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BY VICTORIA STEPHENS
Endangered Language
Tribal elder to teach Sahaptin at UO
T
he UO will be offering an endangered
Native American language to its
students this fall. At the request of
Native American tribes in the state, a two-year
series of classes in the Sahaptin language will
be added to the curriculum. This is with the
hope of supporting and encouraging Native
American students and in order to preserve
the language of the original people of the
Northwest. These courses will qualify for the
language requirement for BA students.
Sahaptin and its variants are spoken by
the native peoples along the Mid-Columbia
River area in Washington and Oregon and are
currently spoken on the Umatilla, Colville,
Warm Springs and Yakama reservations.
Virginia Beavert, a Yakama elder and
Washington resident, has taught courses in
Native American languages since 1970 at
various locations and at the UO in condensed
summer courses designed to educate teachers
the last few years.
“This language I teach is very endangered,”
said Beavert, an 86-year-old linguistics doctoral
student and expert in Sahaptin, selected to
teach the upcoming series in the fall.
While studying at the University of Arizona,
Beavert took Japanese linguistics taught by a full
blood Navaho teacher. This helped her know
how to look at the structure of her own language.
“Teaching a different language to anyone can
make them aware of the structure of their
language,” she said. Sahaptin is just one of several
Native American languages that Beavert speaks.
Native American language teachers are
selected by their tribe to become certifi ed
by the state and take a two- to three-week
immersion course in Sahaptin in order to teach
the language. A fl uent speaker of the language
is selected to attend the workshop and a letter
of recommendation is submitted by the tribal
leaders to the Teacher Standards Practices
Commission for the specialized certifi cation,
which is required in order to be able to teach in
the public schools.
Jeff Magoto, director of the UO’s Yamada
Language Center, said their World Language
Academy is an “incubator for newer language
studies.” He said the fall program for the
Sahaptin language series “has the buy-in of
all the tribes within the state for support and
approval.” This is no small feat, as the teaching
of any native language to those outside the
tribe is “not without controversy.”
Concerns among tribal members include
proper regard being given to the culture and
that a respectful climate is ensured. There
are spiritual aspects to be considered as well,
and resentment over what has been done
with Native American languages in U.S. history.
Previously restricted to native teachers
selected by the tribe, and then opened up
with an aim of appealing to Native American
students on campus, the Sahaptin language
course will be open to any student wishing
to learn a second language, in an effort to
preserve the endangered language and culture
of the indigenous people of the region.
At this point, “we just need people to
learn the language in order for it to survive,”
said Beavert.
The Northwest Indian Language Institute
(NILI) traces its beginning to a tribal request
made to the UO in 1997 for assistance in
developing linguistic and language training for
native languages, according to Director Janne
Underriner. The NILI mission is to help tribes
preserve their language through linguistic
and other academic language assessment
and documentation, and by establishing
collaborative projects such as this one.
Tony Johnson, who works with the
Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and
serves on the advisory committee of tribal
language speakers with Virginia Beavert and
Brenda Frank of the Klamath Tribe, teaches
Chinuk Wawa at LCC. Chinuk Wawa is the
native trade language of the Pacifi c Northwest
used by merchants and farmers, which he
learned from his great uncles and aunts and his
grandfather’s best friend.
While describing Sahaptin he said, “these
languages are extremely complex.” A few
words can convey multiple sentences in
English, according to Johnson. “That’s where
our diffi culty comes in teaching,” he added.
Sahaptin is a polysynthetic language, which
“even baffl es linguists,” according to Beavert.
Such languages are composed of one-word
sentences used to communicate entire ideas
with words such as ipinasapáwiisklika, which
means “S/he turned him/herself around.”
The stress accent is very important to
the meaning of the word in Sahaptin. For
example, pamtá means bullfrog and pámta
means paternal uncle.
The alphabet is designed to use basic
American characters and has a few special
characters to convey sounds not used in the
English language.
Beavert recently received a Distinguished
Service Award presented by the UO for her
life’s work and contribution to the preservation
of the Sahaptin language, tribal stories, legends
and other cultural treasures that otherwise
would have been lost without her diligent
efforts to revive them.
“This is why we have this program,
because our language is dying out with our
elders,” she said.
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EUGENE WEEKLY JULY 17, 2008 13