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About Siletz news / (Siletz, OR) 199?-current | View Entire Issue (April 1, 2012)
Oregon Tech claims NAIA men's basketball championship for third time Liston Case is on team that finishes season 34-4 By Diane Rodriquez The Oregon Tech Hustlin' Owls beat North wood (Fla.) 63-46 on March 13 to claim the NA1A Division II men’s basket ball championship in Point Outlook, Mo. The Hustlin’ Owls finished the season 34-4, a single-season record for wins and the third consecutive season with 30 or more wins, and join Bethel (Ind.) as the only schools with three national titles. Siletz Tribal member Liston Case is a sophomore guard for the Hustlin’ Owls. He is the oldest child of Torina and Ed Case IV. He played for Chiloquin High School in Southern Oregon, graduating in 2010. He played one season at Shasta Junior College before transferring to Oregon Tech in 2011. Following the NA1A championship. Case played on a team that won the 59,h Annual All-lndian Basketball Tournament in Chiloquin. Additionally, he was named MVP of the tournament. While at Chiloquin High School, Case was named the Southern Cascade League (SCL) Player of the Year in basketball in 2010 and participated in the 2010 OACA/Gatorade Oregon High School All-Star Series. 2012 NAIffl DIVISION II V MEN'S BASKETBALL He was a four-year varsity starter, was selected varsity MVP three times, was named to the all-league team three times and helped lead the team to two SCL championships. He also was a three-time OSAA state qualifier. Courtesy photos by Taylor David - Klamath News Edward Liston Case V, who goes by Liston, holds a championship jacket from the recent 59 Annual All-lndian Basketball Tournament. With him are his father, Edward L. Case IV, and grandfather, Edward L. Case III. Above: The Oregon Tech national championship team celebrates after the title game. Below: Liston Case and Scotty Riddle, a Klamath Tribal member who also is on the team, join other players at the college after a parade for the team in Klamath Falls. Language, con’t from page 1 A few days later on Feb. 21, desig nated as UNESCO’s International Mother Language Day, the Huffington Post website carried an article from K. David Harrison, National Geographic Fellow and director of research for the Living Tongues Institute entitled Celebrating Language Warriors. In visiting what he calls “the front lines of this battle,” Harrison cites Bud Lane, Tribal language and traditional arts instructor and member of the Siletz Tribal Council: phrases into single words: gay-yuu- mvtlh-wvsh means “baby basket laces," a vanishing cultural concept. From cradle to cell phone, Siletz continues its journey. A young Siletz man told me “Sometimes I think I text in the language more than I talk in it." It's a struggle, he contin ued, to find a balance between cultural authenticity for this tongue considered by the Siletz “as old as time itself" and modern technology. But texting “makes the language cool," he mused, and indeed may help save it. Alfred “Bud" Lane III, of the Siletz Nation in Oregon, numbers among the last speakers of Siletz Dee-ni, a language of staggering complexity and beauty. Bud recounted how appalled the Siletz tribal council were when their tongue was classified “moribund" by linguists, des tined for the dust-heap of history. The Siletz resolved that extinction is not inevitable, even when only a handful of speakers remain. An article on the Siletz Tribe’s efforts to restore its Athabascan language appeared on the Daily Kos website on Feb. 26. It describes the results of assimilation policies and their affect on language: With patience and perfect pronun ciation, Bud sat down with linguist Greg Anderson, myself and others and recorded nearly 14,000 words for the Siletz Dee-ni Talking Dictionary. No small feat, since the language packs entire sentences and The Athabaskan-based Siletz Dee- Ni is one of many American Indian languages that faces extinction, a mori bund language, according to linguists. Siletz Dee-Ni has been designated one of 20 endangered language hotspots in the world by Greg Anderson and David Harrison at the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages and rated in the most severe category. “Language Hotspots are areas that are urgently in need of action and should be the areas of highest priority in planning future research projects and channeling funding streams." KLCC, a Eugene, Oregon-based radio station that carries NPR program ming. produced a story by Tom Banse on the “talking dictionaries” that aired on Feb. 28. It opened with the following: Usually it is good news when the Northwest appears on a top five list. But this one is not. Our region ranks near the top of a list of global hotspots for disap pearing languages. The reason is that speakers of Native American languages are dwindling. Now digital technol ogy is coming to the rescue of some ancient tongues. Members of the Siletz Tribe on the Oregon coast take pride in a language they say “is as old as time itself.” But today, you can count the number of flu ent speakers on one hand. Bud Lane is one of them. He says, “We had linguists that had come in and done assessments of our people and our language and they labeled it - 1'11 never forget this term - 'moribund,' meaning it was headed for the ash heap of history." The Siletz Tribal Council was deter mined not to let that happen. Lane told the story over the phone to a symposium in Van couver. He says he realized he would need outside help to revive the Siletz language. He turned to an institute based in Salem that has backing from the National Geographic Society. The Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages helped Lane record 14,000 words and phrases in his native tongue. Although modern tools like the Internet, iPhone apps, YouTube videos and Facebook pages are useful, they can't replace traditional person-to-person contact with a language. Banse's story ends thus: Back in Oregon, Siletz language teacher Bud Lane cautions that tech nology alone cannot save endangered languages. “Nothing takes the place of speakers speaking to other speakers and to people who are learning," he says. “But this bridges a gap that was just sorely needed in our community and in our tribe." Lane says one sign things are turning around: he sees tribal youth texting each other in Siletz. April 2012 • Siletz News • 5
