The Huffington Post featured Osage language teacher Christopher CΓ΄tΓ© one year after the release of βKillers of the Flower Moon.β He stood, long hair down his back, in front of a bright blue and yellow mural, which contrasted the blues and reds of the straight dancer mural on the Osage Nationβs language building that was recently demolished.
The article revisits CΓ΄tΓ©βs viral comments about the film not centering around the Osage people. CΓ΄tΓ© described his work helping the actors speak Osage. Hearing the Osage language in the film was powerful; it was one of the elements that led producers to say they were honoring the Osage people and their story.
Lily Gladstoneβs Osage was wonderful to hear and understand. Last year, the actress Zoomed into the Northeastern State University Symposium on the American Indian to talk about her belief that performance can be an effective strategy in language learning.
I think of that strategy in the chinuk wawa classes Iβm taking. I want to learn the names of local plants and wildlife. Our small county and its communities carry Chinook place names, even though the Chinook Nation is not federally recognized. The class is offered through Lane Community College in Eugene, Ore. Itβs taught by Zoom, twice a week. Iβm impressed with how immersive on-line learning can be with a platform that allows written exercises and an audio interface for teachers to check pronunciation, and breakout rooms for conversation practice during class.
Students are a mix of Chinook community members, some with children in shawash-iliΚi skul, the Confederated Tribes of Grand Rondeβs immersion school. Others are community members Native and non-Native wanting to acknowledge the First People, many studying ecology. The classroom has the same encouraging, welcoming feel that Native spaces can.
Teacher Diane Smith, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, who is Molalla, Chinook, Wasco, Klamath, Klickitat, Chamorro and Philipina, brings a warm welcome to class. An enthusiastic teacher, she uses as much chinuk wawa as she can. Sheβs patterned her classes on Beth Sheppardβs, a mentor, who teaches second year classes. Sheppard said she is non-Native and is teaching until an indigenous teacher is ready.
We review the alphabet together each session, practicing a variety of consonants not found in English or Osage. Pronunciation is challenging for me, but chinuk wawa was a trade language for Natives that expanded to include English and French words when traders and immigrants arrived so the sentence constructions are simple. Proper nouns are not capitalized in chinuk wawa.
With the help of Smithβs special bright blue βguest speaker,β we are learning to introduce ourselves. βgrover nayka yaxΜ£al, ikta mayka yaxΜ£al?β βMy name is Grover, whatβs your name?β Grover says.
Diane and Grover make it fun, giving us mini-conversations to practice. βRuby nayka yaxΜ£al, pi nayka miΙ¬ayt khapa Puget Island,β or in chinuk wawa, tenas iliΚi, small land or island, which is the name on the map, Tenasillie, for an island downriver from us. And so it goes, building on the small islands of language in Chinook or in Osage that we put together, uncovering the Native languages resting there.
It’s deeply satisfying to see language preservation and expansion happening this way in the Northwest and to see non-Natives wanting to stand as allies.
All of our efforts are important, especially to counteract the State of Oklahoma unilaterally removing βYou are Entering the Osage Reservationβ road signs, in line with the nationwide move to remove βobjectionableβ history. Generations of Osages have experienced the attempts to suppress, some say eradicate, our culture, and we are still here.
ππ°ππ°ππ· ππΝππΝππ·. Wahzhazhe Always. ππ°ΝππΝ ππππ»ΝπΌπ·. Touch the feather. Vote, if you havenβt already.
