, but I don't speak like my grandmother. That
doesn't mean he's not trying. It just means he gives
himself room to grow in the language, which I think
is also important to let our people claim it as
their own and let our people live in this space
where they can play and make mistakes. And I just
(27:26):
repeatedly tell my students there are no mistakes in language learning.
It's all just language learning. So continuing these thoughts on
making speakers and what defines a speaker, and how do
you keep people motivated to especially to go really into
the deep dive zone beyond memorization, beyond all these things
(27:48):
to say, you can't read it off a piece of paper.
You got to go and respond to what you're hearing.
What are your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
So as far as what I consider a speaker, I
think of my Oneida teacher, Sally Hoaked Leander Danforth out
in Oneida, Wisconsin. He's in his upper sixties now, and
even you know, he's a second language speaker. He's a
really good second language speaker of Oneida language. And he's
(28:16):
always said that he doesn't ever consider himself as this
like fluent speaker, and he'll never call himself this high
level speaker. But what he did say is he said,
I can speak and people understand me. People can talk
to me and I understand them, and I can formulate
responses and we can carry on a conversation. And that's
(28:39):
where he is about that, Like, that's where he kind
of draws the line, is like I'm able to communicate
back and forth with other speakers of Oneida and Mohawk,
you know, And he kind of leaves it up to
other people to say, you know, if you want to
label me a speaker because of that, okay, But he
understands that he's still in the learning process all the time.
Speaker 4 (28:57):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
I think of your little bear Cheyenne Elder, who I
work with on the board of directors for the Indigenous
Language Institute. One of his lectures, he said, you'll never
reach this point where you say I now know all
the words of the Cheyenne language.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
You know.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
And I thought, yeah, anybody right, You're never going to
say that I know all the words of the twing
It language or the you know, Garuda language. I now
know everything about it, you know. So it is this
ongoing process of being able to express yourself. I took
a class, a Native languages class at und Out in
Grand Forks, North Dakota, and that's what they talked about
(29:40):
was to have the ability to tell a story on
the fly. The teacher said, if you can tell a
story on the fly, just out of the blue, off
the cuff, I think that's a pretty good indicator of
that you're able to be a speaker. And I always
aspired that. When he said that, I thought, wow, you know,
he's right. And he even kind of broke down. He's like, uh,
(30:01):
you know, you come across these people who they get
on the stage or the classroom or wherever they can
bust out their whole intro. You know their name, their age,
their clan, where they're from, you know, and it gives
you this impression like, oh, wow, wow, you're you're a
the Nay speaker. Wow you're a Dakota speaker. You sound fluent.
(30:23):
You know, we talk about that F word, right. And
what they don't realize is these these like that's all
they've done, is it's it's become a script in their
head and it's a routine and they can bust it
out anytime they want. I had asked one of my
friends at time, I said, are you able to introduce
your wife? He said no. I said, can you introduce
your son? He said nah. I had never learned how
(30:44):
to do that. So just something as simple as being
able to like take your whole intro and make everything
in the male form, make everything in the female form,
Like to us who've been in the language game, like,
that's a really simple change, you know, and it's totally teachable.
But somebody who's memorizing that script, it's just a routine
for them. So I know a lot of languages have
(31:07):
the ceremonial addresses, and some of them, in our culture,
they're short enough that you can you can memorize some
of them. And I noticed that sometimes when I went
to one of the schools up at six nations. They
are the kids. They could do these addresses for thirty minutes,
and I was so impressed that they talked for thirty
minutes straight. Later on in the week, I'm asking them
(31:31):
all these words, how do you say this? How do
you say that? And they're going, well, I'm not actually
a speaker, you know. I said, yeah, but you were
just talking for a half hour straight yesterday, like cleterally,
you can, you can really carry on and he said, no,
those are like that's different, that's different. What I did
you know? I don't. And then now that I think
(31:54):
back to it, like I never really remember those kids
having dialogue back and forth in the language. Everything was English,
but when it came to those memorized speeches, they could
they could go on and on and on. So I
came up with this term speechers. There's speakers and there's speechers,
you know, and we have some people who are speechers
and they're really good speechers, and you know, you have
(32:17):
these people who've never delved into language at all, right,
like they just stay on the outside. They're just like
I'm not going to do it. That's somebody else's job.
And when they hear the speechers go, they're like, man,
he's a really good speaker. Go ask him. He's a speaker,
you know, not knowing the difference between somebody who knows
how to memorize and somebody else to who knows how
(32:37):
to just do it on the fly. And so it
is again about communicating on the fly. We have these
little games. Once I get my students going, I'll hand
them announcements. So we have a sing that everybody comes
together and they share social dance songs while women's dance songs,
and then there's a big social in the fall in
(32:58):
the spring. And every time I had a there's little
things that happen. So hey, there's kids running in and
out of the bathroom and they're leaving the water on
and sticking toilet paper on the wall. You know, everybody
needs to watch their kids, you know. Or somebody lost
a red cell phone in the men's room. If you want,
if it's yours, come up here and describe it and
(33:19):
we'll give it back to you. This is an on
the fly announcement R. So I'll give them a card
and say here, make the announcement. Some of them their
first instinct is to translate everything in there. And you
never gave us this word, but I'll say, just convey
the message. That's all you need to do. Tell them
there's a loss phone, tell them what color it is,
(33:40):
tell them how they can get it back. However, whatever
is within your ability to do that, you know, And
I'll mix up the announcements. The faith keepers are going
to be selling benches and drums at the cook house
on Saturday to raise money. Or the lacrosse game go,
(34:02):
you know, it starts at six, goes till eight there go.
Can you do that on the fly, you know, And
that's what we try to do with an opening address
where we give thanks. There is a path that you
do have to try to follow in that, but there's
also room for you to create and express yourself on
(34:24):
that path.
Speaker 4 (34:25):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:25):
If we're talking about the trees, there's a lot of
stuff you can say about the trees. If it's a
certain time of year, if there's certain things going on
in the world, you can add as much as you want,
or you can keep it really basic. There's different expressions
that you know. You can use a factual expression or
you can use a state of expression and they convey
(34:46):
the same meaning and you can keep your opening kind
of fresh. So I think what makes a speaker is
being versatile, being able to communicate your feelings, what you see,
what you feel well, what's going on around you, and
being very versatile at the drop of a hat. That's
(35:07):
one of the big pieces. And I'll hand it off
to Monty.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
So, yeah, one of the I kind of remembered what
I was going to say earlier and what I wanted
to say earlier. Is part of becoming a speaker or
what a what a speaker is is this ability to
create your own speaking environment, right, so you turn you're
(35:30):
able to turn the environment that you're in from an
English one into a Tusco or one into a Seneca
one into a clean one, right. And that's and that's
the idea of the confidence to be able to do that.
And it's not necessarily very easy. It's in fact it's easy.
It's easier to go right to English, right, especially you
(35:52):
know you're practicing, you're learning. You're like, oh, well, just
give me the translation for this, give me the translation
for that, or anything like that. It's sort of like, no,
we're going to keep it in our speaking tradition and
the tusk for a speaking tradition, right, Because I think
one of the things too, that defines are it's a
little bit about it's a little bit about more than
(36:13):
just language, right, It's about a whole attitude, about your worldview,
about your perspective on things, and it is a it's
a transformative thing, I think, becoming a speaker and recognizing
yourself as such. And at the same time, though, it's
difficult to balance that with the same idea. What I
was talking about earlier, and I think Lance touched on
(36:36):
this too, were like, even if you're using one or
two words of our language, you're also a speaker. And
I don't think that these are contradictory ideas. What I
think is that it points to the fact that the
term speaker might be insufficient to describe or point at
the phenomenon that we're dealing with in language revitalization, right,
(36:59):
because like you look at these things and they're both valid.
They're both you know, you're learning, Like let's just say,
instead of greeting people with hello, you just start using
twan everywhere. I could probably start doing that in my
Indigenous studies apartment and people would figure it out right well.
And and I think part of that too would be
(37:22):
because being in an Indigenous studies department, people would be
more inclined to be accepting of it right and be
willing to go with it and be willing to understanding it.
But you're not necessarily also going to find that everywhere,
which is I think also a little bit part of
(37:43):
the struggle. I don't know, I don't have any solutions
for that, but I think that something you just need
to need to be able to confront. And I'm not
talking like, you know, like racist white people not liking
Indigenous languages. I'm talking like people in your own community
that get up that you're speaking right, or why are
you using this word? Or you're trying to show that
(38:05):
you're better than me, like anything like this is a
lateral violence or this this perception of lateral violence, right,
And that's something that you also have to deal with,
deal with as a speaker, what it means to be
a speaker. But I mean there's good stuff about it too.
There's good stuff about it too. So this ability, I
(38:27):
think what it is also is being able to give
what you have to others, and I think that is
part of then you know that goes hand in hand
with what's the creating the environment. But to be able
to say, okay, well, I'm going to teach you how
to do this. I'm going to teach you how to
say hello, and then that's what we're going to do
from now on. Right, I'm going to teach you how
(38:49):
to say call that a car or call that you
know with threat tat, and that's what we're going to
do from now on.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
Right.
Speaker 3 (38:56):
I'll do it as long as you do it, and
we both know what we're doing, and then I can
learn it in your language, you can learn it in mind.
Then we could just use it with use these languages
with each other, right, and both be understood. So I
think too, Yeah, being a speaker comes with a responsibility
of like also open mindedness, this sort of this sort
of idea. A lot of our communities back then were
(39:19):
definitely multi lingual. There was a lot of trading going on.
We exchanged languages, we exchange cultures, we exchanged ideas, and
this sort of stuff was this was happening. It's not
like we were all fighting each other all the time, right,
they were. I'm pretty sure there were also, you know
times at times of peace, right, and you see that,
I mean I think I think it stands. It's like obvious.
(39:41):
But also you can like go look in the archaeological record, right,
and you can see actual evidence, you know, if you
if you want to be all scientific about it, right,
we we actually are like, okay, well, how do these
beads from the Gulf of Mexico get all the way
up to New York?
Speaker 4 (39:58):
Right?
Speaker 3 (39:58):
How does that happen? People have there has to be
a way for these you know, they don't they don't
just grow wings imply there. Right, we didn't have Amazon
back then, right, you had to do it, do it
the hard way, you know. And that and that involves language,
that involves communication, that involves dealing with each other in
a in some way or form. So yeah, it's I think,
(40:23):
but yeah, a lot about a lot about that and
and so basically respecting difference too is also like what
is at the core of it. And that respecting difference
is also something that Lance was talking about too, with
the fact that you don't really need to constantly be
correcting other people if you can understand, he said, if
(40:44):
you can understand what they're saying, and you can respond
to them. Then that's good because they're gonna they know.
I don't like, I don't know how many of you
listening are are have been the speaker. But you know,
when you're like, oh that was bad, you know what
I mean, something comes out of your mouth and you're like, oh,
that was you know, but imagine some of that coming
(41:07):
out of your mouth and you're saying, thinking, oh, that
was like god awful, like I can't believe. And then
but the person you're talking to goes, oh, yeah, like
I have I have I have a cat too, right,
And you're like, oh, I guess it wasn't I guess
it couldn't have been that bad. I'll try better next time.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
That was pretty embarrassing, but you know, he at least
figured out, like, you know, we're talking about cats and
who has what and everything like that, you know. And
you know, I haven't gotten really into like the child
acquisition to language acquisition learning, but it really seems to
me that humans are very capable of self correction.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right.
Speaker 3 (41:43):
That seems like a in a in a capability. So
just allowing yourself this like to be like childlike in
this way again, right, and to and to be not
only be understanding to yourself, but be understanding to others
around you. Yeah, so there's so there's a lot about
being a speaker that I don't think even necessarily involves language, right,
(42:07):
And I guess you could even point, I don't know,
you could blame colonialism. I think you know, at least
part of it. You could put you know, like eighty
eighty percent colonialism, twenty percent other problems, right, and these
sort of way colonial mentalities that have been put into us. Right,
(42:30):
so as you're adopting these things, are like you're afraid
to let go of them? Just be Oh, actually no,
I'm decolonizing myself by letting go of these things, right,
So I think, Yeah, to me, that's what it's about
being the speaker.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
And cheesh, thanks to both of you. And time is
a colonial construct. And it's also time to take our
second break.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So we'll be right back.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Her eel he bore ah, you're you're not said ho
cod bo h her eo are oh kind of talk
(43:46):
he gives away to dat.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
Welcome back to the Tongue Unbroken. We're here with se
de Want, Damien Webster, and Montgomery Hill, who are doing
wonderful work in the Seneca and Tuscarora languages here on
Hudna Shone Lands the East Coast. I just have so
much admiration for indigenous peoples of the East Coast, this
whole area for absorbing so many like the first huge
(44:37):
waves of colonial destruction really just washed up upon this
side of the continent. And so to see folks holding
onto their language and to keep going is just really
energizing and exciting. And I know that we're on the
cusp of I think tremendous change across North America as
we look at what can we do, how can we
(44:59):
keep going? And so there's a couple of things I
want us to sort of think about and talk about here,
which is I've sometimes said, you know, if everybody who
started learning our thing get language, kept going, we'd have
a thousand speakers right now, but we got thirty, you know,
And so that that's alarming to see so many people
that start but don't take it all the way and
(45:21):
for some reason, you know, and we know a lot
of the reasons. We've talked about colonial violence, we've talked
about violence against women, we've talked about unhealthy situations, lack
of strong language, environments, over corrections, there's on and on on,
And one thing that we have talked about as well
is if you just focus on those negative things, it's
hard to see what the brighter sides could be. And
(45:42):
I think for me, I get overly paranoid that everything's
a colonial trick and everything's something here to distract us
or to dissuade us. But I also like the quote
from Maudi scholar Moana Jackson, who says, to paraphrase, one
of the most harmful things that colonialism did to us
is to get us to lose faith in ourselves. So
(46:04):
I think indigenous solutions are what we need. But I
guess my question to you is how do you inspire
folks to keep going? And how do you keep going yourself?
When you see, you know, we do have rates of success,
but sometimes we have to look and think where did
those people go and why did they leave? And what
(46:25):
kind of was there something I could have done to
hold on to them before they walked away from this
thing that we were all doing together. But I'm hoping
for messages of inspiration and hope and not to just
you know, be all super bummed out about what didn't happen.
But as we build these programs that are stronger and stronger,
we want to make sure that the people who walk
(46:45):
away are fewer and fewer, because they will say, I
knew this was where I needed to be, and once
I got there, I felt the love, and I felt
like I belonged, and I felt like we knew each other.
And that's what we go for with our language programs.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Awesome. Yeah, when it comes to longevity and inspiration for others, oh,
there's so much to unpack. I think all you listeners
out there, wherever you're at in your language learning, whichever
language you're trying to study and make a part of
your life, you realize at some point that that language
(47:22):
is bigger than all of us. It's older than I
don't care how old you are. The language is bigger
than you are. If you're a title holder, the language
is still bigger than you are. You know, you're a
part of something bigger than all of us. And that
sounds so cliche, but it actually it is bigger than
all of us. So, you know, I'm coming up on
(47:43):
seven years at my job, and one of the things
I told myself is you're going to have some tough
times in this job, and you're going to be challenged,
and it's it's kind of sad to tell yourself that,
but I got to be realistic about it too, like
you're going to be challenged, and when the challenges came,
(48:03):
it's really easy to pump yourself up when you're in
your car and you're laying in bed. You know, it's
a whole other thing when it's right in your face
and everything's going off right now, you're in the thick
of it. Your anxiety is up, you're wondering what's going
to happen. And there were those moments where I thought
the same worth it, man, this is you know what
(48:23):
I think. I just want to go back to making
subs or I want to go load boxes in a
truck or not worry about all this. And I had
to take that moment because you guys are going to
have these breaking points in your language journey where it's
just this is too hard. This isn't what I thought
it was going to be. So the beast is staring
you down like it's right in your face, and that's
(48:44):
what I thought to myself. I was like, look at you,
look at you. The difficulties here, the difficulty you said
that what's going to come is here, and it's looking
you right in the face right now, and your first
thought is you want to give up and walk away.
So you got to pull your pants up and you
gotta trudch forward and don't forget while you're here, don't
(49:07):
forget what you're fighting for. When we talk about colonialism
and what happened to our people, it wasn't this one
time event, right, it's this ongoing process to try to
eradicate us and eradicate who we are and us in
the modern day. Like some of us are so far
(49:28):
removed from that. I mean, there's some stuff that's real recent, right,
Like it's still it's still not that far back. And
I think it's always important to remember what our ancestors
went through to carry on what is still here for
us today.
Speaker 1 (49:43):
Right.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
So over here we talk about the seven generations and
that the people seven generations from now that you're never
going to meet should be able to enjoy the things
that you enjoy right now, right, And if you take
it backwards, those people that were never going to meet
us and who we are, they held on, They held
(50:05):
strong when the boarding schools came like you could see
they have those They don't care if they got their haircut,
if they got slapped in the ear, if they had
their tongue pierced with a nail. Something in their head
was like, I'm still going to talk my language. I'm
still going to keep speaking. You're not going to stop
me from passing on this language. And it's like you
(50:26):
should honor those people for doing that. When I got
back seven years ago, my teacher was doing funeral addresses.
These funeral rites are generations old. These are old old ways.
I've gone to a condolence of where we raise a leader.
This is like a pre contact ceremony. They're using these
(50:49):
expressions and songs and this whole process that predates America,
predates Canada, and somebody had the wherewithal to hold it
strong so that it's still here today. Like it's really
a testament to sit there and watch a leader get
raised all day and just like wow, this is like
(51:11):
people have seen this for generations. You know, I can't
imagine what did this look like a hundred years ago,
two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, And it's
we're still doing it today. We're still sending people home
the way our people send people home. So you're holding
on to something just way bigger. And it's almost like
once you join this movement and once you decide to
(51:34):
really give yourself to learning the language, it's like you
jump in this like stream of consciousness that has to
carry forward too, right, So then it's like, well, what's
going to be your contribution?
Speaker 1 (51:46):
You know?
Speaker 2 (51:47):
Is the language going to continue on because of you?
Or are you going to be one of the reasons why?
It makes it a lot more difficult, you know. And
I always remember sitting in my kitchen and Santa Fe
the radio station up in Six Nations. They would play
social music on Wednesday nights and I would stream it
on my computer. But one night I tuned in and
(52:09):
they weren't playing music. They had a I think it
was Jake Thomas talking. It had to be him, so
he said, if you don't want your language and your
culture to continue, then that's where it'll stop with you.
And that just struck a chord, Like I grabbed a
note card right away and I wrote it down and
I taped it to my wall, and I told myself, God,
(52:32):
dang it, all right, it's not going to stop with me.
You know, I have two little girls here that I
have an opportunity to give them something that I didn't
have growing up. You know, I didn't have parents that spoke.
I didn't have grandparents or aunties or uncles that spoke
the language. You know, I knew. I grew up knowing
like four words, and language was never on my radar.
(52:52):
Even I told my daughter, she's seventeen, I said, language
wasn't on my radar when I was seventeen. I never thought, hey,
I should learn my language, you know, and you just
never know what you're going to do to inspire them, right.
So there was a point too where I thought, I'm
never really going to be a speaker. I'm never going
(53:13):
to have that level of fluency or proficiency like those
ones that came before us, and maybe why should I
bother doing it? But then we heard Tom Porter, a
Mohawk elder. He said, don't ever underestimate when you plant
those seeds what's going to come up and grow on
the other side. You never know what's going to come
(53:35):
out of that, so you have to give it a chance.
Speaker 1 (53:37):
Right.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
So when I heard that, I said, you know what,
I'm going to give it a chance. Maybe I will
never be a speaker of this language, but let's see
what it does for my daughters. And so we use
a lot of phrases when we got in the car shopping, eating,
bad time, bedtime. And once you know it, they start
(53:59):
producing language on their own. They start learning how to
conjugate things on their own that I didn't even think
they would pick up because kids just do that, right.
And I'm sitting there listening to them use it and
it comes out of them, and I'm just like, man,
that's because I didn't underestimate the efforts of what I
(54:21):
could do. And I was just listening to a podcast
over here, this guy named ojik well Jibwe guy, another
podcast called The Language, and that's what he said. He goes,
I had this myth in my head that I don't
want to pass the language on to my kids until
I have it perfect, until I'm perfectly using the F
word fluent myself. And he said, I thought I thought
(54:44):
I would pass on this imperfect language to them, and
I don't want to do that, so I'm going to wait.
And he says, looking back on it, there's so much
I could have given to them, anyways, even in an
imperfect state or whatever, they would have had so much more.
He goes, I see all these other people who give
their kids the language. The just make adjustments along the way,
and we do that, like you have the ability to
(55:07):
change things. I changed my jump shot.
Speaker 4 (55:11):
You know.
Speaker 2 (55:11):
It took a lot of work, but I changed my
jump shot. And you can change things. So there was
a book I came across that In the book it
looked like it said gano oh w and next to
it it said I love you, and I never I
never could find that in none of any other resources.
So I was like, oh, man, I found it. I
can tell my kids I love them. And Seneca we
(55:34):
start saying gon know oh quah quah so kayaw wuk
is like daughter, right, gun know oh u kawak and
they would say guno oh quah hotni. And we just
kept saying that for the longest time, back and forth
to each other whenever we had to leave or whatever.
And then I got a track somebody sent me these
language tracks, and there's a speaker on there she goes,
gon wha, I love you. I was like, oh, that's
(55:56):
different going on. Well, all of a sudden, I learned too,
like go like me to you and know what is
the root. I was like, oh, me to you, I
love you, going on qua. So I had to go
to my daughter's I said, hey, we've been saying this
word the wrong way. It's not gonna oh why it's
going They're like really, I said, yeah, we just got
to fix it. And you know, to their credit, they
(56:18):
just rolled right with. They were like, okay, going on
quahtani go no qua kawak and we just we just
fixed it, you know. And and like Manty said earlier,
like kids have the ability, people have any ability to
self correct and so that's what we did. So if
you're out there thinking like, you know what, I got
to be perfectly good in my language, no, just like
give them what you can now, give it to them
(56:39):
while they're they can absorb their their minds are fresh
and open and see where it goes. Don't underestimate your efforts,
you know, and you're part of the future of your language.
And there's nothing more beautiful than that to uh, to
hear children speak the language. That's a rare occurrence for me.
(57:00):
I'll tell you what. There's there's one you know, June
did a presentation earlier today where he said we had
our first birth speaker in over sixty years. And I
started thinking about that because there's this little girl in
Catteraugus named Mira, and years ago when she started being
able to talk and her mom went through the language program,
there would be these little videos and you would hear
(57:22):
her just that's the first little kid I ever heard
just Seneca just poured from her mouth, linguistically, really good,
just stringing together sentences like nothing. It was the most
beautiful sound I've ever heard to hear children. I thought,
(57:42):
I wonder how long that's been that If she's the
first birth speaker of Seneca in I don't know how
many years, you know, and the effort it takes to
do that, it's beautiful. And one of my friends in
South Dakota, like he's raising his boys and his daughter
like their first language Lakota speakers. It's beautiful to watch
the videos of his boys just interacting La Clotta. And
(58:06):
it's possible for everybody believe in that dream, you know,
that's what we're doing. We're dreaming, dreaming the impossible dream.
But at the same time, like maybe it is impossible,
but I'm still gonna do it anyways. You know, we're
gonna go down swinging if it's if it's gonna go,
it's gonna go. But we're not going to go down
without fighting. I really enjoy being on the program, and
(58:29):
it's been awesome listening to a lot of your podcasts
and your shows and your classes you put on. I
was Tellingne today tonight that I feel like I developed
a relationship with his former classes because I listened to
so many classes. It's been really cool. So it's awesome
being on the podcast. I listened to all of season one,
and I really appreciate you giving me the time to
(58:50):
be on the show so way. So it now we
the things that keep me keeping on. I think one
of the main things would probably be stress management first up,
because you know, we get talking about the language and
how important it is, and that's a really big weight,
(59:13):
and I think you know that's something that you have
to It never really gets lighter, like in fact, as
you start to acquire more languages, you start to acquire
more knowledge. I feel like you actually, you know, it
gets heavier in the sense that you feel a more
(59:34):
significant responsibility to share what it is that you've collected
and I know and I think that's true, and I think, uh,
it's just something you really have to work on making
yourself accustomed to. And I mean it's a lot of it.
It's just like working out that you got to you
got to listen to your body, right. You really have
(59:57):
to be like, well, I've been going hard. I've been
like getting in the gym four times a week, and
this week, I really I'm just like I can't get
myself to go. And it's like I'm going, Okay, well
i'll go to bed and I'll wake up tomorrow and
i'll go.
Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
I'll go. Then you wake up tomorrow and you're like,
I don't want to go, and then you know that happens,
that could happen, that happened to me. Actually I don't.
I don't know less a couple of weeks ago and
you know, I was like, you know what, I'm just
gonna see how long it is. It's good, how long
this break is. Before you know, I was like, I'm
(01:00:36):
a wake up and I'm excited to go. And it
only took a week. And sometimes, you know, I think
taking that break is exceptionally important. You know, your body
is telling you things right, you're and then in the
same way, I think like your mind is telling you
things too. But the important thing is you don't take
(01:00:58):
the break indefinitely.
Speaker 1 (01:01:01):
You know.
Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
The idea, The idea is you come back right, you
get I mean you might get defeated or feel defeated,
or feel rejected or this or that, or come up
with any sort of excuse, but those you have to
also recognize, like are those excuses or legitimate reasons?
Speaker 1 (01:01:20):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
So you know, and there are legitimate reasons. Let's say,
you know, there's like it's a genuinely unhealthy environment in
your language program. You know, that's not unheard of, and
that's something like a reality, especially as we're dealing with
the ugly process of decolonization and lateral trying to heal
from lateral violence and everything like that that happens, I
(01:01:42):
mean really even relationships with other speakers, you know, all
these sorts of things. So there are I think, like
legitimate reasons for you know, not wanting to participate. At
the same time, like not all languages are communities are
like that, So we'll find a find another one and
help them, right, And that's something that we can all do, uh.
(01:02:05):
For each other. So yeah, so they's just like a
bunch of ways to well, I guess actually that's what
I did. So we were having problems, uh, I guess
like getting to the point of full on conversational tusc
Aurora and once actually it was really great. It was
(01:02:26):
myself and a number of other people from my community,
uh from the Tuscoor Nation went through the Mohawk Immersion
program when it was offered in Buffalo, and we had
a bunch of people in UH, one in each of
the three cohorts. And from there we were actually were
able learning mohawks related language. We were able to sort
(01:02:49):
of transform ourselves into speakers, into into like having these
ful on conversations. We it, we got we found training.
We kind of well, we did take a detour, right
or and in some sense or yeah, we did something else.
We were doing something else, we were learning something else.
(01:03:11):
So and that's the idea, right is Okay, yeah, take
your break, and but just make sure to come back,
you know. I think that's that's the number one thing.
And like I, like I said, is take as long
as you actually as you actually need, right or maybe
you can go find something else to do while you're
(01:03:32):
waiting for your community to change, for this program to change,
for maybe people leave. You know, the people creating toxic
environments usually don't aren't able to stick around in any
particular environment for an extended period of time. Usually, you know,
most of the time, you would hope, but uh, you know,
(01:03:54):
you just got to be aware of the situation and
sort of just be like be a excited find that
excitement again, right, And when you don't have the excitement,
I mean, sometimes you do have to push through when
you don't have that excitement. But there's a difference between like,
you know, okay, so sometimes you wake up and you're
(01:04:15):
like ready to go, and sometimes you wake up and
be like, ah, I mean it is a gym day,
so I better go, right, And that's fine too. And
then even there's like, oh man, I'm gonna how about today.
I'm going to go, but like only I'm not going
to do squats today, right, you know, I'm not going
to do I'm not going to do this thing that
(01:04:37):
I really you know, you make make a deal with yourself, right,
or you get to be like, Okay, well today's going
to be my got I'm going to go, but I'll
let myself have the teat day today, right, just like
you're you know, it's a it's a constant negotiation with yourself.
It's stress management, and you know that requires you to
be very self aware. I think that's I if that's
(01:05:00):
a big struggle I think for anybody nowadays. Uh So,
I think it's also good then to have like a
support network of people that know you too, so they
recognize that you're sort of like acting stressed out or
you know, they're kind of seeing that you need a
break if you can't see it yourself. So cultivating cultivating
(01:05:23):
that is really important. And it's really important too in
the sense of becoming a speaker, because what's the point
of learning a language if you're not going to be
talking anybody?
Speaker 1 (01:05:33):
Right?
Speaker 3 (01:05:33):
And I mean, I guess it's so. I mean, you
could do it for five you know. It's it's iffy, right,
it's iffy. I guess you know. I guess I can't
judge you if you just want to like learn a
language and then never talk to anyone in it. I
get like, there's nothing I don't think unethical about it.
(01:05:55):
It's just you know, a little weird. But uh, you
know this idea that you know, part of being a
speaker and part of doing this sort of work is
you're cultivating a community also to to engage in it with. Right,
And I think, you know, like the real treasure is
like the journey or what is that? The actual reward
(01:06:16):
is the journey and the friends on the way or
something like that. It's like it's like one of the Yeah,
it's not the destination, it's the journey. Thank you do
me now? Like I knew, Yeah, I don't do platitudes.
I's just like, you know, well not very often anyway.
I just did one. But I'm trying to you know.
(01:06:37):
I mean we're at the self help portion of the show,
so it's like we've got to indulge a little bit.
But yeah, So moving on to the stress management, surrounding
yourself with a good support group, listening to yourself and
the sense of both your body and your brain spiritually too,
Like if you just burned out, don't don't do it
(01:06:59):
and just just make sure to come back to it. Yeah,
be gentle with yourself, be understanding with yourself. This is
none of this stuff is easy, well some of I
mean some of it is easy, right, you just open
you open a book, you open up your dictionary, and
like look at it, like ten minutes, fifteen minutes a day. Right,
that's like something that's easily accomplishable. But that only kind
(01:07:21):
of pays off if you already are like a speaker
or stuff like that. But the point is you can
any sort of incremental progress towards the goal is still progress, right,
And even if you're not going to be able to
make progress your language, I don't know, there's other communities, right,
(01:07:42):
there's attractive speak people that speak other languages. You know,
you can go find some motivation there, any number of things, right,
talking about going back to tradition, Yeah, so I guess
that'd be sort of my like my recommendations there about
what kind of can keep you on keeping on.
Speaker 1 (01:08:05):
We're going to cheese to both of you. This has
been the Tongue Unbroken. Season two, Episode two is in
the books in Buffalo, New York, home of a lot
more than Buffalo Wings and sports teams, home to wonderful, strong,
growing language programs. So life is complicated. Things are rarely
(01:08:27):
just one thing or the other. But there's spectrums. Way
on one side is the monster. Way on one side
is the medicine. Keep your focus on the medicine. Be
the medicine, be the light, be the change. All right,
change makers. We'll catch next time. Going to cheese to
both of you, Yeah Oha, going to cheese. What a
(01:08:48):
wonderful opportunity to spend with some amazing folks who are
thinking about language revitalization on their home territories. I want
to give thanks to Kambui Oh, the g ME and
the Lincoln Center for hosting the North Star Conversations on Boundlessness,
which helped me get to the East Coast, and the
(01:09:10):
University at Buffalo for hosting a seminar on technology and
Indigenous language revitalization. This podcast would not exist without the
Next Up initiative through the iHeartMedia Network. And I want
to give a special shout out to Joel Monique and
Mia Taylor for being super producers for the Tongue Unbroken.
(01:09:35):
We will be back next week. We'll be back every
week for about fourteen more weeks to talk about decolonization
and language revitalization in North America. So the closing message
here as usual, stick with it. Believe in yourself, believe
in each other, do it with kindness, do it with love,
(01:09:57):
Think about the things that you want to leave seven
generations from now. Always think about the future. Always think
about what you can do to help people who have
been through boarding schools, relocations from their home to non
Indigenous families, prohibitions of language, ways of life, ways of being.
(01:10:24):
Identifying with the self is medicine. Identifying with your ancestors
is medicine. Identifying with the land is medicine. Identifying with
future generations is medicine. We're building a future where Indigenous
languages not only exist, but thrive and are known by
(01:10:46):
the people who live on those lands. Colonization, as we
know it is ending in terms of something that annihilates
Indigenous ways of being and knowing. So gonna cheese for
all your work, Gonna choose for your belief, for your
hopes for being the dream of your ancestors. Keep going.
(01:11:08):
We'll be back next week to talk about this some
more Gonna cheese.
Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
Yeah, Oh what
Host
X̱ʼunei Lance Twitchell
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