In answer to your query about quotes concerning the importance of learning and
maintaining Indian languages, you might be interested in these three quotes from
my new
book. Full reference on the book:
Hinton, Leanne, 1994. Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages.
Heyday Books; PO Box 9145; Berkeley, CA 94709
The book is largely about language loss and language restoration.
Heyday Books also puts out the journal News from Native California, which
abounds in
quotes such as these.
If you use any of these, you might write or call Heyday Books
(phone # is (510) 549-3564) for permission to print the quotes.
You can tell them I said it was fine with me.
I would enjoy seeing a copy of the brochure.
Sincerely,
Leanne Hinton
Dept. of Linguistics
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
email: hinton@violet.berkeley.edu
"Okay, you children listen. If he won't tell you, then I must. You must know
your language first. Yes, we must know the white man language to survive in
this world.
But we must know our language to survive forever."
--Darryl Babe Wilson (Achumawi-Atsugewi), quoting his Aunt Gladys (Hinton, p.
234)"
At some point I realized that I had to look at things and understand things
through
the language. Because the language defines the way we relate to things. And
for myself being
raised away from that, it was, and has been until the very recent past,
difficult for me to
understand why the people that were raised on the reservation were not getting
that knowledge.
So you have to look back at the past and figure out how it is that we have been
separated as
tribal peoples from our languages. It has a lot to do with the policies that
have been set upon
us by the federal government, that has tried to separate the people from the
ideas that make up
their world view. And as time goes by, little bits of that world view just kind
of disappear,
just kind of fall off and are lost. And as those things are lost, we can see
problems of
alcoholism and family dysfunction, that I think a lot of tribes have
experienced. The strength
of the value system that we pass on through the language is not there any more.
Then about five years ago I find myself becoming involved working with a group
of
elders to try to restore that knowledge and that point of view that is ours --
and we start off
with the language.
And as I become more aware of the ideas that language represents, and the
values and
the value system that that language offers, I also become more aware of the
conflicts between
that point of view and the way the modern world works. I teach language
classes, and when I
look at the students in there, I have to think about what it is that we're
giving them. We're
trying to give them a language that will identify and allow them to think in
certain values and
certain lifeways that are important to our people. At the same time we have to
take into
account how they will fit into the modern world. A lot of change has taken
place. But
ultimately I believe that our language and that value system has more to offer.
Has more to
offer than all the enticements of the modern world.
...When I go into the classroom, sometimes I look at the kids that I'm
teaching, and
I see the potential, and I see the desire that they have, and it's like I'm
holding this very
fragile, precious thing in my hand.
--Parris Butler (Mojave), speech at the Master-Apprentice
Language Learning Workshop, June 4, 1993.
(Hinton, p. 190)
To the Lonely Hearts Language Club
At night
when the work is done
and the children are in bed
and the roar of the freeway is quieted
and the house cools and darkens and sighs into stillness,
She holds in her hands the pages
on which rest spidery symbols
of sounds whispered by dying grandmothers
and written down by a crazed linguist, long dead too,
of words spoken for the final time generations ago
entombed now in perpetual silence,
the last sound waves decayed into carbon traces
in a paper monument to the passing of a language from this earth.
Called each night by a power beyond her understanding
She lifts a page into her circle of light
and begins a ceremony of resurrection.
The pencil scratchings that encase the grandmothers' gifts
fall away and the words reawaken;
Her voice frees them one by one
and they fly into the night,
echoing into and out of corners.
The air vibrates with their saying.
The world resonates with their being.
by Leanne Hinton,
for Cindy Alvitre, L. Frank Manriquez,
Ernestine McGovran, and Linda Yamane.
(Hinton, p. 220)