Tongue UnbrokenWest side!! Language learning on the West side of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy
In episode 2, we are joined by Shodzi'dzo:wa:’ Damian Webster and Montgomery Hill who do amazing work in the Seneca and Tuscarora languages. We talk about their languages, communities, and work, and then give perspectives on what it takes to create speakers, and then talk about what it takes to keep going and not quit while doing this type of work. Keep on going, keep on believing, keep being the dream of your ancestors.
They tried to colonizes, try to genocide. Yet we're still here with the tongue on broke and hotlin gonna choose you wait to cut you on Ya hutting a show in the Haya takutziyayata. This is the tongue unbroken. We're coming to you on the road and we're with two very special guests here. We're going to talk about their language program, what kinds of things they're doing, how people might learn languages, and how we can be creating new speakers in this era while we're trying to also decolonize and manage programs and manage our lives and not go crazy and not quit. So we're I'm excited. We're in a hotel room. We just did a one day symposium on languages, and so I'll let my two special guests introduce themselves and we're going to get right to our topics. Gonna cheese ya scan guego so know the walk got going. Nate Nanny, John Good gig he those shown end us Wonde Ny hold on Towny, hand on stok YAsO Nanny.
And the hand on the stock. Don't guess Nate Nanny the gig die yet Ko walks home Gianna Wakiya naso uh nate Na and a song got the stone jake and he walked and they went and we caught he said done. So my name is so Zitzowa, and I said that my nation is Seneca Wa got the people of the Great Hill and turtle clan gan Dan. I live in Joan Good, which is called Akron. Some people call that Hayong Gang. And then I grew up in Buffalo. So do show where? Do show where? Between the bass woods is the term for that, So there must have been a lot of basswood in the area back in the day when they named the town. I'm the director, So doan dust on of Hanan Town, which is our language program out at Tonawanda, and we have K three uh pre K and then we have an adult full fledge adult language program that's been going since twenty seventeen and I've been directing there for In a couple of days, it's going to be my seven year anniversary, So you know, it's been pretty good. A lot of interesting work since moving home, and what a difference being home versus trying to learn from far away in New Mexico, Wisconsin, North Dakota. Just being home is it's been a lot and a lot of people have made themselves available to me in my learning journey. So I'll just say that much right now to get us started.
It's awesome and Grilchieshan upcoming seven year anniversary, Like I think this kind of work. You do it, and you do it and you do it next thing. You know, it's been five years and it's gonna be ten. And then there's sports. I think that do get easier, but then there's parts that are always just challenging and that comes with being in communities that are struggling and being with people that are struggling and trying to really create a lot of shifts. So the cheese for sharing with.
Us, tent that's gonna have Montgomery Hill got that? Got you? Etti on that? Gane decent that that what now? U beak her? Not walk yeah? Hot? Like hell I get hot? Ohch what got now? We asked the hot yeah hot with that got god name? We asked top what air on that?
Were you.
On that?
You with these?
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What airwell on that? Coasta? Hotanka got you trad that when it has not well? He said not walk yeah hot, Hey when a he got guy doctor walking in that you do not care an quill on that ossin asse diag guisa is h gary. I got hotet had to hasten the hot dett. So Hello, my name is Montgomery Hill. I am an assistant professor at University of Buffalo in UH Indigenous Studies. I got my PhD in linguistics actually from here from U B Well. I finished my dissertation maybe end of twenty nineteen, and I was awarded my dissertation my doctorate in twenty twenty. So and a little bit more about me personally, I guess uh I live on the Test Coordination UH territory. I'm over there by loose in New York on the Niagara Escarpment. So I'm I'm a member of the Tuest Coordination. I'm a citizen of the Tuest Coordination, and I'm a member of the Beaver Clan. I'm thirty three years old, and I've been studying or been a part of language revitalization, like learning how to speak our language, starting from like five years old when I was first exposed to it in pre K. We didn't really have language in my home. My dad's parents, my grandma and Grandpa were multi lingual in our languages, and that was actually a common situation back then for our people to have knowledge of multiple of our languages, and it's actually the case now even as people are studying. It's a lot of our Tuscarora speakers now, a lot of our adult learners actually went and did a year of the Mohawk language training first, and that really enabled I think their speaking ability, their confidence, and really strengthened their identity is like indigenous people. So I'm really thankful for that opportunity that that happened, and I'm thankful for you for having me on the show now, Cheesh.
So, as language teachers and as language learners, as language scholars, some of the things that I think keep me up at night anyways, is how on earth do we make new speakers right? And so when you have languages that are used in fewer and fewer places, when you end up with fewer and fewer people to talk to. Now, I usually don't like to look at everything just in terms of like what are we losing, but just sometimes one of the patterns that emerges is we want people to really understand how our language works. But if you just explain your language all day every day. Then you have people who could tell you how it works. But then you say, look out the wind to tell me what you see or respond to this language thing. Let me ask you a question about how your days going, how you feeling, what do you think about this thing?
What's your face?
Were kind of dog or just what whatever? The type of thing you know? Where was the where was the buffalo wing invented? Right? And so like as we talk about those types of things. One of the things that we want to do. Going back to something that doctor Pilo Wilson said to us over at University of hawai yat Hilo Kai, he said, the goal of language revitalization is to protect the speakers you have well, making new ones, and ensure that your language is the language of power in you. So my question to you, folks is tell us a little bit more about your language, and then tell us how what's your what's your approach to making sure that people can understand your language and can speak your language?
All right?
So I to walk go on.
The Seneca language or the Seneca voice is the westernmost language of the Roquoian dialects. So we have the six nations. Right, we have Us and the Tuscarora, the Cayugas, on Adagas, Oneidas, and Mohawks. And then you have the other Iroquoian languages like Cherokee that that also share what we do even now here on right here on and yeah, wyant. So Seneca is the one on the west side of the Confederacy. So Senecas are labeled sometimes as the keepers of the western door and even that though that actually refers to two chiefs, Donny Hogatwa and Gonna Eat Dewhee are the keepers of that western that dark doorway. But we're the westernmost language, so we've gone through the most morphological changes. A long time ago, our language used to sound more like Mohawk. But over the years, the Senecas were kind of conquerors and just took over took whatever they wanted, and as as a result that they absorbed a lot of tribes. Then when they absorbed those tribes, they had to they had like training camps to how to make them Seneca. And as they did that, the influences from the languages that other people came from had an effect on Seneca, and there were changes made to shorten the language so our language is a polysynthetic language, and I'm sure Manti can get more into it because he's a linguist about all the finer points of Iroquoian languages. But yeah, Seneca, it's got its own little things. The morphological changes are pretty interesting. It's just there's one thing all the other languages still have is the yes no question particle. So even listening to your your classes and hearing that you guys have like a geh after a yes no question, like Cayuga has geh, the other languages have gone what do they have? And they you know? And Seneca, for whatever reason, is the only one who just dropped it out of the out of the way. And I have a lot of people ask me, how the heck do you ask a yes no question in your language without the yes no particle we make, do you know? And even that's a process. If we're talking about creating speakers, that's that's a multifaceted question, right. I think over the pandemic listening to second language acquisition specialists, listening to your podcast and a variety of others. The goal has to be communication, And sometimes I saw people get hung up more on drilling paradigms, linguistic explanations, and breakdowns, which all have their own place, like I'm not going to lie. Those have been beneficial to me and how I work in my language learning. But the goal is communication, you know, so comprehensible input mean ative activities and tasks to formulate actual speech, not the textbook you know, language that nobody ever actually speaks in. So getting down to brass tacks using everyday vocab, we have a curriculum we adopted and modified, but there's other liberties we take with that where we do get into everyday events, watching TV, eating food, going to eat, going places. Where'd you go last night? Did you do anything this morning? Those are all everyday topics just to get a conversation going. So, even though that's not necessarily a part of the unit we're on, it's still everyday vocab. So we're going to show them how to use it or at least make it part of the vernacular. And right now, maybe we're not going to get into all the breakdowns of what goes on because there are there's more advance. If we're going to do a progression, you're going to come across things that are kind of considered more advanced in the everyday vocab, but there's still no getting around them. So we'll just show you how to use them with good input, and when we get to it later, that's when we'll give you some of the breakdowns and how it works and the ins and out. The biggest thing, too, is pushing yourself as an educator, as a speaker, yourself to really always push to know the ins and outs of your language. The finer point for me making myself vulnerable to my students and always letting them know that when I'm working with this language with you, I tell my students, I'm not telling you this as if I've grown up speaking the language or that I've known this for twenty years. I've made all the same mistakes you did along the way, and I'm sharing my mistakes with you so that you can you can learn from that. You know, we can learn a lot from each other, And that's why I listen to your podcast, a lot of other people's podcasts. People share experiences in this big job that we have, and there's so much you can learn. A lot of things overlap. We go through a lot of the same situations. So making yourself vulnerable to your students. Letting them know that you're not perfect, you're learning along as well, and creating a safe learning space for them is big and I've seen it make a big difference with the more recent cohorts that we've had, and I think that goes a long way into fostering an environment where speakership and communication and grow. And the group that I just had graduate, even the ones who didn't finish and only did the first year, they communicate really well, and I think that's just a small part of it. Monty can piggyback off of that and share his experiences as well.
Now, Damien for sharing your thoughts on creating speakers. I think what you were talking about there right was the adult immersion programs that we have going on on a lot of our territories right now. These adult immersion programs I think are really exceptional and they have been proven to create speakers, which is one of the things that just it's just really amazing about it. It uses I guess I would say unconventional methods, which is which I mean to say, is like it's not anything that people were really doing before or really had thought about before, and that specifically we're paying our students to learn our languages six to eight hours a day. So each year, the goal like the so the Root Word method and then the Unglewana and joe Qua style adult immersion program, you have about one thousand and eighty hours a year of immersion is the goal. And the reason that you do that is because there's nowhere in the whole world that you can go and only be surround in one of our languages. Right, So you want to go you want to learn Italian, you go to Italy, Right, you want to learn Arabic, you go multiple places in the Middle East, right, Hindi you go to India. There's all these all these sorts of opportunities. So in reality, I think one of the main things that you have to do to create speakers is to create an environment where you can you can make speakers. And I think it also goes the other way too. So what I mean by that is, well, part of what it takes to make speakers is you have to have people that are willing to speak. So if you don't have if you have people that aren't really talking that much in English, it's not like them learning another language is gonna suddenly give them a bigger voice or anything like that. Right, It's it's not this sort of magically transformative power, right, It's something and this is like a little cheesy, right, but like the power is in you right to make that decision to use the language. And so yeah, so deciding deciding to be a speaker, right, that's something that's out of any teacher's control. There's there's only so much you can do about someone that has sort of resigned themselves to never get past a certain level of fluency. And on the flip side, I mean it's also true, like you can imagine, like you want to be able to write a dissertation in your language, and it's like, well, maybe we should have a little bit more realistic goals. Maybe just you know, be able to live your day to day life and teach your kids and be able to have like little conversations with your kids and be able to negotiate bedtime, be able to negotiate what you're eating, right, or even just like make commentary at the store and things like that. And honestly, like a lot of it is just to be encouraging and appreciative of any language that emerges as it emerges. So I know, from my own experience, like speaking with my own kid, A lot of the time, the language comes out when they want something, so they're like, you know, a dusk one we style, like could you give me some money?
Right?
And it's like there, of course they're going to ask that in mohawk, right, and especially you know in like this polite form, right, so you always say a wad of the gone like would it be possible? It will be possible, you know, and uh, you know they're kind of buttering you up, right, but they that that in itself, you being susceptible to that is a form of giving power to the language. You're they're able to achieve something that they want and acquire something that they want with the language, right. And that's I think one sort of facet of power, as we talk about it is we conceive it, right, the ability to get get yourself, to satisfy yourself, to satisfy these needs or wants. That's like the one aspect of power. And then you know that ties into language, and then appreciating any sort of language that you get, and appreciating any sort of language that you get is also its own sort of power. So I go and get gas from one particular gas station because I can say naw to the guy pumping my gas and he'll always say yeah, back, you know what I mean. And so that in itself, I think is just a really rewarding experience, you know, because you can do the whole getting your gas pumped without any more than that. Really, you know, you put out the twenty dollars, you get Okay, yeah, I want twenty dollars a gas. Right, you just say once he's done with it, you say yaw, he says yeah, and you're on with your day. Look, we just did one hundred percent exchange of tusc Aurora and I got my gas, right, I guess.
Uh.
So like this power, this power of gratitude to it is like the flip side, right, the being thankful for what you acquired, the being thankful for what you get cognitive reframing.
Right.
You could be like, oh, well that was only two words that you guys expote, or you know, you think about it. Hey, we just had a full on interaction in the language. I took care of everything, all my needs and it went off without a problem. So that is like like a third aspect of like power with respect to language and that's what it's ultimately about. Right. You're learning there's language to empower yourself. Right, You're not looking to learn the language like make yourself worse than anything. Right. You know, the idea is like, oh, yeah, I'm going to learn the language because I think in some way it's going to be better for me and or it's going to be better for my kids, it's going to be better for my community and anything like this. And I think that that also turns it into a joint effort, a collaborative effort. And so you kind of even even if we're getting into notions of power and everything like this and being able to get what you want, you're still having to constantly negotiate everything with everybody else, Right, And that's I think with what language gives us this ability to sort of like negotiate, collaborate, express It does all these really complicated things. But they these complicated things aren't like the way that they manifest themselves, aren't necessarily complex themselves. They just like they can just be that simple interaction of here, you put out your hand with the twenty dollars, he takes it. You say now' for pumping and pumping the gas and he says, yeah, and you're on with You're on with your day, right. I think that was about That's about where I was going with that. Yeah, it's like that. So the power of cognitive reframing with respect to language is one way to make a speaker, the of like recognizing your own power, this ability to use the language to achieve what you want.
Yeah, well, well the first question is only like the hardest question there is, right, just like how do you do the thing?
Right?
So, but yeah, this is all right on as we think about what it takes to create speakers to keep going to think of a world where we have I remember us in Hewwiti and someone said, it's not like I remember when it was exactly, but I just remember this general time when I didn't know every single person who spoke Hawaiian, and I thought, wow, that's what I really want, is just to like have people like And then just I think a few months ago, I went to the post office in Juno and someone walked by and they said, your kok's a teen.
I was like, oh, good cheese, and.
They walked off, and I thought, I don't know who that person was, right, And so it's it's beginning to happen with us as like as the language spreads and as we remove some of the stigmas about like it has to be perfect or I have to be at this level, then we start to see these impacts. So I know you just got a thought. But if we're gonna make new speakers, we've got to make listeners as well. So we're thankful that you all are listening to this. Gonna cheese. We need to take a quick break, but before we do, I want you to visualize wherever you're at in your language journey, whether you're learning on your own, teaching someone learning from a whole bunch of people, in a cohort, leading a cohort, directing a language program, just think of one thing that's been in your way lately and just watch it vaporize before your eyes, and just think of like just overcoming that one obstacle. And so the obstacles are there, but I think what's bigger than that is the success that's going to be on the other side of that.
So we'll be right back.
One or two or three times you try any de not brids you run all around without your head.
Struggle.
Yes, to day you struggle still today now, but you'll find a broader away my brother and sisters, don't you know. I found the way to bring it back for those who came. Believe in yourself now believe in us somehow, but not deep color nothing, and we're back. So I asked the question about what does it take to make speakers, which is kind of jumping in the water before we even weighe down into getting to the deep end, because we didn't even talk about what is a speaker? And I've got a few thoughts to share and then I'll turn over to you folks to sort of share your ideas. So there's a number of different things that are just rolling around my brain right now, and one is my experience as a language teacher is a lot of people are reluctant to ever call themselves a speaker. They'll just say I'm just a learner. And I really like to empower students to say you are a speaker. If you're using this language, you are a speaker of the language. And I don't like to use the word fluent because I think that stops us from considering ourselves part of this language community. So I like to use the word fluency, like to say you could just keep stepping on up, keep going up up up, and that way we could say, oh, you're right here, work on these things. You're right here, work on these things. And we also I try to communicate with adults what I also heard from Pelah Wilson, which was you learn an artificial form of the language at first, because you've got to break in all these chunks so people can digest it. You're just learning the names of things, and you're learning these little phrases, and then next thing, you're learning these bigger parts, and you have to first thing it anyway, so you have to put all these parts together, and then they're not fully contracting in your mind and interacting the way they would if you'd been speaking your whole life. So for adults, we try to just really let our adults know it's okay if you don't sound like a high fluency speaker right away. And then we try to talk to our language speakers who grew up with the language and say, you're going to hear some adults speaking and it's going to sound really different than you think it should, but really try to focus on encouraging them and receive what they're sharing with you and talk back to them, because if they can see that, you understand what they're trying to do. That light's a fire. It keeps that fire burning. And so as we think about like what a speaker is, we also have these I have lots of thoughts as well about how do you keep people going, how do you get them to naturalize their language a bit because a friend of mine, Tinakpungy, he said, I speak my grandmother's language, but I don't speak like my grandmother. That doesn't mean he's not trying. It just means he gives himself room to grow in the language, which I think is also important to let our people claim it as their own and let our people live in this space where they can play and make mistakes. And I just repeatedly tell my students there are no mistakes in language learning. It's all just language learning. So continuing these thoughts on making speakers and what defines a speaker, and how do you keep people motivated to especially to go really into the deep dive zone beyond memorization, beyond all these things to say, you can't read it off a piece of paper. You got to go and respond to what you're hearing. What are your thoughts on that.
So as far as what I consider a speaker, I think of my Oneida teacher, Sally Hoaked Leander Danforth out in Oneida, Wisconsin. He's in his upper sixties now, and even you know, he's a second language speaker. He's a really good second language speaker of Oneida language. And he's always said that he doesn't ever consider himself as this like fluent speaker, and he'll never call himself this high level speaker. But what he did say is he said, I can speak and people understand me. People can talk to me and I understand them, and I can formulate responses and we can carry on a conversation. And that's where he is about that, Like, that's where he kind of draws the line, is like I'm able to communicate back and forth with other speakers of Oneida and Mohawk, you know, And he kind of leaves it up to other people to say, you know, if you want to label me a speaker because of that, okay, But he understands that he's still in the learning process all the time.
You know.
I think of your little bear Cheyenne Elder, who I work with on the board of directors for the Indigenous Language Institute. One of his lectures, he said, you'll never reach this point where you say I now know all the words of the Cheyenne language.
You know.
And I thought, yeah, anybody right, You're never going to say that I know all the words of the twing It language or the you know, Garuda language. I now know everything about it, you know. So it is this ongoing process of being able to express yourself. I took a class, a Native languages class at und Out in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and that's what they talked about was to have the ability to tell a story on the fly. The teacher said, if you can tell a story on the fly, just out of the blue, off the cuff, I think that's a pretty good indicator of that you're able to be a speaker. And I always aspired that. When he said that, I thought, wow, you know, he's right. And he even kind of broke down. He's like, uh, you know, you come across these people who they get on the stage or the classroom or wherever they can bust out their whole intro. You know their name, their age, their clan, where they're from, you know, and it gives you this impression like, oh, wow, wow, you're you're a the Nay speaker. Wow you're a Dakota speaker. You sound fluent. You know, we talk about that F word, right. And what they don't realize is these these like that's all they've done, is it's it's become a script in their head and it's a routine and they can bust it out anytime they want. I had asked one of my friends at time, I said, are you able to introduce your wife? He said no. I said, can you introduce your son? He said nah. I had never learned how to do that. So just something as simple as being able to like take your whole intro and make everything in the male form, make everything in the female form, Like to us who've been in the language game, like, that's a really simple change, you know, and it's totally teachable. But somebody who's memorizing that script, it's just a routine for them. So I know a lot of languages have the ceremonial addresses, and some of them, in our culture, they're short enough that you can you can memorize some of them. And I noticed that sometimes when I went to one of the schools up at six nations. They are the kids. They could do these addresses for thirty minutes, and I was so impressed that they talked for thirty minutes straight. Later on in the week, I'm asking them all these words, how do you say this? How do you say that? And they're going, well, I'm not actually a speaker, you know. I said, yeah, but you were just talking for a half hour straight yesterday, like cleterally, you can, you can really carry on and he said, no, those are like that's different, that's different. What I did you know? I don't. And then now that I think back to it, like I never really remember those kids having dialogue back and forth in the language. Everything was English, but when it came to those memorized speeches, they could they could go on and on and on. So I came up with this term speechers. There's speakers and there's speechers, you know, and we have some people who are speechers and they're really good speechers, and you know, you have these people who've never delved into language at all, right, like they just stay on the outside. They're just like I'm not going to do it. That's somebody else's job. And when they hear the speechers go, they're like, man, he's a really good speaker. Go ask him. He's a speaker, you know, not knowing the difference between somebody who knows how to memorize and somebody else to who knows how to just do it on the fly. And so it is again about communicating on the fly. We have these little games. Once I get my students going, I'll hand them announcements. So we have a sing that everybody comes together and they share social dance songs while women's dance songs, and then there's a big social in the fall in the spring. And every time I had a there's little things that happen. So hey, there's kids running in and out of the bathroom and they're leaving the water on and sticking toilet paper on the wall. You know, everybody needs to watch their kids, you know. Or somebody lost a red cell phone in the men's room. If you want, if it's yours, come up here and describe it and we'll give it back to you. This is an on the fly announcement R. So I'll give them a card and say here, make the announcement. Some of them their first instinct is to translate everything in there. And you never gave us this word, but I'll say, just convey the message. That's all you need to do. Tell them there's a loss phone, tell them what color it is, tell them how they can get it back. However, whatever is within your ability to do that, you know, And I'll mix up the announcements. The faith keepers are going to be selling benches and drums at the cook house on Saturday to raise money. Or the lacrosse game go, you know, it starts at six, goes till eight there go. Can you do that on the fly, you know, And that's what we try to do with an opening address where we give thanks. There is a path that you do have to try to follow in that, but there's also room for you to create and express yourself on that path.
You know.
If we're talking about the trees, there's a lot of stuff you can say about the trees. If it's a certain time of year, if there's certain things going on in the world, you can add as much as you want, or you can keep it really basic. There's different expressions that you know. You can use a factual expression or you can use a state of expression and they convey the same meaning and you can keep your opening kind of fresh. So I think what makes a speaker is being versatile, being able to communicate your feelings, what you see, what you feel well, what's going on around you, and being very versatile at the drop of a hat. That's one of the big pieces. And I'll hand it off to Monty.
So, yeah, one of the I kind of remembered what I was going to say earlier and what I wanted to say earlier. Is part of becoming a speaker or what a what a speaker is is this ability to create your own speaking environment, right, so you turn you're able to turn the environment that you're in from an English one into a Tusco or one into a Seneca one into a clean one, right. And that's and that's the idea of the confidence to be able to do that. And it's not necessarily very easy. It's in fact it's easy. It's easier to go right to English, right, especially you know you're practicing, you're learning. You're like, oh, well, just give me the translation for this, give me the translation for that, or anything like that. It's sort of like, no, we're going to keep it in our speaking tradition and the tusk for a speaking tradition, right, Because I think one of the things too, that defines are it's a little bit about it's a little bit about more than just language, right, It's about a whole attitude, about your worldview, about your perspective on things, and it is a it's a transformative thing, I think, becoming a speaker and recognizing yourself as such. And at the same time, though, it's difficult to balance that with the same idea. What I was talking about earlier, and I think Lance touched on this too, were like, even if you're using one or two words of our language, you're also a speaker. And I don't think that these are contradictory ideas. What I think is that it points to the fact that the term speaker might be insufficient to describe or point at the phenomenon that we're dealing with in language revitalization, right, because like you look at these things and they're both valid. They're both you know, you're learning, Like let's just say, instead of greeting people with hello, you just start using twan everywhere. I could probably start doing that in my Indigenous studies apartment and people would figure it out right well. And and I think part of that too would be because being in an Indigenous studies department, people would be more inclined to be accepting of it right and be willing to go with it and be willing to understanding it. But you're not necessarily also going to find that everywhere, which is I think also a little bit part of the struggle. I don't know, I don't have any solutions for that, but I think that something you just need to need to be able to confront. And I'm not talking like, you know, like racist white people not liking Indigenous languages. I'm talking like people in your own community that get up that you're speaking right, or why are you using this word? Or you're trying to show that you're better than me, like anything like this is a lateral violence or this this perception of lateral violence, right, And that's something that you also have to deal with, deal with as a speaker, what it means to be a speaker. But I mean there's good stuff about it too. There's good stuff about it too. So this ability, I think what it is also is being able to give what you have to others, and I think that is part of then you know that goes hand in hand with what's the creating the environment. But to be able to say, okay, well, I'm going to teach you how to do this. I'm going to teach you how to say hello, and then that's what we're going to do from now on. Right, I'm going to teach you how to say call that a car or call that you know with threat tat, and that's what we're going to do from now on.
Right.
I'll do it as long as you do it, and we both know what we're doing, and then I can learn it in your language, you can learn it in mind. Then we could just use it with use these languages with each other, right, and both be understood. So I think too, Yeah, being a speaker comes with a responsibility of like also open mindedness, this sort of this sort of idea. A lot of our communities back then were definitely multi lingual. There was a lot of trading going on. We exchanged languages, we exchange cultures, we exchanged ideas, and this sort of stuff was this was happening. It's not like we were all fighting each other all the time, right, they were. I'm pretty sure there were also, you know times at times of peace, right, and you see that, I mean I think I think it stands. It's like obvious. But also you can like go look in the archaeological record, right, and you can see actual evidence, you know, if you if you want to be all scientific about it, right, we we actually are like, okay, well, how do these beads from the Gulf of Mexico get all the way up to New York?
Right?
How does that happen? People have there has to be a way for these you know, they don't they don't just grow wings imply there. Right, we didn't have Amazon back then, right, you had to do it, do it the hard way, you know. And that and that involves language, that involves communication, that involves dealing with each other in a in some way or form. So yeah, it's I think, but yeah, a lot about a lot about that and and so basically respecting difference too is also like what is at the core of it. And that respecting difference is also something that Lance was talking about too, with the fact that you don't really need to constantly be correcting other people if you can understand, he said, if you can understand what they're saying, and you can respond to them. Then that's good because they're gonna they know. I don't like, I don't know how many of you listening are are have been the speaker. But you know, when you're like, oh that was bad, you know what I mean, something comes out of your mouth and you're like, oh, that was you know, but imagine some of that coming out of your mouth and you're saying, thinking, oh, that was like god awful, like I can't believe. And then but the person you're talking to goes, oh, yeah, like I have I have I have a cat too, right, And you're like, oh, I guess it wasn't I guess it couldn't have been that bad. I'll try better next time.
Right.
That was pretty embarrassing, but you know, he at least figured out, like, you know, we're talking about cats and who has what and everything like that, you know. And you know, I haven't gotten really into like the child acquisition to language acquisition learning, but it really seems to me that humans are very capable of self correction.
Right.
That seems like a in a in a capability. So just allowing yourself this like to be like childlike in this way again, right, and to and to be not only be understanding to yourself, but be understanding to others around you. Yeah, so there's so there's a lot about being a speaker that I don't think even necessarily involves language, right, And I guess you could even point, I don't know, you could blame colonialism. I think you know, at least part of it. You could put you know, like eighty eighty percent colonialism, twenty percent other problems, right, and these sort of way colonial mentalities that have been put into us. Right, so as you're adopting these things, are like you're afraid to let go of them? Just be Oh, actually no, I'm decolonizing myself by letting go of these things, right, So I think, Yeah, to me, that's what it's about being the speaker.
And cheesh, thanks to both of you. And time is a colonial construct. And it's also time to take our second break.
So we'll be right back.
Her eel he bore ah, you're you're not said ho cod bo h her eo are oh kind of talk he gives away to dat.
Welcome back to the Tongue Unbroken. We're here with se de Want, Damien Webster, and Montgomery Hill, who are doing wonderful work in the Seneca and Tuscarora languages here on Hudna Shone Lands the East Coast. I just have so much admiration for indigenous peoples of the East Coast, this whole area for absorbing so many like the first huge waves of colonial destruction really just washed up upon this side of the continent. And so to see folks holding onto their language and to keep going is just really energizing and exciting. And I know that we're on the cusp of I think tremendous change across North America as we look at what can we do, how can we keep going? And so there's a couple of things I want us to sort of think about and talk about here, which is I've sometimes said, you know, if everybody who started learning our thing get language, kept going, we'd have a thousand speakers right now, but we got thirty, you know, And so that that's alarming to see so many people that start but don't take it all the way and for some reason, you know, and we know a lot of the reasons. We've talked about colonial violence, we've talked about violence against women, we've talked about unhealthy situations, lack of strong language, environments, over corrections, there's on and on on, And one thing that we have talked about as well is if you just focus on those negative things, it's hard to see what the brighter sides could be. And I think for me, I get overly paranoid that everything's a colonial trick and everything's something here to distract us or to dissuade us. But I also like the quote from Maudi scholar Moana Jackson, who says, to paraphrase, one of the most harmful things that colonialism did to us is to get us to lose faith in ourselves. So I think indigenous solutions are what we need. But I guess my question to you is how do you inspire folks to keep going? And how do you keep going yourself? When you see, you know, we do have rates of success, but sometimes we have to look and think where did those people go and why did they leave? And what kind of was there something I could have done to hold on to them before they walked away from this thing that we were all doing together. But I'm hoping for messages of inspiration and hope and not to just you know, be all super bummed out about what didn't happen. But as we build these programs that are stronger and stronger, we want to make sure that the people who walk away are fewer and fewer, because they will say, I knew this was where I needed to be, and once I got there, I felt the love, and I felt like I belonged, and I felt like we knew each other. And that's what we go for with our language programs.
Awesome. Yeah, when it comes to longevity and inspiration for others, oh, there's so much to unpack. I think all you listeners out there, wherever you're at in your language learning, whichever language you're trying to study and make a part of your life, you realize at some point that that language is bigger than all of us. It's older than I don't care how old you are. The language is bigger than you are. If you're a title holder, the language is still bigger than you are. You know, you're a part of something bigger than all of us. And that sounds so cliche, but it actually it is bigger than all of us. So, you know, I'm coming up on seven years at my job, and one of the things I told myself is you're going to have some tough times in this job, and you're going to be challenged, and it's it's kind of sad to tell yourself that, but I got to be realistic about it too, like you're going to be challenged, and when the challenges came, it's really easy to pump yourself up when you're in your car and you're laying in bed. You know, it's a whole other thing when it's right in your face and everything's going off right now, you're in the thick of it. Your anxiety is up, you're wondering what's going to happen. And there were those moments where I thought the same worth it, man, this is you know what I think. I just want to go back to making subs or I want to go load boxes in a truck or not worry about all this. And I had to take that moment because you guys are going to have these breaking points in your language journey where it's just this is too hard. This isn't what I thought it was going to be. So the beast is staring you down like it's right in your face, and that's what I thought to myself. I was like, look at you, look at you. The difficulties here, the difficulty you said that what's going to come is here, and it's looking you right in the face right now, and your first thought is you want to give up and walk away. So you got to pull your pants up and you gotta trudch forward and don't forget while you're here, don't forget what you're fighting for. When we talk about colonialism and what happened to our people, it wasn't this one time event, right, it's this ongoing process to try to eradicate us and eradicate who we are and us in the modern day. Like some of us are so far removed from that. I mean, there's some stuff that's real recent, right, Like it's still it's still not that far back. And I think it's always important to remember what our ancestors went through to carry on what is still here for us today.
Right.
So over here we talk about the seven generations and that the people seven generations from now that you're never going to meet should be able to enjoy the things that you enjoy right now, right, And if you take it backwards, those people that were never going to meet us and who we are, they held on, They held strong when the boarding schools came like you could see they have those They don't care if they got their haircut, if they got slapped in the ear, if they had their tongue pierced with a nail. Something in their head was like, I'm still going to talk my language. I'm still going to keep speaking. You're not going to stop me from passing on this language. And it's like you should honor those people for doing that. When I got back seven years ago, my teacher was doing funeral addresses. These funeral rites are generations old. These are old old ways. I've gone to a condolence of where we raise a leader. This is like a pre contact ceremony. They're using these expressions and songs and this whole process that predates America, predates Canada, and somebody had the wherewithal to hold it strong so that it's still here today. Like it's really a testament to sit there and watch a leader get raised all day and just like wow, this is like people have seen this for generations. You know, I can't imagine what did this look like a hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, three hundred years ago, And it's we're still doing it today. We're still sending people home the way our people send people home. So you're holding on to something just way bigger. And it's almost like once you join this movement and once you decide to really give yourself to learning the language, it's like you jump in this like stream of consciousness that has to carry forward too, right, So then it's like, well, what's going to be your contribution?
You know?
Is the language going to continue on because of you? Or are you going to be one of the reasons why? It makes it a lot more difficult, you know. And I always remember sitting in my kitchen and Santa Fe the radio station up in Six Nations. They would play social music on Wednesday nights and I would stream it on my computer. But one night I tuned in and they weren't playing music. They had a I think it was Jake Thomas talking. It had to be him, so he said, if you don't want your language and your culture to continue, then that's where it'll stop with you. And that just struck a chord, Like I grabbed a note card right away and I wrote it down and I taped it to my wall, and I told myself, God, dang it, all right, it's not going to stop with me. You know, I have two little girls here that I have an opportunity to give them something that I didn't have growing up. You know, I didn't have parents that spoke. I didn't have grandparents or aunties or uncles that spoke the language. You know, I knew. I grew up knowing like four words, and language was never on my radar. Even I told my daughter, she's seventeen, I said, language wasn't on my radar when I was seventeen. I never thought, hey, I should learn my language, you know, and you just never know what you're going to do to inspire them, right. So there was a point too where I thought, I'm never really going to be a speaker. I'm never going to have that level of fluency or proficiency like those ones that came before us, and maybe why should I bother doing it? But then we heard Tom Porter, a Mohawk elder. He said, don't ever underestimate when you plant those seeds what's going to come up and grow on the other side. You never know what's going to come out of that, so you have to give it a chance.
Right.
So when I heard that, I said, you know what, I'm going to give it a chance. Maybe I will never be a speaker of this language, but let's see what it does for my daughters. And so we use a lot of phrases when we got in the car shopping, eating, bad time, bedtime. And once you know it, they start producing language on their own. They start learning how to conjugate things on their own that I didn't even think they would pick up because kids just do that, right. And I'm sitting there listening to them use it and it comes out of them, and I'm just like, man, that's because I didn't underestimate the efforts of what I could do. And I was just listening to a podcast over here, this guy named ojik well Jibwe guy, another podcast called The Language, and that's what he said. He goes, I had this myth in my head that I don't want to pass the language on to my kids until I have it perfect, until I'm perfectly using the F word fluent myself. And he said, I thought I thought I would pass on this imperfect language to them, and I don't want to do that, so I'm going to wait. And he says, looking back on it, there's so much I could have given to them, anyways, even in an imperfect state or whatever, they would have had so much more. He goes, I see all these other people who give their kids the language. The just make adjustments along the way, and we do that, like you have the ability to change things. I changed my jump shot.
You know.
It took a lot of work, but I changed my jump shot. And you can change things. So there was a book I came across that In the book it looked like it said gano oh w and next to it it said I love you, and I never I never could find that in none of any other resources. So I was like, oh, man, I found it. I can tell my kids I love them. And Seneca we start saying gon know oh quah quah so kayaw wuk is like daughter, right, gun know oh u kawak and they would say guno oh quah hotni. And we just kept saying that for the longest time, back and forth to each other whenever we had to leave or whatever. And then I got a track somebody sent me these language tracks, and there's a speaker on there she goes, gon wha, I love you. I was like, oh, that's different going on. Well, all of a sudden, I learned too, like go like me to you and know what is the root. I was like, oh, me to you, I love you, going on qua. So I had to go to my daughter's I said, hey, we've been saying this word the wrong way. It's not gonna oh why it's going They're like really, I said, yeah, we just got to fix it. And you know, to their credit, they just rolled right with. They were like, okay, going on quahtani go no qua kawak and we just we just fixed it, you know. And and like Manty said earlier, like kids have the ability, people have any ability to self correct and so that's what we did. So if you're out there thinking like, you know what, I got to be perfectly good in my language, no, just like give them what you can now, give it to them while they're they can absorb their their minds are fresh and open and see where it goes. Don't underestimate your efforts, you know, and you're part of the future of your language. And there's nothing more beautiful than that to uh, to hear children speak the language. That's a rare occurrence for me. I'll tell you what. There's there's one you know, June did a presentation earlier today where he said we had our first birth speaker in over sixty years. And I started thinking about that because there's this little girl in Catteraugus named Mira, and years ago when she started being able to talk and her mom went through the language program, there would be these little videos and you would hear her just that's the first little kid I ever heard just Seneca just poured from her mouth, linguistically, really good, just stringing together sentences like nothing. It was the most beautiful sound I've ever heard to hear children. I thought, I wonder how long that's been that If she's the first birth speaker of Seneca in I don't know how many years, you know, and the effort it takes to do that, it's beautiful. And one of my friends in South Dakota, like he's raising his boys and his daughter like their first language Lakota speakers. It's beautiful to watch the videos of his boys just interacting La Clotta. And it's possible for everybody believe in that dream, you know, that's what we're doing. We're dreaming, dreaming the impossible dream. But at the same time, like maybe it is impossible, but I'm still gonna do it anyways. You know, we're gonna go down swinging if it's if it's gonna go, it's gonna go. But we're not going to go down without fighting. I really enjoy being on the program, and it's been awesome listening to a lot of your podcasts and your shows and your classes you put on. I was Tellingne today tonight that I feel like I developed a relationship with his former classes because I listened to so many classes. It's been really cool. So it's awesome being on the podcast. I listened to all of season one, and I really appreciate you giving me the time to be on the show so way. So it now we the things that keep me keeping on. I think one of the main things would probably be stress management first up, because you know, we get talking about the language and how important it is, and that's a really big weight, and I think you know that's something that you have to It never really gets lighter, like in fact, as you start to acquire more languages, you start to acquire more knowledge. I feel like you actually, you know, it gets heavier in the sense that you feel a more significant responsibility to share what it is that you've collected and I know and I think that's true, and I think, uh, it's just something you really have to work on making yourself accustomed to. And I mean it's a lot of it. It's just like working out that you got to you got to listen to your body, right. You really have to be like, well, I've been going hard. I've been like getting in the gym four times a week, and this week, I really I'm just like I can't get myself to go. And it's like I'm going, Okay, well i'll go to bed and I'll wake up tomorrow and i'll go.
I'll go. Then you wake up tomorrow and you're like, I don't want to go, and then you know that happens, that could happen, that happened to me. Actually I don't. I don't know less a couple of weeks ago and you know, I was like, you know what, I'm just gonna see how long it is. It's good, how long this break is. Before you know, I was like, I'm a wake up and I'm excited to go. And it only took a week. And sometimes, you know, I think taking that break is exceptionally important. You know, your body is telling you things right, you're and then in the same way, I think like your mind is telling you things too. But the important thing is you don't take the break indefinitely.
You know.
The idea, The idea is you come back right, you get I mean you might get defeated or feel defeated, or feel rejected or this or that, or come up with any sort of excuse, but those you have to also recognize, like are those excuses or legitimate reasons?
Right?
So you know, and there are legitimate reasons. Let's say, you know, there's like it's a genuinely unhealthy environment in your language program. You know, that's not unheard of, and that's something like a reality, especially as we're dealing with the ugly process of decolonization and lateral trying to heal from lateral violence and everything like that that happens, I mean really even relationships with other speakers, you know, all these sorts of things. So there are I think, like legitimate reasons for you know, not wanting to participate. At the same time, like not all languages are communities are like that, So we'll find a find another one and help them, right, And that's something that we can all do, uh. For each other. So yeah, so they's just like a bunch of ways to well, I guess actually that's what I did. So we were having problems, uh, I guess like getting to the point of full on conversational tusc Aurora and once actually it was really great. It was myself and a number of other people from my community, uh from the Tuscoor Nation went through the Mohawk Immersion program when it was offered in Buffalo, and we had a bunch of people in UH, one in each of the three cohorts. And from there we were actually were able learning mohawks related language. We were able to sort of transform ourselves into speakers, into into like having these ful on conversations. We it, we got we found training. We kind of well, we did take a detour, right or and in some sense or yeah, we did something else. We were doing something else, we were learning something else. So and that's the idea, right is Okay, yeah, take your break, and but just make sure to come back, you know. I think that's that's the number one thing. And like I, like I said, is take as long as you actually as you actually need, right or maybe you can go find something else to do while you're waiting for your community to change, for this program to change, for maybe people leave. You know, the people creating toxic environments usually don't aren't able to stick around in any particular environment for an extended period of time. Usually, you know, most of the time, you would hope, but uh, you know, you just got to be aware of the situation and sort of just be like be a excited find that excitement again, right, And when you don't have the excitement, I mean, sometimes you do have to push through when you don't have that excitement. But there's a difference between like, you know, okay, so sometimes you wake up and you're like ready to go, and sometimes you wake up and be like, ah, I mean it is a gym day, so I better go, right, And that's fine too. And then even there's like, oh man, I'm gonna how about today. I'm going to go, but like only I'm not going to do squats today, right, you know, I'm not going to do I'm not going to do this thing that I really you know, you make make a deal with yourself, right, or you get to be like, Okay, well today's going to be my got I'm going to go, but I'll let myself have the teat day today, right, just like you're you know, it's a it's a constant negotiation with yourself. It's stress management, and you know that requires you to be very self aware. I think that's I if that's a big struggle I think for anybody nowadays. Uh So, I think it's also good then to have like a support network of people that know you too, so they recognize that you're sort of like acting stressed out or you know, they're kind of seeing that you need a break if you can't see it yourself. So cultivating cultivating that is really important. And it's really important too in the sense of becoming a speaker, because what's the point of learning a language if you're not going to be talking anybody?
Right?
And I mean, I guess it's so. I mean, you could do it for five you know. It's it's iffy, right, it's iffy. I guess you know. I guess I can't judge you if you just want to like learn a language and then never talk to anyone in it. I get like, there's nothing I don't think unethical about it. It's just you know, a little weird. But uh, you know this idea that you know, part of being a speaker and part of doing this sort of work is you're cultivating a community also to to engage in it with. Right, And I think, you know, like the real treasure is like the journey or what is that? The actual reward is the journey and the friends on the way or something like that. It's like it's like one of the Yeah, it's not the destination, it's the journey. Thank you do me now? Like I knew, Yeah, I don't do platitudes. I's just like, you know, well not very often anyway. I just did one. But I'm trying to you know. I mean we're at the self help portion of the show, so it's like we've got to indulge a little bit. But yeah, So moving on to the stress management, surrounding yourself with a good support group, listening to yourself and the sense of both your body and your brain spiritually too, Like if you just burned out, don't don't do it and just just make sure to come back to it. Yeah, be gentle with yourself, be understanding with yourself. This is none of this stuff is easy, well some of I mean some of it is easy, right, you just open you open a book, you open up your dictionary, and like look at it, like ten minutes, fifteen minutes a day. Right, that's like something that's easily accomplishable. But that only kind of pays off if you already are like a speaker or stuff like that. But the point is you can any sort of incremental progress towards the goal is still progress, right, And even if you're not going to be able to make progress your language, I don't know, there's other communities, right, there's attractive speak people that speak other languages. You know, you can go find some motivation there, any number of things, right, talking about going back to tradition, Yeah, so I guess that'd be sort of my like my recommendations there about what kind of can keep you on keeping on.
We're going to cheese to both of you. This has been the Tongue Unbroken. Season two, Episode two is in the books in Buffalo, New York, home of a lot more than Buffalo Wings and sports teams, home to wonderful, strong, growing language programs. So life is complicated. Things are rarely just one thing or the other. But there's spectrums. Way on one side is the monster. Way on one side is the medicine. Keep your focus on the medicine. Be the medicine, be the light, be the change. All right, change makers. We'll catch next time. Going to cheese to both of you, Yeah Oha, going to cheese. What a wonderful opportunity to spend with some amazing folks who are thinking about language revitalization on their home territories. I want to give thanks to Kambui Oh, the g ME and the Lincoln Center for hosting the North Star Conversations on Boundlessness, which helped me get to the East Coast, and the University at Buffalo for hosting a seminar on technology and Indigenous language revitalization. This podcast would not exist without the Next Up initiative through the iHeartMedia Network. And I want to give a special shout out to Joel Monique and Mia Taylor for being super producers for the Tongue Unbroken. We will be back next week. We'll be back every week for about fourteen more weeks to talk about decolonization and language revitalization in North America. So the closing message here as usual, stick with it. Believe in yourself, believe in each other, do it with kindness, do it with love, Think about the things that you want to leave seven generations from now. Always think about the future. Always think about what you can do to help people who have been through boarding schools, relocations from their home to non Indigenous families, prohibitions of language, ways of life, ways of being. Identifying with the self is medicine. Identifying with your ancestors is medicine. Identifying with the land is medicine. Identifying with future generations is medicine. We're building a future where Indigenous languages not only exist, but thrive and are known by the people who live on those lands. Colonization, as we know it is ending in terms of something that annihilates Indigenous ways of being and knowing. So gonna cheese for all your work, Gonna choose for your belief, for your hopes for being the dream of your ancestors. Keep going. We'll be back next week to talk about this some more Gonna cheese.
Yeah, Oh what
