As
far as the records show, no one has spoken Shinnecock or Unkechaug,
languages of Long Island's Indian tribes, for nearly 200 years. Now
Stony Brook University and two of the Indian nations are initiating
a joint project to revive these extinct tongues, using old documents
like a vocabulary list that Thomas Jefferson wrote during a visit
in 1791.
The
goal is language resuscitation and enlisting tribal members from
this generation and the next to speak them, said representatives
from the tribes and Stony Brook's Southampton campus.
Chief
Harry Wallace, the elected leader of the Unkechaug Nation, said
that for tribal members, knowing the language is an integral part
of understanding their own culture, past and present.
"When
our children study their own language and culture, they perform
better academically," he said. "They have a core foundation to rely
on."
The
Long Island effort is part of a wave of language reclamation projects
undertaken by American Indians in recent years. For many tribes
language is a cultural glue that holds a community together, linking
generations and preserving a heritage and values. Bruce Cole, the
former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, which
sponsors language preservation programs, has called language "the
DNA of a culture."
The
odds against success can be overwhelming, given the relatively small
number of potential speakers and the difficulty in persuading a
new generation to participate. There has been progress, though,
said Leanne Hinton, professor emerita at the University of California,
Berkeley, who created the Breath of Life program in California in
1992 to revive dormant languages in the state.
Representatives
from at least 25 languages with no native speakers have participated
in the group's workshops so far, she said. Last month Ms. Hinton
and a colleague at Yale received a federal grant to create a similar
program based in Washington, D.C.
Of
the more than 300 indigenous languages spoken in the United States,
only 175 remain, according to the Indigenous Language Institute.
This nonprofit group estimates that without restoration efforts,
no more than 20 will still be spoken in 2050.
Some
reclamation efforts have shown success. Daryl Baldwin started working
to revive the dormant language of the Miami Nation in the Midwest
(part of the Algonquian language family), and taught his own children
to speak it fluently. He now directs the Myaamia Project at Miami
University in Ohio, a joint effort between academics and the Miami
tribe.
Farther
east is Stephanie Fielding, a member of the Connecticut Mohegans
and an adviser on the Stony Brook project. She has devoted her life
to bringing her tribe's language back to life and is compiling a
dictionary and grammar book. In her eyes language provides a mental
telescope into the world of her ancestors. She notes, for example,
that in an English conversation, a statement is typically built
with the first person "I" coming first. In the same
statement in Mohegan, however, "you" always comes first, even when
the speaker is the subject.
"This
suggests a more communally minded culture," she said.
Now
in her 60s, Ms. Fielding knows firsthand just how tough it is to
sustain a language effort over time, however. She said she was still
not fluent.
"In
order for a language to survive and resurrect," she said, "it needs
people talking it, and for people to talk it, there has to be a
society that works on it."
Chief
Wallace of the Unkechaug in Long Island already has a willing student
from a younger generation. Howard Treadwell, 24, graduated from
Stony Brook in 2009 with a linguistics degree. He will participate
in the Long Island effort while doing graduate work at the University
of Arizona, where there is a specialized program researching American
Indian languages.
Mr.
Treadwell is one of 400 registered members of the tribe, which maintains
a 52-acre reservation in Mastic, on the South Shore. The Shinnecocks
have about 1,300 enrolled members and have a reservation adjacent
to Southampton.
Robert
D. Hoberman, the chairman of the linguistics department at Stony
Book, is overseeing the academic side of the project. He is an expert
in the creation of modern Hebrew, the great success story of language
revival. Essentially unspoken for 2,000 years, Hebrew survived only
in religious uses until early Zionists tried to update it
an undertaking adopted on a grand scale when the State of Israel
was established.
For
the American Indians on Long Island the task is particularly difficult
because there are few records. But Shinnecock and Unkechaug are
part of a family of eastern Algonquian languages. Some have both
dictionaries and native speakers, Mr. Hoberman said, which the team
can mine for missing words and phrases, and for grammatical structure.
The
reclamation is a two-step process, the professor explained. "First
we have to figure out what the language looked like," using remembered
prayers, greetings, sayings and word lists, like the one Jefferson
created, he said. "Then we'll look at languages that are much better
documented, look at short word lists to see what the differences
are and see what the equivalencies are, and we'll use that to reconstruct
what the Long Island languages probably were like." The Massachusett
language, for example, is well documented with dictionaries and
Bible translations.
Jefferson's
Unkechaug word list was collected on June 13, 1791, when he visited
Brookhaven, Long Island, with James Madison, later his successor
in the White House. He wrote that even then, only three old women
remained who could still speak the language fluently.
Chief
Wallace said he had many more records, including religious documents,
deeds and legal transactions, and possibly a tape of some tribal
members speaking in the 1940s.
"When
we have an idea of what the language should sound like, the vocabulary
and the structure, we'll then introduce it to people in the community,"
Mr. Hoberman said.
While
it may seem impossible to recreate the sound of a lost tongue, Mr.
Hoberman said the process was not all that mysterious because the
dictionaries were transliterated into English.
"Would
someone from 200 years ago think we had a funny accent?" Mr. Hoberman
asked. "Yes. Would they understand it? I hope so."
|