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
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Siletz News
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