Preserving endangered languages: Barry

Mosses 
I've spoken to you today in the spoken language which at one time was the dominant language in
this region where we currently reside this is a language that was once the dominant language but
has now come down to a point where it's critically endangered what is it what exactly does this
phrase mean that a language is critically endangered what that means in practical terms that
unless something is done within the next short while the language will be gone forever and in
numerical terms what this means in the case of the Spokane is that fewer than five maybe six
fluent speakers remain in all the world and all of these individuals are over the age of 65 so I
want to tell a story today about language and about culture and about a people and I want to talk
a little bit about the process of how a language and culture are lost through the lens of my own
personal experience and the experience of my family when I was a child 1970s I used to attend
cultural gatherings on the Spokane Indian Reservation in the Spokane tribe along house and I
remember a time in those days when all the elders would sit around the edges of the room and
there were dozens of them at that time and it seemed like it would last forever and I remember
these individuals would sit around the edges of the room and they would converse and tell stories
and share the news of the day and they would speak to each other in the Spokane language these
conversations were lively filled with laughter but for some reason I never understood when they
address the younger generation they would always transition back to English so as a child I had
this perception that this was something for the older generation but not something for us and
perhaps something that was going to pass away at some point I realized that we've reached this
critical point in history and I've asked myself how did we get here and I think this story tells a
little piece of that but to fully understand this question I think we have to go back in time and
examine the lives of the people who went before us
my grandfather was born in 1913 not far from Spokane of course Native Americans did not
become citizens of the United States until 1924 and so he was considered a foreigner even
though he was born on American soil at the time that he was a child the Spokane language was
his first language and the only language spoken in their home unfortunately the United States
government did not think too highly of the Spokane language or any other native language for
that matter and so they set up a system of boarding schools that were designed to homogenize
Native American youth and turned them into non-indian and hopefully white people many of
these children were ripped from their homes against their will and were taken to boarding
schools many of them were beaten for speaking their languages or for practicing their cultures
ultimately my grandfather's generation did survive the boarding school experience but many of
them turned away from their language from that point forward I heard the stories of my
grandfather and I imagine he had some sense of defiance in the face of assimilation he used to
run away from the school to escape the abuse and every time he did the Indian agents would
pursue him on horseback and bring him back to school I imagine that he wanted to keep some
semblance of cultural integrity but eventually it wasn't the boarding schools but just the
economic realities that persuaded him to put his language aside and to marginalize his own
culture in simple terms he just had to get a job and for him that meant speaking English we go
forward another generation my father was born in 1948 and when he was just five years old the
united states government enacted a policy of Indian termination and what this means is that it
was the policy of the United States to terminate the special legal relationship between the tribes
and the federal government it was also the policy of the United States that Indians should
assimilate into the mainstream culture as quickly as possible and leave behind any vestiges of the
past including the language it's difficult to really know how much termination as a policy may
have affected my father but I do know that he was the first generation in our family history to
speak English as his first language and so I'm sobered as I reflect upon this to think that I'm only
a second generation English speaker and I never really even connected that until recently as I
was preparing for this time the second generation and that quickly we see the decline and the loss
it's difficult to imagine what would be lost if that were to pass away but I want to tell one more
story that illustrates what this point means to me as an individual but also to many of us as a
community who were now as was mentioned racing against time to preserve these languages and
these ways of life again when I was a child I used to attend funerals in the Spokane tribal long
house with my father sometimes we would show up and I would see other kids would be outside
playing and I'd say dad I want to go outside and play too and he said no you can't there's coffee
to be poured their tables to be served their floors to be swept and so he'd make me most often
against my will go in and serve coffee serve food wash tables sweep floors and when all the
work was done he would sit me in the second row behind all the elders and in those days the first
row were the people who understood and knew the old what we call now the old Indian hymns
these were hymns that were sung in the spoken language to pray for the deceased and to pray
also for the family and the ones who were grieving and even though I never understood the
words of what they were saying there was something so powerful about what they were doing
and many times as a boy eight nine ten years old I'd sit behind them and weep and what is this
that I'm feeling I don't understand what it is that I'm witnessing but I knew it was important and
then only two or three years ago I was attending another funeral also on the Spokane Indian
Reservation and I looked around the room and everyone was speaking English and I waited for
the hymns and finally at the end one man stood up my father's brother he stood up by himself in
front of that room the last one standing on that edge and he sang those hymns the ones that he
knew or could remember and when I saw him standing there alone something in my heart broke
and I said to myself I cannot let him stand there by himself anymore I will learn the prayers I will
learn the songs I will learn the stories in the language to the best of my ability so that as he
stands there on that edge he doesn't have to do it alone and maybe someone behind me then will
hear that and stand with us I've often heard people speak in Ted about a TED wish but in our
culture everything is framed in the context of spirituality so for me today I have a TED prayer
and I'm not sure if that's been done but this is my Ted wish for today in our language who
yoculan Sutent allow us to chew Muscat and the week we had slammed onto obliphica Yaman
suit yet Lacroix OG ATS chowie 2 p.m. hi : Sutan who talked sauced to km quill Quentin who
talk tactics inflected by people who'd in Coleman to be a remnant Shea I said creator it's my
prayer today that we will never lose our language and we'll never forget the ways of our elders
thank you.