Squamish Language.com

Sub­co­man­dante Marcos

There is a story told that, in a cer­tain town, men and women toiled at work in order to sur­vive. Every­day the men and women went out to their respec­tive jobs: the men to the fields and the bean crops; the women to the fire­wood and the car­ry­ing of water. At times there was work that brought them together as equals. For exam­ple, men and women would join together for the cut­ting of cof­fee, when its time had come. And so it passed.

But there was a man who did not do that. He did work though, but not in the fields or bean crops, nor did he go to the cof­fee plan­ta­tions when the beans red­dened among the branches. No, this man worked plant­ing trees in the moun­tain. The trees this man planted did not grow rapidly, all of them took entire decades to grow and to make all their branches and leaves. The other men laughed at and crit­i­cized this man quite a bit.

“Why do you work at things that you are never going to see com­pleted? Bet­ter to work in the fields, which will give you fruit in months, and not in the plant­ing of trees that will be large when you have already died.” “You are a fool or crazy, because you work fruitlessly.”

The man defended him­self and said: “Yes, it is true, I am not going to see these trees full grown, full of branches, leaves and birds, nor will my eyes see chil­dren play­ing under their shade. But, if all of us work just for the present and for just the fol­low­ing day: who will plant the trees that our descen­dents are going to need, in order to have shel­ter, con­so­la­tion and joy?”

No one under­stood him. The crazy or fool­ish man con­tin­ued plant­ing trees that he would not see, and sen­si­ble men and women con­tin­ued plant­ing and work­ing for their present. Time passed, and all of them died, their chil­dren con­tin­ued in their work, and those were fol­lowed by the chil­dren of their children.

One morn­ing, a group of boys and girls went out for a walk and found a place filled with great trees, a thou­sand birds liv­ing in them and their great branches giv­ing relief from the heat and pro­tec­tion from the rain. Yes, an entire moun­tain­side was found filled with trees. The boys and girls returned to their town and spoke of this mar­velous place.

The men and women gath­ered together and they went to the place in great sur­prise. “Who planted this?” they asked. No one knew. They went to speak with their elders and they did not know either. Only an old one, the old­est of the com­mu­nity, could give them the infor­ma­tion and he told them the his­tory of the crazy and fool­ish man.

The men and women met in assem­bly and had a dis­cus­sion. They saw and under­stood the man whom their ances­tors had dealt with and they admired that man very much and they were fond of him. They knew that mem­ory can travel very far and arrive where no one can think or imag­ine, the men and women of that today in the place of the great trees.

They sur­rounded one that was in the cen­ter, and, out of col­ored let­ters, they made a sign. They had a fiesta after­wards, and dawn was already approach­ing when the last dancers were leav­ing to go to sleep. The great for­est was left alone and in silence. It rained and it ceased to rain. The Moon came out and the Milky Way molded its con­vo­luted body once again. Sud­denly a ray of moon­light insin­u­ated itself among the great branches and leaves of the tree in the cen­ter, and, by its small light, the sign of col­ors that had been left there could be read:

“To the first ones:

Those who came later did understand.

Health to you”

* * *

This that I am recount­ing to you was told to me fif­teen years ago, and fif­teen years had already passed when what they told me had come to pass. And yes, per­haps it would be point­less to say it in words because we say it with acts; but yes, those who came later did understand.

And if I am telling you this, it is not just to give our regards to the first ones, nor is it just to gift you with a lit­tle piece of that mem­ory that would seem to be lost and for­got­ten. Not just for that, also to try and respond to the ques­tion of what the zap­atis­tas want.

To plant the tree of the morn­ing, that is what we want. We know that, in these fre­netic times of “real­is­tic” pol­i­tics, of fallen ban­ners, of polls that sub­sti­tute for democ­racy, of neolib­eral crim­i­nals who call for cru­sades against what they are hid­ing and that which feeds them, of chameleon-like trans­for­ma­tions; in these times, to say that we want to plant the tree of the morn­ing sounds fool­ish and crazy, which, regard­less, has not become a the­atri­cal phrase or an out­dated utopia.

We know it, and, nonethe­less, that is what we want. And that is what we are doing. How many peo­ple in the worlds that make up the world can say as we can say, that is, that they are doing what they want to do? We think there are many, that the worlds of the world are filled with crazy and fool­ish per­sons who are plant­ing their respec­tive trees for their respec­tive tomor­rows, and that the day will come when this moun­tain­side of the uni­verse, that some call “Planet Earth,” will be filled with trees of all col­ors and there will be so many birds and com­forts that, yes, it is likely that no one will remem­ber the first ones, because all the yes­ter­days that are dis­tress­ing us so today will be noth­ing more than an old page in the old book of the old history.

In that tree of tomor­row, a space where every­one is, where the other knows and respects the other oth­ers, and where the false light loses its last bat­tle. If I were pressed to be pre­cise, I would tell you that it is a place with democ­racy, lib­erty and jus­tice: that is the tree of tomorrow.

- Sub­co­man­dante Insur­gente Mar­cos from the Clos­ing Words at the Encuen­tro in Defense of the Cul­tural Her­itage, August 14, 1999 pub­lished in Our Word Is Our Weapon, selected writings

A Fas­ci­nat­ing Story: a sum­mer with ‘Where Are Your Keys?’ from Sky Hopinka on Vimeo.

Let’s Speak Ojibwe To Our Kids classes for par­ents and chil­dren is a class is doing amaz­ing work in Win­nepeg.  CBC reporter Wab Kinew and his father, UWin­nipeg Elder and instruc­tor, Toba­son­akwut Kinew vol­un­teered to lead the classes.  “Due to the legacy of assim­i­la­tion we are work­ing on rebuild­ing our com­mu­ni­ties through lan­guage to replace what was lost,” explained Wab Kinew. “Lan­guage is the most impor­tant way to hang on to our iden­tity. It cel­e­brates our iden­tity and reveals how our Elders see the world and it makes them happy when they hear the young peo­ple speak­ing it.”

Yurok Natives tra­di­tions to be revived in a new vil­lage.  The project is part of a broad resur­gence in tra­di­tional tribal cul­ture that began in tan­dem with the Amer­i­can Indian civil rights move­ment and aims to fos­ter com­mu­nity resilience and iden­tity. The Yurok vil­lages that once existed by the hun­dreds on the banks of the Kla­math, now reser­va­tion land, were home­steads for extended families.

The Syilx (Okana­gan) com­mu­nity in Ver­non is doing amaz­ing work with their Lan­guage and Cul­ture Immer­sion School.  Called Nkm’aplqs isn’ma’ma’ya’tn klsqilxwtet Lan­guage and Cul­tural Immer­sion School, means “a learn­ing place towards and in the direc­tion of our indige­nous Okana­gan ways.”

Where Are Your Keys? releases an amaz­ing 21 minute doc­u­men­tary on their Numu-Language Pro­gram they did in Sum­mer 2011.  Fea­tur­ing friends Evan Gard­ner, Sky Hopinka, April Charlo and David Edwards work­ing with Warm Springs Reser­va­tion.  This sum­mer April Charlo will be work­ing with the “Where Are Your Keys?” com­mu­nity to run Ksanka Sum­mer 2012, a Ktu­naxa lan­guage sum­mer camp sim­i­lar to the pre­vi­ous year.  If you’re look­ing for train­ing in one of the most suc­cess­ful and ver­sa­tile lan­guage teach­ing meth­ods alive, con­tact them about intern­ing at the sum­mer camp this com­ing summer!

NEED SOME INSPIRATION?

Some dude learns ’about’ the Squamish language.

by X̱elsílem

Twenty-two year jour­ney to learn my lan­guage.  It con­tin­ues on! Audio tapes first that moved to ele­men­tary and later high school classes.   I left the high school classes to do my own pri­vate study after a short time.  It is only in the past two years my travel to flu­ency has reached new peaks and achieve­ments.  The dra­matic race to become a flu­ent speaker only sprinted in the recent two years though.

But it was last week I made a star­tling dis­cov­ery — a rev­e­la­tion really.

Learn­ing to speak my lan­guage is a supe­rior path than learn­ing to speak about my lan­guage.

A short story com­mon to to many Indige­nous com­mu­ni­ties may explain:

It’s 1967.  The alarm is sound­ing about the near extinc­tion of a Indige­nous lan­guage.  “We must pro­tect and save these pre­cious parts of our cul­ture and soci­ety” was the mes­sage.  The memo was com­ing from many places — but no more heart­break­ing than elders feel­ing the real urgency.  The last speak­ers of a dying lan­guage.  A deep desire to see younger gen­er­a­tions speak their native tongue once again.

The nat­ural response — teach young native boys and girls.  The elders and lead­ers ask to the for­eign school sys­tem, “Can we come into your edu­ca­tion sys­tem and offer (insert Indige­nous language) classes for our Indige­nous children?”.

The response: “You do not meet our stan­dards — you must be certified.”

Thus, in an act of appease­ment, cer­ti­fi­ca­tion classes were designed and planned over the con­ven­ing years.  Elders and adults who were 100% flu­ent in their native tongue had to then be indoc­tri­nated into a for­eign sys­tem to become accred­ited.  It was here the beauty of the lan­guage was ripped up — but with well mean­ing intentions.

Lin­guis­tics.  An ugly and some­times dis­as­trous route to rebirth of a ances­tral tongue.  It became the key aspect of these accred­i­ta­tion courses and pro­grams. “Teach the Teacher” or “Train the Trainer” type pro­grams were offered.  It was about “How do we teach these flu­ent speak­ers to be able to teach the lan­guage to chil­dren?”  Some course cur­ricu­lum was repli­cated from typ­i­cal French (or Span­ish) lan­guage curriculums.

You know the drill: body parts, num­bers, colours, ani­mals, objects. The elders and flu­ent speak­ers became knowl­edge­able — about talk­ing about the lan­guage.  They spoke the lan­guage flu­idly and with ease but could now dis­sect and talk about it.  Tran­si­tive, intran­si­tive, pas­sives, cli­tics, pre­fix or suf­fix, noun, verb, adjec­tive, and proverbs.  These became the lin­gua franca among flu­ent speak­ers who gained skills talk about a language.

It was one of the most dis­as­trous moves ever made to help revi­tal­ize the language.

Learn­ing to speak a lan­guage is vastly dif­fer­ent than learn­ing to speak about a lan­guage.  One is a life of trans­la­tion, and the other is fluid con­ver­sa­tion and instantaneous thought.

The chal­lenge is then this: learn a lan­guage with­out trans­la­tion, only through immer­sion, and with­out killing fairies**.

Here is my warn­ing: Con­stantly trans­lat­ing from Eng­lish to Squamish is not flu­ency.  It is also a hard habit to break once pat­terns are estab­lished.  It becomes harder to turn OFF the Eng­lish Brain and allow only the Squamish Brain to run free.  Don’t sab­o­tage your­self!  For­get what they say.  Don’t worry about learn­ing about what a verb, nouns, adjec­tive or pre­fix is!  Learn to lan­guage hunt, and absorb the lan­guage through fierce con­ver­sa­tion and immersion.

There are numer­ous tech­niques that help with learn­ing through fierce con­ver­sa­tion and immer­sion.  It will take to long (and be too hard) to go into length at this moment, but please take my warn­ing.  Speak­ing mul­ti­ple lan­guages is a beau­ti­ful thing, and can be super easy — if approach­ing by the best path!  Let’s speak our lan­guage — not talk about them.

** Killing fairies is a Where Are Your Keys? “Tech­nique”.  You are a first-language Eng­lish speaker and are learn­ing Squamish.  If you ask ques­tions about HOW the lan­guage works in Eng­lish — you are killing a fairy.  Fairies die when you don’t believe in them!  And lan­guages die when you don’t believe in them too.  It’s when you don’t believe in learn­ing the lan­guage… through the lan­guage!