Nanticoke Language: Bringing a Language Back

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Listen to superhuman on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts. Hey, it was good, y'all. You're listening and learning the hard way with your favorite therapists and host care games. This space is about Black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere. But you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit of armor? It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts. Hey, the he. Duck the he. They tried colonizers tried to genocide us. Yet we still hear with the tongue unbroken. What's the use of the cut you hear? Good luck, cheese. Thank you all for being here. This is the tongue unbroken. I'm so glad we're together. I'm so glad you're listening to this. Welcome back. If this is the first time you're checking us out, welcome. Check out all the stuff we've been doing talking about. And if you've been listening to this, a lot of what we're trying to do here is decolonization. So if you're on board with decolonization, you're going to enjoy some of the stuff that we're talking about today. If you're not sure what decolonization is, then you'll just keep listening. Listen, we're going to talk about this stuff. Sometimes we're going to break some of these things down, like the specifics of what is colonization, what is coloniality, what is decolonization, what is decoloniality, what's hegemony, all these different things. Because they all play a role in the future of Native American languages. And we are all about maintaining the same number of languages that were here, which sometimes takes a tremendous amount of work and a tremendous amount of change. So if you're not sure, just keep trying. You have parts that are probably deeply ingrained in you and that you have been that have been planted through the educational systems to get you to resist something like this. And you might even think, someone's trying to keep me from doing something, someone's trying to take something away from me. And there might be some truth to that because what's being taken away is concepts of supremacy. Because supremacy cannot exist on this continent without genocide. You just can't have one without the other. And so it's like a fallcrumb. And a lot of things, we try to not think in terms of one thing or the other, but sometimes there are some situations where someone's got their foot on someone's neck. And you can't just have your foot on someone's neck and expect everyone to be okay with that. So I am going to be proposing here that we decolonize everything, everything, especially public institutions and education. Education is such a powerful tool in America. It creates a lot of problems when it comes to Native American histories, Native American ideologies, Native American languages, because they're often just not truly part of what's being taught to people. And so if education, if educational systems have not fully examine themselves with an intention to decolonize, they are probably agents of destruction in agents of genocide and oppression. So to move away from that, we're going to have some conversations about what it specifically takes to get out of that because it takes people doing different things. It takes people constructing different systems. A lot of educational systems are rotten at the core because they are rooted in these concepts of supremacy, which some people hate. Some people hate to hear this because it challenges some of the notions that they're comfortable with. A lot of people are comfortable with supremacy and they are comfortable with annihilation of Native American peoples because if there's no annihilation, that means we have to be in the room, we have to be in the systems, we have to be in whatever everybody else is in. And that's what we're looking for because we remain. We were here, we are here, we will be here. And today we're going to have two special guests who are working on a language that went to sleep. And we're going to use the term sleep because sometimes you do lose the last of your speakers. This is something that's going to happen across North America and we have to be ready. So sometimes we have to be ready to say no, we're not going to allow that to happen. Sometimes we have to be ready to say boy, we're coming close, we need to make sure that doesn't happen. And sometimes we're going to say okay, that has happened and we're not extinct. Extinct is a colonizer's term. I remember someone wrote an article about a language gathering. In this language gathering, there are folks who said we're not extinct, please don't call us that. They said that. I was like you were there, you heard them, you heard them. I wrote to the author who denied what I was trying to tell them. He tried to say well, according to some stupid standard of some stupid thing, this is what the term is and no. So people who have been oppressed and people who have been victims of what colonization has done. And so we're talking about all kinds of people, all kinds of people. We're talking about ethnicities, races, genders, sexual orientation, rhythm, all kinds of stuff. They have the right to define themselves. They have the right to define what's safe for themselves and they have the right to exist in comfort without having to try to not be themselves. So in future episodes, we're probably about halfway done with this season. So we're going to keep trying to extend this and keep trying to do more. This is a wonderful work. To just have conversations with people about this kind of stuff. But at some point, we're going to go over the story of how Alaska Native languages became co-official languages in Alaska. Because there's some weirdness to it. There's some violence to that story. There's some things that emerged that I think we need to talk about and it's good to just sort of put on the table. But today we're going to celebrate Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native in Congress. And a powerful, wonderful, Alaska Native female voice. For now, when I listen to our guests, we're going to have a conversation. I'll pop in at the end and wrap this one up. I'm going to teach. So glad you're here. Keep going. Keep being strong. Keep doing the good stuff. If you're not doing the good stuff, look at yourself. Look at what you can be doing right now. You could be a change agent. You could be a positive force in your community that helps people survive and thrive and live and come back to places of strength. And one last thing about being an educator and doing this type of work. I've been trying to think of some terminology that I think helps. Because sometimes you have people. Like there's, let me get to the definitions. I don't like to label people a whole lot. But I also sometimes have problems because there's certain people that I have worked with where they have said things in meetings. And sometimes they've been administrators. Sometimes they've been faculty members. And they have said decolonization is totalitarianism. And then they talk about how academic freedom is threatened by decolonization. Which at the core is all about inclusion. It's just saying, if you're teaching at a place where these people are, you have to include those people in the content. You cannot exclude them from the content. And that means you have to go to their voices and have their voices be heard. So some of the folks who do this stuff, and it gets complicated because some people will be against decolonization and will be actively creating atmospheres of discrimination against indigenous peoples in their classrooms and in their work. So those are not colleagues. I started to say colleagues. Well, I've got these colleagues, colleagues, colleagues. And I thought about that word and that word. just seemed very nice like we're somehow on this same sort of team and I'm not trying to go against them, but I'm moving them out of the way. I'm like, okay, if that's what you're thinking, you gotta get out of the way because your mode of thinking, if you start saying things like genocide is the wrong word for Native Americans to use to describe their own experiences and their own histories. That mode of thinking is like expired, old milk, been in the fridge too long, start in a curdle, and you need to reboot your operating system. You need to update some of those files because it's an outdated mode of thinking that's rooted in supremacy. And supremacy is a huge myth, a huge lie. So, whenever that, they'll be well, not enough, more and more and more, but not more from me, from our guests today. Gonna cheese. Gonna cheese. Like, at your hand, what's the art of your gay eye? Yeah, I'm just going to be in your account. I'm just going to be in your account. I'm just going to be in your whole day. And I'm excited to talk to you with two new friends of mine and to talk about what's going on with their language. It's important for us to know that there are lots of indigenous languages in North America. There used to be lots. There are lots right now. They're all important. And it's important for us to learn about what's going on with folks in different parts of North America. So, I am joined by Keith and Carell. And if you would like to introduce yourselves and we're going to have a conversation about what you folks are doing, what's going on, what you might need, what's going to happen next, all kinds of exciting stuff. So, go ahead and tell the people who you are. Can't you? Lika Nauwalamo. Keith Gunningham, Delaware. My name's Keith Gunningham. I am the language for the Nantikoke Indian tribe. Lika Nauwal, Neetab, Carell, Delaware, Nantukoni. I'm Carell and I am part of the Nantikoke Indian tribe. And very excited to be here today. Fabulous. And where are you folks? What's your folks? Land like? What's your language? What's going on? You know, the East Coast is such a magnificent place of wonderful, rich, indigenous peoples and histories that I think are sometimes overlooked, erased. So, we want you to have a chance to tell us about your people in your language. Well, we are a fairly small community in Delaware and southern Delaware. So, for any of you guys who have been out to the Delaware beaches, we're hope with beach. Our tribal lands are a little bit inland from that. We also have a couple of sister communities, one in central Delaware and another one in South Jersey. And we're, you know, one extended family and three separate political communities. And we have been here on this land forever and they weren't able, they didn't push us off. We managed to stay against all odds and to keep our communities together and to keep our families together. And we're still out here today doing that. That's amazing. And I got a lot of love and respect for people on the East Coast who felt the brunt of a lot of colonial forces for a longer period of time and often in an incredibly violent way to try and displace people, get rid of people. And so in your folks' language work with what you're doing, what are some of, well, I want to talk about what are you folks doing first before we get into what's hard about it. So, what's going on with your language? What kinds of things have you folks been working on and has been gone? Well, you know, you're right. Our communities have, you were some of the earliest to experience those colonial invaders, right? So 1608 was actually when John Smith, the infamous John Smith, came and visited our community. And so we have been struggling through a lot of challenges since then. Our language has actually been sleeping for a while now. So we don't have any native speakers alive today. Our last speaker passed in the mid 1800s. And so what we're doing right now is we're waking that language back up. So we have some old archives that I'll let Keith tell you a little bit more about the details of how you even take these old books and help to, you know, real wake in the language from that. But our communities are really making that push right now to bring that language back, put it in the mouths of our children and to put in the mouths of the elders and the adults in every single person. We're all starting off at the beginning, but we're all really excited to bring that language back. And the children of tomorrow and for the next several generations are going to have this language. It's incredible. I'm going to choose for all that work for for having the courage to step forward and to do that. We talk a lot in our region about these kind of three different terms that we use. We say language stabilization is if you got a lot of speakers and just kind of trying to stay where you're at. And language revitalization means you don't have a lot of speakers and you're trying to create speakers so you can do stabilization. And then revival is you don't have speakers and you need to start creating new speakers. And it's wonderful and inspirational to hear that this can happen that it is happening. I wish you all the very, very best as you folks are doing this work. And I guess what are some of those challenges that you face and what are your strategies to overcome those challenges to defy all the odds which you are going to do and which you are doing? So, you know, since an Anticoke were among the first two encounter columnists in language, when dormant, before we had things like tape recorders, IPA or any other linguistic notation, what we have at our disposal are some very inconsistently recorded documents which contain little under 400 unique words. But fortunately, the Algonquin family as a whole was very closely related and the individual language and particularly along the Eastern Seaboard, the Eastern Algonquin languages which comprise a genetic subgroup within the wider Algonquin family are really more closely related to one another than say French or Spanish or Italian are related to one another. So, even though we might not have a complete vocabulary of the language, we are able to draw in friends from other better documented languages of ones that still have speakers or ones that have gone dormant after we have already acquired appreciable numbers of recordings of them. And so, what I am doing with the language, I am doing kind of the dirty work of language revitalization which is taking these documents, trying to puzzle out their orthography which again, they didn't have IPA or anything of that sort. But I am taking these words, meticulously finding cognates and these other related Algonquin languages. And fortunately also Algonquin does happen to be the best studied language family in the new world and we do have already have several dictionaries of proto-algonquin. So, a lot of reconstructive work has been done. And so, my work has been in addition to gathering cognates and looking at proto-algonquin, proto-eastern Algonquin. Just trying to figure out how did nanticope descend from the proto-languages and how does it resemble neighboring languages. It is other relatives and with that, we can fill in a lot of the gaps that are in the documentation thereby creating a working language again. That's wonderful. And I enjoyed seeing you had cat that was crawling on your keyboard. It's fun. I had to take my dog's toys away before we started this. And so, we're just hanging out. We're chilling. We're just talking about language revitalization. We're talking about what's going on. So, what kinds of things? What kinds of things are you making? What kinds of things are you doing? What kinds of, who's your target audience for some of this stuff? Yeah, I'm very fascinated to hear. So, one of the elders in our community, Raggi, had this idea, this vision, this dream that she could find a way to really bring this language to the children. We've had for the last decade or so, we've had some other elders in our community get together and work with some of those other speakers of sister languages. So, they worked with a woman who is from the Nishinabe people. And so, those languages are sister or cousin languages two hours. And so, they alongside Keith worked together to create a series of classes, mainly geared at adults or older children to start to learn some of the vocabulary and grammar. And so, we had like some classes that we did a series of classes. But so Raggi wanted to find a way to bring it to the younger children that those, you know, there are future and they're going to be the people taking our language into the future. And also something that people could have all the time because due to, you know, we're all busy adults, Keith and I are both in graduate school right now. So, you know, we are very busy. But we wanted to, you know, create something that people could have all the time that they could access and learn at their own pace in addition to the classes that will still be offering in the future. And so she had this idea of putting together a children's book in the language. And so that's actually what we've been spending most of the pandemic working on because, you know, couldn't do anything else. So it's perfect for at least, you know, language work and being able, you know, since I wasn't able to do some of my other work and other research at the time, we could really dive into that language work and put this book together. And so we have a really great team of people who are working to make this a reality. So it's one of those introductory books that has colorful illustrations done by a very talented artist from our community page. And we have this character, grandmother turtle, who takes everyone through the lessons. And she actually kind of reminds everybody of Raggi. She's modeled after this wonderful elder in our community who is also a storyteller. And so grandmother turtle, she teaches you greetings. The greetings that Keith and I gave at the beginning, those are in the books and we want everyone to learn them. There's also lessons on animals and colors and family members. And even within those lessons, there's also, you know, our own cultural teachings that are, you know, brought into that. So in the family section, for example, we tell them that our word for siblings and our word for cousins are the same thing in the language because, you know, our people are like your siblings, your cousins, those are, you know, they're all your brothers and sisters. And so it's there in the language. Yes, exactly. So, you know, some of those things are in there. We have, you know, a section about giveaways and why those are important. And so, you know, also, they learn the words for gift. And they also learn that teaching of, you know, what giveaways are about and the sort of generosity that is sort of embedded in our, in our cultures. Wow, that is beautiful because you have children who will be learning this as a new language and you also have adults who will be learning this as a new language. And so as everybody sort of starts to bring it back, it's wonderful to think about these things that can fit for everybody. And I'm so happy you folks use the term sleeping. Like, I'm not happy that that's the state. But, you know, I was at a language gathering here in Alaska that was, it was very strange. Like, so they wanted to bring our languages forward because we had made most of our Alaska native languages, co-official languages of Alaska. So they wanted to have a signing ceremony to kind of prop up this politician. So they reached out to me and said, could you get someone from, can you, and there was kind of a team of us is that could you guys get someone from every Alaska native language to say, thank you. I'm so happy my language is an official language of the state of Alaska. And I said, well, that's something we'd never say in our languages, but I said, we could probably say something kind of close to that. But if you give people a chance to start speaking their language, they're going to say a lot more than that. So you better be ready for it. And they really weren't. And they were trying to get me to get everyone to be quiet. And I said, were you brought us here to celebrate our languages? Now you want me to tell people to be quiet. You picked the wrong guy for that job. And so at one point we have a language here, EAC, which is a beautiful language just north of us. And they don't have any fully fluent speakers right now as far as I know. There might be one or two, but they had sort of famously lost one of their last speakers in the 1990s, I believe. Maybe it was early 2000s. And her name was Anne Smith. And people started using the word extinct to talk about their language. And a lot of us always felt like that's the wrong word to use one because with someone gets murdered, you know, it's different. And so there's these colonial forces that have annihilated and genocide-ed Indigenous peoples are attempted to. And then also like the people are there. And we see languages that are bringing their languages back to use, bringing their languages back to life. And so the EAC peoples who came to this, they said, don't say we're extinct. We're not. We're right here. We're doing everything we can. We're trying to bring our language back. And there was some reporter who wrote an article and said, including the extinct language of EAC. And I reached out to that reporter. I said, hey, man, I was there. And they said, don't use that word. And you turn around, use that word. And then they tried to explain, well, according to something, something else, it's not your place. And so, I think it's important for Indigenous communities to define themselves, to define their own work, to set their own path. And I'm so happy to hear that this is what you folks are doing as you go forward. And so let's say someone else has a language that doesn't have any speakers. What's your advice on how do they get started? Well, I would definitely tell them to think about what other resources do they have because a lot of people, they get really, it's intimidating. It is. And it's a very daunting task, but it's not impossible. And so there might be old archive documents. There might be old recordings, depending on when their language was last spoken. So if we're talking like the last elders just recently passed, there may still be people who may not be fluent speakers, but they may know some of it to go to them and start talking with them and working with them. And then for other communities that are similar to ours and we are going on archive text. Also, remember your own language families. There are so many languages all across North America and all across the West Turtle Island. And they all are related to somebody else. And so go find your neighbors. Go find your cousins. You're long lost cousins. You're linguistic cousins. And you know, see how you guys can help each other. So I think we just need to not think about it as these isolated communities bringing an isolated language back to life. It's not, it's more than that. You know, we do things by community anyway. And so reaching out across those communities for help and for resources, I think, is one way to go. Amazing. Also, one thing that I've really come to appreciate as I've been working on the nanticore language is that no matter how many generations have passed since the last speaker has walked on, the culture is still alive and well. And the world view, the values are still very much a part of the culture. And so the experience of reintroducing a language isn't so much teaching a foreign language. So much as it is welcoming a relative home, even though someone, even though the current generation of students may have never heard the language spoken before, there is still this intimate familiarity that it is kind of recognized. There's just this sense of familiarity with the language, even if they haven't spoken it once they learn how there are certain ways of expressions. And I imagine that Carol can probably speak a lot more about this than I can. But that's really, I mean, it's just something just clicks when it's somebody reconnecting with their own ancestral language versus trying to learn a completely new paradigm. And I found that very moving as I gave my classes where I would look just as you know, a coming to a lesson outside or I'd be explaining some things that are different from a kind of English background. And the reaction I got was more sort of like, oh yes, of course, you know, that makes perfect sense. And it should be this case, you know, whether it be, you know, animacy or you're not saying goodbye, it's like I'll see you later. It's just, you know, a common way of saying it's never farewell. Everybody always reunites. And I found that very moving. Yeah. And especially using that example of goodbye, realizing that in the Nanakoke language, they don't say goodbye. They say, I'll see you again or I'll see you another time. I'll see you later, something like that. Growing up, all the elders in our family never use the word goodbye. They always would say later. And I remember as a kid very clearly getting yelled at by one of my great aunts because I would say bye to her because you know, that's, I don't know, that's what all the other kids say to people like. And she was like, no, we don't do that, you know, don't say goodbye. It's bad luck is what she would always say. And she's like, say, I'll see you later. I'll see you again because we always will see each other again in this life for the next one. And so it's really exciting as I learn more and more about this language and as I'm learning more of it, how many things like that are embedded that were kept by the community even if they passed into English, like we're using English words, but we're still expressing some of these same ideas. Right, and I think it's important for folks to also realize like the level of reconstruction that else often has to happen in Native America. And so like with the amount of destruction that colonialism has done historically and continues to do by, you know, othering people and keeping them out of spaces and just generally just ignoring like whole nations and languages. Often you have to put so much stuff back together, but some of the things that I think of as we had an elder, as in as King Easty, David Katzik, and he used to always stand up to in front of classes and say, "Yi tu ye iti, ha yukatongi, tu ye iti." Our language is inside of you, it's inside of you, we're going to wake it up, we're going to bring this thing back. And then another elder, his name was Khaja Khti Walter Sobelov. He used to say, "Never forget this wonderful thing that was born on the world and that allowed our ancestors to survive." Because I think in order to survive as indigenous peoples, I think we need our languages. And for some of us, we're just going to try and get back everything that we can little bits at a time. And so I'm so happy to hear what you folks are doing. And we're going to hear more about it, but first we're going to take a short break. We're going to listen to some folks who have something we might be interested in. Hopefully it's a good thing. So Guna's cheese, this is the tongue unbroken, we'll be right back. [Music] Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential. Either way, the podcast's superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Within probably 10 days I put on 10 pounds, I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth. Listen to superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you remember when Diana Ross double tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? When Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people. I know what you're thinking. What the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? 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Open your free, our hard radio app, search, learn the hard way and listen now. Okay, gonna teach. We are back. We're happy to be having this coast to coast conversation. So we brought the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean together for this conversation. So a lot of the work that I think happens in language revitalization is language planning. So for language planning, a lot of times when I go to Hawaii, look at things and say, okay, this could be us 30 years from now. I always have to think, okay, we got to come up with some kind of, and they would throw that number at us. And so Pila Wilson, Kawanoi Kamana and others, it's a 30 years, what's it going to be like 30 years from now? And so it was interesting because I'm I'm not a very organized person. So sometimes trying to think of like two years from now is going to be difficult. But I'd say, oh, well, you know, it's going to be like 20, 50. What's going to happen in 20, 50 other than flying cars and rain all the time or whatever is in the movies, right? But I guess for what's your vision for what is going to happen with your language and how are you going to get there? I think for so many of us, it's to have children born and speaking Nanakoke as their first language and growing up and still speaking Nanakoke as that first language learning English because, you know, we all live in this world and we have to know it and and work in it and deal with it. But having that language at home in our communities and so we go to community gatherings and everybody speaking in the language and, you know, each new generation, the kids coming up with new slang and I don't know jokes and songs in the language, you know, something that, you know, makes it fun and keeps it going. So that very broadly and I have some ideas how to get there. I don't know whether that's my the 30 year plan, the 50 year plan, the 150 year plan, but however long it takes as long as we keep going and take a step forward each day, I think that, you know, they're going to get there. Those next generations, I don't know which one it'll be, but they will get there. But I think for us, I would love to see this book that we're creating, we're going to have it soon in the hands of hopefully as many people in our community as possible. We are going to create an online dictionary where people, it'll be an interactive dictionary where people are able to look up words and grammar and, you know, start to put together some of their sentences themselves. I would love to see some language in us as soon as we get enough people learning to speak the language well enough to create some of these language-only spaces where we can work with, you know, different groups of people, you know, children or adults or, you know, small groups of people where we can really help to increase their fluency. And, yeah, having our own schools again, we used to have our own schools in our communities, not in the language of course, but, you know, just for our sort of community members. But, having our own schools and facilities in the future where, you know, we can, we can teach the math in the language, you know, we can teach real history in the language, you know, literature, government, politics, actual global studies. So, I would love to see that as I know I've been looking around it, you know, all the people in Indian country who are doing some of these programs now and just really seeing what they're doing and how they're moving that forward. And, you know, I'm really excited to see what I can help and who I can inspire and pass it on to. And it's a cheese. And, yeah, we think about this stuff a lot just in terms of trying to see the, you know, getting this long range vision and then trying to figure out like, well, what are the pieces to really get there? And, I love that it takes just a lot of innovation, jumping outside the colonial boxes and creating some things. And, sometimes you're creating stuff specifically for age groups. Like, so, okay, this is for kids and so we need to get some stuff for the kids is for the adults. We've got to get some stuff for the adults. And then once you start getting this critical mass of learners who can start to speak, then you start to think about creating community spaces. And so for us in Lengit, we spent the summer doing some language immersion gatherings. And one of the things that we realized is we have a very large population, well, pretty large, you know, for us. We have a pretty large population here in Juno. And Juno is probably 30,000 people. And I'd say maybe 20 to 25% are indigenous. And so we're, we're a pretty large part of the population. But we don't really have a space where we can gather specifically around our language. And so we have a lot of wonderful organizations who have developed spaces and purchased spaces and built, you know, buildings. But most of the times those are English speaking spaces, even though they are indigenous. And so we do a lot of partnerships with them, but then we realize we're winning. some spaces where we can just gather and have dinners and get together and basically a language house because we had rented some through through these different companies where you can sort of rent to house for a while and I think there's a lot of land moguls who are involved with this stuff and I don't think it's very healthy for communities in general but we got like really bad reviews because we moved furniture around we had a bunch of cars there and it wasn't your typical have a little vacation type of thing like we we had work to do and so what we're going to try and figure out here is how do we acquire some spaces that are specifically for our language so we could say let's go to the language house and once you cross that threshold then you you just leave your English outside and we found that when we were living like that it was a lot easier to speak a lot easier to understand but then we also have to get a lot of people ready for that which is you know all these interlocking pieces and so as as you folks are doing this work I'm so happy that you have neighboring languages that you can work with I know I've like I guess what are some models that you're looking at that you're hoping to replicate in your work with your language so really my inspiration for the work I'm doing was Jesse Littledovarets work Wampanov language so Wampanov similarly did not have speakers of language for several generations and so Jesse Littledovarets working with the late Dr. Kenneth Hale worked with resources such as the Elliott Bible and some native native documents in Massachusetts to reconstruct the language and so I'm basically I'm using the same method albeit with a smaller corpus to work from and also so looking towards the future you're right now as as I mentioned I'm kind of doing like the dirty work of the language revitalization with this sorting of orthography to phoneme correspondences and all that historical work but moving forward I think of course pedagogy is the most important thing getting this reconstructed language back to the people and I've learned certainly of things like language camps and like and opportunities to actually use the language are certainly absolutely crucial to that and I think as I've as I've been studying the language I'm looking at it to the lens of a linguist so things like you know obviative or you know transitive animate and so forth and that works well for me but I find you know in a classroom setting explaining these things like obviative etc using those terms sometimes it just kind of draws a blank and just kind of dissecting the language in that way kind of like a taxidermy or just kind of like a very forensic way of looking in the language doesn't really help as much as just providing these opportunities to just kind of use it as a living language ultimately the language language is you know patterns and sound that's running the languages is pattern recognition and so just you know getting those language camps started and have just all these opportunities to use language I think that's really going to be crucial for getting the language back in communities right um so yeah those uh you know the Wampanoag example is one that I've I've I've um very much uh I've learned a lot from from their approach um I've studied a few other indigenous languages along the way I did some adenipisod some upsaloka and they both basically very similar is kind of creating creating the environment for the language with the language camps and activities just kind of have people actively using them versus this kind of like Latin style uh grammatical instruction and our communities the Nanocoat community um we many of the Eastern Algonquin communities um Eastern Algonquin communities are consider the Lenape people to be sort of the grandfather's the original people of this land and our languages are of course very similar to Lenape um Lenape itself has broadly to to rough sort of categories of dialects some people would say you know some of these words are not um you know as useful for describing what you know how these languages operate in practice but um there's the Muncie in the in the north and Unami in the south and I've been able to learn some Muncie um from uh speakers in Canada from the two two Muncie communities in Ontario who um they've been working on their language revitalization as well and it's been really valuable to both connect with them as you know these distinct kin because you know they are they're also our people and um and also to learn about what they're doing with language revitalization and one good thing about the pandemic I don't even know if I want to say that as a phrase but um something this rise of zoom and being able to have online classes because you know my language teachers in Canada and so you know me down here in Delaware would have been very hard to attend you know by weekly classes that would be held in Ontario but due to the pandemic they move these classes online and so now you're having people from all over being able to log in and um and talk to each other in the language even if they're geographically separate so it's also been really great to connect with other people like that yeah that's amazing uh we started using zoom I think a couple years before the pandemic for teaching because we were trying to find high fidelity options you know and so a lot of the kind of interfaces for having video conferences and for having some sort of class or conversation would compress the audio because they just a lot of folks who are probably designing this stuff assume that everybody speaks the same language so it's just all about like being visually pleasing and having some good interactivity and being easy to use and so we started hunting around and we uh we have a great IT department at our university who are always looking for these microphone solutions and who are looking for ideas and there was uh uh an English teacher named Kevin Meyer who said if you try to zoom thing and and so he's a professor at UAS and I said no and I looked at it and I said this is what we need so lucky for us when the pandemic hit we had already been zooming for a year or two and so we were just sort of kind of ready to roll right into that and then we we had a massive open online courses through a couple of institutions uh see Alaska Heritage Institutes and outer coast out of Sitka and they had they were hosting these free online classes and we're getting hundreds of people signing up showing lots of interest a lot of people coming and so we started to try and think of strategies in terms of okay we got to get people interested then we got to get them started then we got to start breaking off these groups who are starting to really make some progress and then just keep pushing everybody higher and higher and higher because we went you know we still we have an unbroken chain of speakers but we went probably 40 50 years without creating any speakers and and so now we're starting to get to a point where we can create them and we can start to have conversations with each other but then even with that we find that we have to resist the urge to switch to English so that we could explain what we were trying to say or where things where there was an error or whatever and so instead of focusing on perfection we're always trying to just focus on communication to make sure that the language can be something of daily communications I loved what you're saying about like make it the thing that you use to talk about movies or sports or hunting or fishing or whatever people want to do give them the tools to do so in your language so I guess what about some of your you both are studying hard and I think pursuing PhDs good for both of you that's a long hard road did that and so how is that going and how are your studies relating to what you're trying to do in your language work so I'm getting that towards the end of my dissertation which is on the co-historical chronology I've meticulously analyzed the historical word lists revised repeat your answer repeat in multiple rounds of revisions and just sending it around for coordination with other with other experts getting a feedback and all that so I'm coming up towards the end of that and but yeah that's been the combination of I've been and you know so I started the PhD program in 2015 but actually my work with the Nantikur community I started I can 2012 I just happened to visit the Nantikur museum and met with the curator Sterling Street and before that I actually weigh away back I can really actually giving a little bit more background about myself I think might make it a little clearer about some of my motives with this so you know I myself I don't have Nantikur cancestry I grew up in lands down the town the stoutside Baltimore city I um right um I really started my love of languages in high school when so they've started offering Japanese at my high school which was unusual because they were getting ready to get rid of all foreign language programs in the school. So, Shield Sensei, she was a very important influence in my life and I am very grateful much. She basically taught me another worldview. It was the experience of studying Japanese, learning this different language, all the values and different worldview, I read it expresses that was absolutely a transformative experience for me. So, when I continued studying Japanese during my undergraduate days and also happened to take a course in Chinese historical phonology, which was a really, that's a very, I just had this very sort of esoteric, really laser focused interest on this historical phonology thing. It was kind of like almost like algebra in a way, everything correspondences, just really fascinated in just how languages evolve from ancestral forms and all. But then there was actually seeing that documentary, we still live here, about the Wampanoag project where I thought, okay, this is really a way that I can tie together my esoteric interests to something that can really benefit people. And then as you mentioned in your inaugural podcast that you were kind of setting this table, everyone will have a seat and share in this great meal. I think it's imperative that all Americans that we take an active interest in one of those cultures, and moreover that we endeavor to understand every group on their own terms rather than their adherence to you know, some sort of your American model of being. So that really, finding this project, that was something where I thought, that's my way, or I can kind of say, I see you, I honor you, I want to do my part to help you, to I want to do my part to contribute to the continued vitality of your culture. And just as my fellow Americans, the well-being is important to me and I want to see you thrive and I want to hear what you have to say. And so that's really been the motive for me, that I've been kind of sifting through all these old documents and meticulously gathering cognates, it's just that goal of kind of restoring something that was taken away that really, that's really motivated me and I, you know, I humbly, I hope that I have made a contribution to something that will benefit many generations from now. And I am not really at the end of my dissertation. I would say I'm in the latter half of it is where I'm at. I'm finishing up my fieldwork finally, I was supposed to start it at the end of 2020, but you know, pandemic. So I'll be starting my write-up process very soon. And my research is studying Nanakoke in Lenape, sovereignty and identity. And really trying to tease apart this word sovereignty, I've even had many conversations with people about, you know, maybe sovereignty isn't even the word that we want to use because it has so many different connotations to it. But really talking to people about, you know, what it is to exist as a Nanakoke or Lenape person and how we are able to be ourselves, express our culture, express our identities and stay together as these communities. And some of that is through our language work. And some of it is through political work and some of it is through, you know, other different types of embodied forms of existing. And so, yeah, my work is teasing out that I became interested in language revitalization. Probably, well, as a kid, I knew that the only word I think I knew was Wenishin, which is thank you, which is a word that, you know, one of the words that most many people in the community do know. But when I went to college and it was the first time where I got to be with other native students from like other communities, native people who weren't my cousins. So it was really my first opportunity to meet, you know, people from all parts of Native America. And one of the classes I took was about language revitalization. And, you know, I really got to hear all these different communities talk about the different stages that their languages were in. And they were, you know, all over the board, as far as, you know, some people, like people from Navajo Nation, for example, who are working on that stability right now, right? I didn't know, I have a Tlingit friend actually from college as well. But yeah, so it made me really think about what our community like where we were at and what I could do to contribute to bring us to a stronger place. And I did a study abroad program in New Zealand and my host family was a Māori family. And they were running a Māori immersion preschool. And so, you know, they were telling me about how they were trying to, you know, keep Māori alive and being and helping to make sure that it gets past to the children and the children are learning it in addition to English. And so, you know, after I graduated, I wanted to, you know, see what I could do, you know, how can I use whatever talents that I have to help our community bring it back? And I got to meet Keith and, you know, we've been working together for a while and just, you know, really excited to bring together different people to, you know, to bring this language back to our communities. I've really been learning a little bit about, you know, teaching methods and, you know, how do you effectively teach people things? How do you connect with people? How do you teach in these non-colonial ways? You know, these are some of the things that I've been trying to learn so that, you know, I'm in a position to, you know, bring to speak our language and to bring it back to our community in a way that's going to really work for us and help us and something that we want and that we can shape. And so, yeah, still looking for more ways to be helpful, learning, trying to learn more skills and pass them on. And I will say that I'm really excited by how many, you know, how many elders are also starting to learn some of this language because I was talking with one elder and, you know, he was saying, you know, it's very daunting to try to learn, you know, a whole other language. However, he now introduces himself in the language. He says, he uses, when is she all the time? He can do his introduction. He knows some prayer words. He can say, "Create" or "Kishelamo Kwan." Like, you know, so he is, he has that language. And I think that, I think he's also said it earlier. It's not as important to, I'm a bit with you, I don't remember. Now, it's not as important to focus on that perfection of the language, but to work on communication. Sorry, that was you. So, yeah, just like, really seeing how, you know, pulling some of the, like, what's important to people, just being able to speak those few words, to say that short prayer to creator in the language, that's what's really important and beautiful. Okay. "Gaud Kaoudekit Yohan." Yeah, "Gi d'attach" to a "sakou" "Irsakai" "Yadadad." We're going to take another break, but before we do, I just want to say it, I think another important part of decolonization is really continually analyzing everything and being very paranoid that colonial mechanisms are going to be entering into your consciousness. So, being competitive, trying to be the best and trying to, well, they got this, I'm mad that they got this, right? These other things, like, we were, we were messing around with our elders trying to come up with a term for, like, someone get something and you're jealous that they got it and they had a really hard time because they said, "We're not like that." But, you know, finally, we had an elder who, who told you he had to sleep on it, you know, his name was Anath Lahash Sam Johnston. He's one of my favorites because he'll tell you how to say all kinds of amazing stuff, but I think just continually sort of analyzing the different ways that you can sometimes get caught in a trap and that that trap will also leave you sometimes saying, "Okay, we're not ready, but as soon as we get ready, we're going to do the thing where I think just do the thing. Don't wait to get ready because that time's not really going to come for a lot of people." So, if your language is already in trouble, if your language is endangered, if your language maybe doesn't have speakers right now, then you can't wait for anything. You've got to go and create changes and shifts, but you can still have a plan, you can still go, but I think, you know, we used to run into this here when we were talking about building these immersion environments. Like, we have a language nest now and it's beautiful and just watching those kids and those teachers. It's very difficult to do, but it can be done. But a lot of people would say, "Oh, we're just not ready for that." And I'd say, "We're in a state of loss. We don't get more ready by just waiting for something else to change. We have to be that change." And so, if you're out there, you're doing this work, you're thinking about doing this work, be positive, be productive, don't be toxic to each other, don't hurt each other, and just get in there and do it. So, we'll be right back and we'll see if you folks will maybe teach us a few things from your language, so we can hear it, learn about it. Right after this ad break, I'm gonna teach. Thinking about the ways they have lived and they're gonna live This is the way, get away, get hooked up to see Woo-ching, yac-ah-tudah Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged It's the enhanced games Some call it grotesque, others say it's unleashing human potential Either way, the podcast Superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year Within probably 10 days I put on 10 pounds I was having trouble stopping the muscle growth Listen to Superhuman on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Do you remember when Diana Ross double tap Little Kim's boobs at the VMAs? When Kanye said that George Bush didn't like black people I know what you're thinking, what the hell does George Bush got to do with Little Kim? Well you can find out on the Look Back at the Podcast I'm Sam J And I'm Alex English Each episode we pick you here, unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survived it Including a recent episode with Mark Lamont Hill waxing all about cracking the 80s To be clear, 84 was big to me not just because of crack I'm down to talking about crack old David, literally literally I mean at this point Mark, this is the second episode where we've discussed crack So I'm starting to see that there's a through line We also have eggs on the table right now so Thank you for finishing that sentence And yes, I don't think there's a more important year for black people Really? Yeah, for me it's one of the most important years for black people in American history Listen to Look Back added on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts Welcome to my new podcast, Learn the Hard way with me, your host and your favorite therapists, caregames And in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month, I'm bringing over a decade of my own experience in the mental health field And conversations with so many incredible guests, I'm talking trip fontain, Ryan Clark Sometimes when we're in the pursuit of the thing, we get so wrapped up in the chase That we don't realize that we are in possession of the thing And we're still chasing it and we don't know when we done enough Because people scoreboard wise, life becomes about wins and losses Steve Burns, Dustin Ross, because you find it important to be a good person while you're here on earth Are you a good person because you're free? Because that's two different intentions bro Absolutely And that's two different levels of trust I want you to just really be a good person Join me, caregames is we have real conversations about healing, growth, fatherhood, pressure and purpose on my new podcast, Learn the Hard way Open your free, heart, radio app, search, learn the hard way and listen now And we're back, I'll teach you how to heal, heal, heal, heal, heal, heal I'm excited to hear a few things from your folks' language As we start to kind of wrap up this episode, wrap up this conversation It's been so wonderful to spend some time with you So, teach us a couple of things Let's hear your language So we can give you a greeting to speak to your friend So when we started, we said, "Willik and Noel," which means it's good to see you "Willik and Noel," or at the top, you could add "You Top" on the end, which is my friend So, to make it really personal, because all of you are our friends "Willik and Noel will need to have" "Gonna teach, heck echa, the Keith you got on for us?" So, our good enough, "Cheesh" is one of the "she" I just say, "Thank you" in the language "One "ne "she" "Gonna teach" And usually you want to ask about somebody's well-being when you're greeting them, you can say, "A coolamala-sa" One more time? "Coolamala-sa" It means how are you? Fabulous And any parting messages for the people who are listening, anything you want to share, inspiration, things you want to make sure that they know about you folks? I will say that even if you don't speak your language today or you're really afraid, if it seems too daunting or too big of a job, start small, learn one word, then learn a second one. Soon you're going to have a whole phrase, learn to, like, simple words, like the ones that we're teaching you, learn what those greetings are, what those words of gratitude, and start from there, and before you know it, you will be speaking your language. So don't give up, don't be discouraged. Any of our languages can come back and can be reawoken. I would like to add to that that, definitely, I'd like to reiterate that, you know, one succeeds in language learning. The goal shouldn't always be, like, oh, I must absolutely, 100% fluent in this language. You know, identity performance is important. The ability to say a few phrases in one's language. That's a very, every single word, every phrase used in your language is a very potent statement of pride in one's identity, and also a very potent statement of resistance against assimilation. And I think that American Indian cultures, Alaska Native cultures, languages are a very intergal part of our nation's patchwork, national treasures. And I think that it's, I find it very wonderful that that Native peoples are re-embracing their languages and their cultures. And I also think that it's imperative that all Americans take in active interest in that and learn as much as they can about our first nations. And that way I think, I think really just taking that active interest is going to go a long way to healing wounds and just encouraging people to be who they are. I think that's, that's the utmost importance. And so where can folks find you, support you? There's got to be people on the East Coast, all kinds of money, give them some money, give them building things, do things, make things happen. If you're living on indigenous lands, you better be finding a way to help indigenous languages or else you're just playing colonizer or tourist. If you want to have those roles, you want your role to be an active decolonizer, a change maker, someone who contributes to life instead of taking away from others, everything we're doing here is additive. We're all doing good things. So how can people find your folks and support you? Right now we're still working on a social media presence, we're going to need a Gen Z intern for that. But right now we do have a dedicated email for the language work and it's called natto cook language at gmail.com. So no dots or spaces, just nantic oak language at gmail.com. How do you spell that? That is N-A-N-T-I-C-O-K-E nantic oak. And you're also welcome to the nantic oak indian tribe has a website and contact information there. So that's another way to, if you can't remember that email address or you're looking for a website to go to our language work doesn't specifically have a presence on the site yet. I mean, I was something we're still building. If there's any people in that tech world out there who want to help us with that, we would love some recommendations. Okay, somebody get us a millennial. No, we're millennials. We need the Gen Z as we need the younger folks. Oh, that's the next one, that's the M I think I'm Gen X. So I'm behind on all those things. But yeah, someone with some social media fluency, some web fluency, some technology. We do some work with 7,000 languages and their headquarters are kind of close to you folks. So yeah, let's get you all some help and let's get you all some relief and just keep building these wonderful things. And I just want to say if you reach out to help people who are doing stuff in indigenous languages. And if you're not from that group, just stay humble, be be kind, listen to people, try to pluralize. We get a lot of folks who come here and say Alaska Native culture, Alaska Native culture. I'm like, there's so many of us. We're all different. Stop saying just a singular thing. And so, and also just be be a good ally and also stay productive and stay. And so, we're all different in tune with what the people are doing and try not to claim anything as yours. And so as we sort of reach out for folks to come and visit with you folks and to help you all out, we want to make sure that they're coming in a good way and that they're also being additive. And so, I hope is that this 30 year dream or children are speaking your language and their people are telling stories in your language and people are walking around just talking about their day to day stuff. What do they need to talk trash to each other? They need to gossip. They need to tell stories jokes. All that good stuff. I hope it's coming in your language and that you folks are a genesis of something that is wonderful and unstoppable. So that's my best my wish for what's coming forward for you folks. I want to thank you for reaching out to to me. after listening to our podcast Keith and to just hang out with us today and be an awesome so I wish you all the best and we'll talk to you later. We're not cheap, when is she? I'm honored to speak with you today. I wish you the best of luck for your continued success. When is she? When is she? Quatti, Ye Quatti, Guna Chish, your ancestors want you to succeed. Be brave, strengthen this inside of you because they want it it's going to happen. This has been the Tong Unbroken, a production of the iHeart Media Network and the Next Up Initiative. Check them out, partition, black fat femme and beauty translated beautiful voices stepping out from the margins. This has been produced by Ian Johnson. We'll be back next week. Guna Chish. On the look back at the podcast. The next one is at 79. That was a big moment for me. 84 was big to me. I'm Sam J. And I'm Alex Egrish. Each episode we pick you here, unpack what went down and try to make sense of how we survived it with our friends, fellow comedians and favorite authors. They did it for a while. I mean, it was a while. A while, yeah. Listen to Look Back at it on the iHeart Radio at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Imagine an Olympics where doping is not only legal but encouraged. Either way, the podcast superhuman documented it all, embedded in the games and with the athletes for a full year. Listen to superhuman on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it was good, yeah. You're listening and learning the hard way with your favorite therapist in the host care games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that it's really not safe to have anywhere but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suda armor? It signals to the world that you not to be played with and just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Guaranteed Human.