They tried callingses, try to genocide us. I'm still here with the tongue unprope and to cut you t H t A T goodness cheechh. 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 the other 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 de colonization. So if you're on board with de colonization, you're gonna enjoy some of the stuff that we're talking about today. If you're not sure what de colonization is, then you'll just keep listening. We're going to talk about this stuff. Sometimes we're gonna break some of these things down, like the specifics of what is colonization, what is coloniality, what is de colonization, what is de coloniality, what's hegemonial, 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 some things like this. And you might even think someone's trying to keep me from doing some thing, someone's trying to take something away from me, and you know, there there's 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 faulk crump and a lot of things we try to I try to not think in terms of like one thing or the other, but sometimes there are some situations where you know, someone's got their foot on someone's neck, and you can't just have your foot on someone's neck and expect everyone 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 ideology, 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 and 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 people's because if there's no annihilation, that 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 gonna have two special guests who are working on a language that went to sleep, and we're gonna use the term sleep because sometimes you do lose the last of your speakers. This is something that's going to happen across the 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 as a colonizer's term. I remember someone wrote an article about a language gathering, and in this language gathering, there are folks who said, we're not extinct. Please don't call us that. And they wrote an article and they said that. I was like, you were there, you heard the you heard them. I wrote to the author who denied what I was trying to tell them. You try to say, well, according to some stupid standard or 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, about 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 gonna keep trying to extend this and keep trying to do more. Uh, 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 there's some weirdness to it. There's some violence to that story. There's some you know, some things that emerged that I think we need to talk about, and that's good to just sort of put on the table. But today we're gonna celebrate Mary Peltola, the first Alaska Native in Congress and a powerful, wonderful Alaska Native female voice. For now, we're listening to our guests. We're gonna have a conversation I'll pop in at the end to wrap this one up. Gonna cheet. 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 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 okay, let me, let me, let me get to the definitions right. And 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 have been faculty members, and they have said de colonization is totalitarianism. And then they talk about how academic freedom is threatened by de colonization, 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, uh, some of the folks who do this stuff, and it gets complicated because some people will be against de colonization and will be actively creating atmospheres of discrimination against Indigenous people's in their classrooms and in their work. So those are not colleagues. I started to say colleagues. So I've got these colleagues, colleagues, colleagues, and I thought about that word, and that word just seemed very nice, like 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've gotta get out of the way because your motive 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, starting to 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 enough of that they'll be from well, not enough, more and more and more, but not more for me. More from our guests today, Gonna cheech, gonna cheese to cut juhan Wassaki, yeahs Hunky and Hastatan h clan chat and how kods it ta eat that Welcome everybody. I'm so happy you folks are joining us. I hope you're having a wonderful day. And I'm excited to talk to with two new friends of mine and to talk about what's going on with their language. It's a iportant 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 Correll, and if you would like to introduce yourselves, and we're gonna 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 Chief Keith Gunningham, Dellaens. My name is Keith Gunningham. I am the linguist of the Natico Indian tribe na Carrel Deloans nant I'm Correll and I am part of the Nantacoke 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 what's going on? Uh? 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, in southern Delaware, So for any of you guys who have been out to the Delaware beaches, Rehobeth Beach are tribal lands are a little bit inland from that. We also have a couple of sister communities, um one in central Delaware and another one in South Jersey. And we're you know, one extended family and but three separate political communities. And we have been here on this land for 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 who felt the brunt of a lot of colonial forces uh for a longer period of time and often h in an incredibly violent way to try and displace people, get rid of people. And so in in your folks's 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 going? Well? You know, you're right, our communities have you were some of the earliest too experience those colonial invaders. Right. So six eight was actually when John Smith, infamous John Smith came and visited our community and so we have been struggling through a lot of challenges since then. Our languich 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 eighteen hundreds, and so what we're doing right now is we're waking that language back up. So we have some old archives that m I'll let Keith tell you a little bit more about the details of how you even take these old books and you know, help to reawaken the language from that. But our communities are really making that push right now to bring that language back, um 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 going to Cheese 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've 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 to overcome those challenges, to defy all the odds what you are going to do and what you are doing. So you know, since Anato Cooke were among the first to encounter cologists and the language when mormant, before we had things like shape recorders, I P A or any other linguistic notation. What we have at our disposal are some very inconsistently recorded documents, of which contain a little under four hundred unique words. But fortunately UH, the Algonkian family as a whole was very closely related and UH with the individual languages, and particularly along the Eastern seaboard. The Eastern Algonkian languages, which comprise a genetic subgroup within the wider Algonkian 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 do we are able to draw inference from other better documented languages of ones that still have speakers or ones that have gone dormant after we have already a are appreciable numbers of recordings of them. And so what I'm doing with the language, I'm doing kind of the dirty work of language or vitalization, which is taking these documents trying to puzzle out their orthography, which again they didn't have i PA or anything of that sort. But I'm taking these words meticulously finding cognates and these other related Algonkian languages and fortunately also Algunky and does happen to be the best studied language family in the New World, and we do have we already have several dictionaries of protoil Gunkey, and so a lot of reconstructive work has been done. And so my work has been in addition to to UH, gathering cognates and looking at protoil Gunkey and proto Eastern Algunkey and just trying to figure out how did not to Cooke descend from the proto languages, and how is it, how does it resemble neighboring languages? It's 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 keyboards that it was fun. I had to take my dogs 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 what's going on, So like what kinds of things, what kinds of things are you making, what kinds of things are you doing, what kinds of Who is your target audience for some of this stuff? Um, yeah, I'm very fascinated to hear. So one of the elders in our community, Raggy, 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. Um, 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's is from the Niche Nabe 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, um, but so Raggie 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. UM. 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, I couldn't do anything else. So it's perfect for at least, you know, language work and being able UM. You know, since I wasn't able to do some of my other work and other research at the time, we can 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 UM have this character, Grandmother Turtle, who takes everyone through the lessons and she actually kind of reminds everybody of Raggie. She's modeled after this wonderful elder in our community who is also a storyteller. And so Grandmother Turtle she teaches greetings UM, the greetings that Keith and I gave at the beginning. Those are in the books and we want everyone to learn them. UM. There's also lessons on UM animals and colors and UM 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 how 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, um, you know, a section about giveaways and why those are important, and so you know, also they learned the words for gift, and they also learned 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 used 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 us most of our Alaska Native language is 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 could you? And there was kind of a team of us. He's like, could you guys get someone from every Alaska native language to say thank you? I'm so happy be my language is an official language of the state of Alaska. And I said, well, that's something would 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 gonna 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, what 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 e K, which is a beautiful language just north of us UH. 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 ninety nineties. I believe maybe it was the early two thousand's um 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 if someone gets murdered, you don't you know, it's different. And so there's these colonial forces that have annihilated and genocided 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 Eak 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 ec 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 that's like, it's not your place. And so, uh, 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 it's intimidating, it is, and it's a very daunting task, but it's not impossible. And so there might be old archived documents, there might be old recordings, you know, depending on when, um, you know, when their language was last spoken. So if we're talking like the last elders, you know, 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, um and start talking with them, and we're working with them, um. And then you know, for other communities that are similar to ours, and we are going on archives text. Also remember your own language families. There are so many languages, um, you know, all across North America and across the rest of Turtle Island, and they all are related to somebody else. And so go find your neighbors, Go find your cousins, your long lost cousins, your 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 all 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 Naticoke language is that no matter how many generations have passed since the last speaker has walked on, that the culture is still alive and well, and the worldview the values are still very much a part of the culture. And so the experience of reintroducing the language is and so much teaching a foreign language so much as it is welcoming a relative home. Even though someone may even though the current generations of students may have never heard the language spoken before, there is still this intimate familiarity that it just kind of recognized that there's just a sense of familiarity with the language even if they haven't spoken it. Once they learn how there are just certain ways of expressions. And imagine Corel can probably speak a lot more about this than I can. But that's a really I mean that it's just something just clicks when it's somebody reconnecting with their own ancestral language versus trying to learn a completely new paradigm um. And I found that very moving as I as I gave my classes where it's just I will just as you know, coming to it as an outsider, I'd be explaining some things that are different from a kind of English background. And the reaction I got was more like, oh, yes, of course, you know that makes perfect sense that it should be this case. It whether it be you know, animus e or you're not saying goodbye, it's like i'll see you later. That's just a common way of it's never farewell. Everybody always reunites. And h I found that very moving. Yeah, and especially I think using that example of goodbye, realizing that in the Nantaicoke 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 used the word goodbye. They always would say later. And I remember as a kid very clearly, UM, getting yelled at by one of my um 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 UM. And she was like, no, we don't, we don't do that, you know, don't say goodbye. Um, it's bad luck is what she would always say. And UM 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 learned more and more about this language, and as I'm learning more of it, how many things like that are embedded that we're 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 also often has to happen in in Native America, and so like with the amount of destruction that colonialism has done historically and continues to do by you know, mothering people and keeping them out of spaces and just generally just ignoring like whole nation 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 his name is Kingisti David Katzik, and he used to always stand up to in front of classes and say two yea yet, to yea yet. Our language is inside of you. It's inside of you. We're gonna wake it up. We're gonna we're gonna bring this thing back. And then another elder, his name was Ka Walter Sobeloff. 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 people's, 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. Uh. And so I'm I'm so happy to hear what you folks are doing. Uh. And I we're gonna hear more about it, but first we're gonna take a short break. We're gonna listen to some folks who have something we might be int stid and hopefully it's a good thing. So gonna chee. This is the tongue unbroken. We'll be right back. What's happening, baby, This colonization ship got you down. You're gonna get on this decoalization. Yeah, it's time the language revitalization, and across North America, the land of the language coming back into the hands of future generations where it all belongs, rise up and have their voices be heard to beat all the colonial forces that try to hold you down. Okay, gonna's cheech. 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 to the work that I think happens in language revitalization as language planning. So for language planning, a lot of times when I go to Hawaii a look at things and say, okay, this could be us thirty years from now, I'd always have to think, okay, we gotta come up with like some kind and they would throw that number at us. And so Peter Wilson and Cowanois Kamana and others that'd say thirty years, what's it going to be like thirty 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 gonna be like twenty fifty. What's going to happen in 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 Nana Cooke as their first language, and growing up and still speaking Atacoca 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 and 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. Um, So that very broadly, and I have some ideas how to get there. I don't know whether that's my thirty year plan, the fifty year plan, the hundred and fifty 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 will be, but they will get there. But I think for us, I would love to see this book that we're creating. We're gonna have it soon in the hands of the pay 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 nests as soon as we get enough, um people learning to speak the language well enough to create some of these language only spaces where we can work with um, you know, different groups of people, 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, um, we used to have our own schools in our communities. UM. But not in the language of court. But um. 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 them math in the language. You know, we can teach um real history in the language, UM, literature, government politics, UM, actual global studies. UM. So I would love to see that as UM. 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 chief. And yeah, we we think about this stuff a lot, just in terms of trying to see the getting this long range vision and then trying to figure out like, well, what are the pieces to really get there, And a lot of that 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 for us and think it. 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 for um for us. We have a pretty large population here in Juno, and Juno is probably thirty thousand people and I'd say maybe twenty our indigenous and so we're 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 purchase spaces and built 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 what we need some spaces where we can just gather and have dinners and get together and basically a language house, because we rented some through through these different companies where you can sort of rent a house for a while. And I think there's a lot of land moguls who were 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 can say, let's go to 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, uh, 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 Little do Baran's work the Wampanog language um So Wampanog. Similarly, UH did not have speakers of the language for several generations, and so Jesse little to working with the late doctor Kinneth Hale worked with resources such as as the Elliott Bible and some native native documents in Massachusetts to reconstruct the language. And uh so I'm basically I'm using the same method, albeit with a smaller corpus to work from. And uh also so looking towards the future right now, as I mentioned, I'm kind of doing like the dirty work of the language or vitalization, with this sorting of orthography to phone um correspondences and all that historical work. But moving forward, I think, of course pedagogy is the most important thing, UM, getting this reconstructed language back to the people. And I've learned certainly things like language camps and like and opportunities to actually use the language are certainly absolutely crucial to that, UM. 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 obviative or transitive, animate and so forth. And that works well for me, but I find, you know, in the classroom setting, explaining these things like obviative, etcetera, and using those terms. Sometimes it just kind of draws a blank and just kind of you know, dissecting the language in that way, kind of like a taxi army or just kind of like a very forensic way of looking the language doesn't really help as much as just providing these opportunities to just kind of use it as a living language. Um. Ultimately, the language language is patterns and sound. That's learning 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 communities, right, Um, yeah, those the Wampanog example is one that I've I've very much. I've learned a lot from from their approach. Um, I've studied a few other indigenous languages along the way. I did some Adnetizad, some Upsaloca, and they all basically very similar. Is kind of creating. Creating the environment for the language with the language camps and activities is kind of people actively using them versus is kind of like Latin style, uh, grammatical instruction. And our communities, the Nanticoke community, um we many of the Eastern Aloan community eastern Hucan communities are and sider the Lenape people to be sort of the grandfathers, the original people of this land, and our languages are of course very similar to Lenape um. Lenape itself has broadly to two 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 months, the in the in the northern, tsunami in the south. And I've been able to learn some months see um from speakers in Canada from the two months a communities on 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 revital as they shan. 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, bi weekly classes that would be held in Ontario, but due to the pandemic, they moved 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. We started using Zoom I think a couple of years before the pandemic for teaching because we're 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 assumed 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 are we have a great I T department at our university who are always looking for these microphone solutions and who are looking for ideas. And there was a uh an English teacher named Kevin Meyer said if you tried to zoom thing and and so he's a professor at US, 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 Selaska 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 gotta get people interested, then we got to get them started. Then we've got to start breaking off these groups who were 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 forty fifty 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're 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 lane, which can be something of daily communications. I loved what you're saying about, like making 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. Uh in your language. So I guess, um, what about some of your You both are studying hard, and I think pursuing PhD is good for both of you. Uh, that's a long hard wrote did that? And uh so how is that going? And how are your studies relating to what you're trying to do in your language work? So, Um, I'm getting towards the end of my dissertation, which is one not to coke historical phrenology. I've meticulously analyzed the historical word lists, um revised repeats, repeat, multiple rounds of revisions, and just sending it around for coordination with other with other experts, getting a feedback and all that. Um So I'm coming up towards the end of that and um but yeah, that's been the culmination of I've been and you know, so I started the PhD program in two thousand and fifteen, but actually my work with the Napticoke community I started back in two thousand twelve. I um, I just happened to visit the Naptocook Museum, UM and I met with the curator Sterling Street. And before that, actually, way a way 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 Naptacoke ancestry. UM. I grew up in Landsdown, at a town so outside Baltimore City. I um but um, I really started my love of languages in high school when so they started offering Japanese in my high school, which was unusual because they were getting ready to get rid of all foreign language programs in the school. UM So, Shield sense was a very important influence in my life, and I am I'm very grateful match you basically taught me another worldview. It was the experience of studying Japanese, learning this different language, all the values and different worldview rather it expresses. That was absolutely a transformative experience for me. And so when I continued studying Japanese during my undergraduate days and UM also happened to take a course in Chinese historical phonology, which was a really you know, 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, you know, almost like algebra in a way. The correspondence is just really fascinated and that just how languages evolved are from ancestral forms and all. UM. But then it was actually seeing that documentary Uh we Still Live here up one project where I thought, Okay, this is really a way that I can tie together my esoteric interests to something that can really benefit cool UM. And then, as you mentioned in your UM inaugural podcast that you were kind of setting this table like we want to have a seat and sharing this great meal. I think it's imperative that all Americans that we take an active interest in one of those cultures UM under and moreover, that we under we endeavor to understand every group on their own terms rather than their adherence to you some sort of your American model of being. UM. So that really finding this project that was something where I thought, that's my way I can kind of say, you know, I see you, I honor you, I've I want to do my part to to help you. Yeah to uh, I want to do my part to contribute to the continued vitality of your culture. And M just you know, as my fellow Americans is 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 this you know that that that's that's really been the motive for me. That as I've been kind of sifting through all these old documents and and uh meticulously gathering cognates, it's just that goal of kind of restoring something that was taken away that really, I mean, that's really motivated me. And I you know, I humbly I hope that I have made a contribution to something written well will benefit many generations from now. And I am not really at the end of my dissertation. UM, I would say I'm in the latter half of it. Is where I'm at. I'm finishing up my field work finally. I was supposed to start it at the UM but you know, pandemic, so um, I'll be starting my write up process very soon. And my research is studying Nana Cooke in the Nape sovereignty and identity and really trying to tease a part 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 nations to it. But really talking to people about, you know, what it is to exist as a nantecoc or Lenape person and how we are able to um be ourselves, express our culture, express our 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. UM. I became interested in language revitalization probably well as a kid. I knew that. Um the only word I think I knew was wenny she 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 um, 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. Uh. So it's 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, Um, I didn't know. I have a clinket friend actually from college as well. So um. 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 Maudi family and they were running a Maori immersion in preschool. Um, and so you know, they were telling me about how they were trying to you know, keep Maudi alive and being um, 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 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 UM, 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 UM these non colonial ways, you know, these are some of the things that I've been trying to learn so that UM, you know, I'm in a position to UM you know, bring to speak our language and to bring it back to our community in a way that's going to really UM work for us and and help us and something that we want and that we can shape. And so yeah, still looking for UM 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, Um, you know, how many elders are also starting to learn some of this language, because um, 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 another language. However, he now introduces himself in the language. He says, he uses lannishi all the time. He can do his introduction. He knows some prayer words. He can say Creator kishlag like you know, so he is he has that language, and I think that um, I think he's also said it earlier. It's not as um important to and maybe it was you. I don't now, I'm sorry. It's not as important to to focus on that perfection of of the language, but to work on communication. Sorry that was you U. 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, gout counter hit you hung yeah dot Uh. We're gonna take another break, but before we do, I just want to say it. I think in 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 uh, well they got this. I'm mad that they got this. Right these other 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 I said, we're not like that. But you know, finally we had an elder who who told me he had to sleep on it. You know, his name was enough to hash 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, well 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 is not really going to come for a lot of people's And 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 talk about building these immerged and environments, like we 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 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 uh, we'll see a few folks and maybe teach us a few things from your language so we can hear it learn about it. Right after this ad break going to cheat Once I thought about a million birds all around the world sharing their songs, thinking about the ways they have lived and they're gonna live. This is the way a way to see and we're back and chee unaway Artokri. I'm excited to hear a few things from your folks as 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 this material language so we can give you a greeting to speak to your friends. So when we started, we said Willy cannel, which means it's good to see you. Will canol or Nie Top you can have the top on the which is my friend, So you know, to make it really personal because all of you are our friends. Really can now will lead top cheese, Keith, you got one for us? When is she? You say thank you language, gonna cheese and and usually you you want to ask about somebody's well being when you're greeting them, you can say alamala huh one more time, colamalis huh. It means how are you fabulous? And uh. 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 gonna have a whole phrase learned. It like simple words like the ones that we're teaching. You learn what those greetings are with those um, 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 any of our languages can come back and can be re awoken. Yeah, I would like to add to that that definitely, Um, I'd like to reiterate that you know, one, it succeeds at language learning. Even the goal shouldn't always be like, oh I must absolutely fluent in this language. Things you know, identity performance is important, the ability to to say a few phrases in one's language. That's um, it's a very every 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. UM. And I think that American Indian cultures, Alaska Native cultures, languages are our integral part of our 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 taken active interest and 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 of the utmost importance. And so where can folks find you, support you. It's gonna be people on these coasts with all kinds of money. Given some money, give build them things, do things, make things happen. If 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 tourists. And you don't 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 in support you? So 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 Nanta Cooke Language at gmail dot com. So no dots or spaces, just Nanticoke Language at gmail dot com. How do you spell it? That is n A n T I c O k E Nanticoke And you're also, um, welcome to the Nanticoke Indian Tribe has a website and contact information that are so UM. That's another way to um 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. Um, you know, was something we're still building. Um. If there's any people in that tech world out there who wanna, you know, help us with that, we would love some recommendations. Okay, somebody get us a millennial. No, we're millennials. We need the gen zs, We need the younger folks. Oh so that's the next one day. See, I'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 fluencies, some technology. We do some work with seven thousand languages, and their 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 if you reach out to help people who are doing stuff in indigenous languages, uh, 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 uh, and also just be be a good ally and also stay productive and stay uh 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 my hope is that this thirty year dream where 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 they need to talk, try ash 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 h a genesis of something that is wonderful and unstoppable. So that's my that's 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 too uh just hanging out with us today and being awesome. So I wish you all the best and uh, we'll talk to you later when she I'm honored to speak with you today. I wish you the best of luck for your continued success. Chee utan joquit quote gonna cheech. Your ancestors want you to success, eat, be brave. Strength is inside of you because they want it. It's going to happen. This has been The Tongue Unbroken, a production of the I Heart Media Network and the next up initiative Check them out. Partition Black Fat, Fem and Beauty Translated beautiful voices stepping out from the margins. This has been produced by Ian Johnson. We'll be back next week, going to Cheech