It was wonderful to read your message. My name is Leanne Hinton; I am a
professor of linguistics at U.C. Berkeley. There are a number of resources
and people that you may already know about, but just in case you don't,
I'll review them for you. First of all, some other Chumash people working
on language -- do you know Frank Lemos? Also Ernestine McGovran.
I can tell you more about them and give you addresses and phone numbers if
you don't know them. Secondly, linguists working with Chumash --
in Santa Barbara, Marianne Mithun works on Chumash and, I think,
has run a class or two on Chumash for interested Chumash people.
She also has some students working on Chumash. Up here closer to you,
there is Kathryn Klar, who works here at Berkeley. Her main field now
is Celtic studies, but she wrote her dissertation on Chumash. I also
have a student here who will probably work on Chumash--her name is
Roxane Beeler, who is the daughter of Madison Beeler, who himself worked
with some of the last Chumash speakers (such as Ernestine McGovran's mother)
in the same era as J.P.Harrington and A.L.Kroeber. You probably know about
J.P.Harrington's extensive fieldnotes on Chumash, which are now on microfilm.
And do you know about the Native California Network? It is an organization
that supports California Indian cultural revival, and is deeply involved
in some language programs. I work with some of these programs.
I am hoping one of these days to get together a workshop for California
Indians who are trying to learn or reconstruct their language without
having living speakers to learn from--a workshop on how to find and use
linguistic fieldnotes, tapes, etc., in language work.
There is also the journal "News from Native California." I write a column
on language in it, and there is also usually a good deal of other
writings on California languages.
You might be interested in my book "Flutes of Fire: Essays on California
Indian Languages", Heyday Books, 1994-- it is available in bookstores in
San Francisco, and has a lot in it about language work being done by
California Indians.
Just in case ANY of this is new information to you, please let me know if
you would like to know more, and if you want any phone #s or addresses
of anyone I have mentioned.
I wish you the very best in your language work.
Sincerely,
Leanne Hinton