The flashcards in front of the children and the letters of the
alphabet hanging on the walls made the classroom look similar to
nearly every other language class.
The creatures on the flashcards, however, were not dogs and
tigers and elephants but mythic monsters and guardians. Intense-looking
words with accents and apostrophes were splashed across the flashcards,
and the letters on the walls were pronounced with unfamiliar sounds
"X," for instance, sounded like a cat's hiss.
The students in Tri City were learning Takelma, the official
language of the Cow Creek Tribe, which recently learned that the
language had been preserved by the Smithsonian Institution. Takelma
hadn't been spoken fluently in more than 75 years, and yet today
the children of the Cow Creek Tribe are waking this dormant language
up.
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Amara
Mata, 8, left, of Tri City and Ellany Wood, 11, of Myrtle
Creek use flashcards to learn Takelma during a class
in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language
of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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Joseph
Malone, 7, of Green, right, and Emmanuel Mata, 10, of
Tri City use flashcards to learn Takelma during a class
in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language
of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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A Sleeping Language
In the latter half of the 19th century, when the Cow
Creeks heard about the horrible conditions on the reservations,
many of them decided not to go, so the Bureau of Indian Affairs
sent exterminators to hunt them.
The Cow Creeks learned to blend in with the Western population,
according to Michael Rondeau, CEO for the Cow Creeks. It wasn't
hard for many of them especially those who had intermarried
with local trappers, had last names like Rondeau, Dumont and Pariseau,
and looked white but it meant they couldn't speak their native
languages in public.
They spoke Takelma, the language of a tribe they had close ties
to and intermarriages with. The last known speaker of Takelma, a
woman named Frances Johnson, or Gwísgwashãn in Takelma,
died on the Siletz Reservation in 1934.
For the rest of the century, tribal elders believed Takelma
was just another casualty of white expansion, Rondeau said. It wasn't
until four years ago that they learned the truth.
In 2011, the tribe's natural resources director, Amy Amoroso,
stumbled across a mention of Takelma surviving online. What she
found on Google was a revelation.
She relayed the discovery to the tribe's elders. Elder Joyce
Sertain remembers crying, then getting goose bumps as she heard
the story of her prodigal language.
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Emmanuel
Mata, 10, of Tri City uses flashcards to learn Takelma
during a class in Tr -City on Thursday. Takelma is the
official language of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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Joseph
Malone, 7, of Green, right, and Emmanuel Mata, 10, of
Tri City use flashcards to learn Takelma during a class
in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language
of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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A Linguistic Lottery
In 1906, Edward Sapir, a 22-year-old doctoral candidate
from Columbia who would later be considered one of the most
important figures in modern linguistics came through the
Umpqua Valley and met Frances Johnson, one of "a handful" of Takelma
speakers, he wrote.
The two spent a month and a half together at the Siletz Reservation
where Johnson lived. The result was the basis of Sapir's doctoral
dissertation: 276 pages of stories, medicine formulas and vocabulary.
It's one of the few languages in the region to survive with so much
content.
"Out of the hundreds of little tribes, he picked ours," Rondeau
said.
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Rhonda
Malone teaches students Takelma during a class in Tri
City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language of
the Cow Creek Indian Tribe. Pictured from left, are
Amara Mata, 8, of Tri City, Emmanuel Mata, 10, of Tri
City and Ellany Wood, 11, of Myrtle Creek.
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Students
use flashcards to learn Takelma during a class in Tri
City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language of
the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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A Cultural Emergency
The Takelma learners, ranging from first to fifth
grade, struggled to focus. They passed cookies back and forth, distracting
each other.
This class takes place at the tribe's Myrtle Creek education
lab. The teacher is Rhonda Malone, who is Cultural Development and
Language Coordinator for the tribe, and recently she was determined
to ensure that each of the children would walk away with a word
he or she could say and define.
To that end, she brought out candy.
"It's amazing how well they knew these words when the Butterfingers
came out," Malone said. "If they only learn one word, I don't care
not if that's the word that hooks them."
Malone works hard to make these classes fun. Each one has a
theme, like "Cookies, Creatures and Clay."
But Malone and the elders are trying to teach a language they're
still learning. Malone calls herself a Takelma 3-year-old. She knows
vocabulary and strings sentences together, but doesn't yet understand
the grammar.
Malone also spends a lot of her time "harassing" the kids' parents
to bring them to the classes, which are voluntary and not part of
any school district's curriculum. Malone has to remind herself that
the kids' parents have lives and jobs.
"It's my big emergency," Malone said. "It's not necessarily
their emergency."
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Rhonda
Malone teaches students Takelma during a class in Tri
City on Thursday. Takelma is the official language of
the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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Malia
Wood, 7, of Myrtle Creek uses flashcards to learn Takelma
during a class in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the
official language of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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A Long Road Ahead
The tribe is fighting against time, according to Dr.
Ives Goddard, senior linguist with the Smithsonian's National Museum
of Natural History. Goddard has worked with many tribes whose languages
are in the process of dying as older generations do.
"When you have a smaller community," Goddard said, "they don't
realize these people are the last store of knowledge until it's
too late."
Malone and the elders find ways to insert Takelma into everyday
Cow Creek life, whether it's posting words on Facebook or just introducing
themselves in their native tongue.
Malone's vision is that one day she will be sitting with members
of the tribe and a whole conversation take place without need for
a single word of English. Her goal will be hard to attain.
Dr. David Lewis, an anthropologist and ethnographer, said that
for a language to survive, it has to have a purpose. If people don't
need to speak it, they won't.
Malone doesn't believe she will ever see Takelma spoken as fluently
as she wants it to be, since if that goal is reached, it will occur
many generations in the future. But this fact doesn't bother Malone.
The privilege of learning right now is enough.
"When we speak our language," Malone said, "we hear our ancestors'
voices."
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Joseph
Malone, 7, of Green, uses flashcards to learn Takelma
during a class in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the
official language of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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Amara
Mata, 8, of Tri City, uses flashcards to learn Takelma
during a class in Tri City on Thursday. Takelma is the
official language of the Cow Creek Indian Tribe.
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Cow
Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians
The Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians upholds Tribal Government,
protects and preserves Tribal sovereignty, history, culture and
the general welfare of the Tribal membership, and serves to provide
for the long term economic needs of the Tribe and its members through
economic development of Tribal lands. The Tribe encourages and promotes
a strong work ethic and personal independence for Tribal members,
while strongly upholding the government to government
relationship with local, State and Federal governments. The Tribe
constantly strives to maintain and develop strong cooperative relationships
that benefit the Tribe and local community.
http://www.cowcreek.com
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