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Spilyay Tymoo, Warm Springs, Oregon
July 28, 2021
‘The future of the language is young people’
A s a child, CarlaDean
Caldera learned the Northern
Paiute language of her mother,
Esther Louise Watah Caldera.
Esther Louise passed away while
CarlaDean was young. Still, grow-
ing up the language and culture
were always around her family.
Some years later, as a young
adult, CarlaDean began studying
and teaching at Warm Springs
Culture and Heritage. “I didn’t
realize until then, till my mid-20s
really, how much of the language
I had kept,” CarlaDean says.
Now these days, as a teacher,
she considers how the Northern
Paiute and other endangered Na-
tive languages can survive into the
future: The solution, clearly, will
involve young people taking an in-
terest in the subject.
And if anything, CarlaDean
The Fields Fellowship will help CarlaDean Caldera to develop
apps making Native language more accessible to young people.
says, young people today use mod-
ern technology—Smart phones,
tablets and other computers. She
herself over the years has become
very good with computers, self-
taught, developing interactive pro-
grams like a basketball shooting
game, and even a hand-washing
School district planning safe fall term
In a little over a month the
2021-22 school year starts for the
Jefferson County School District
509-J. The first day for most stu-
dents in the district will be the Tues-
day after Labor Day, or Septem-
ber 7.
This week district officials are
reviewing the updated Oregon
Department of Education guide-
lines for returning to school. The
guidelines are called ‘Ready
Schools, Safe Learners Resiliency
Framework for the 2021-22
School Year,’ the Resiliency Plan
for short.
The school district, working with
families, will announce its plan
soon, perhaps this week, guiding
school activities for the rest of the
summer, into the return to in-
school learning in September.
The updated guidelines came
out just recently, and the Jefferson
County district is developing its pro-
gram based on the Resiliency plan.
Most of the plan guidelines are ad-
visory to the individual school dis-
tricts, leaving many of the decisions
at the local level.
The Resiliency Plan overall is
designed to give health and safety
recommendations that provide
flexibility in order to:
Return to full-time, in-person in-
struction for all stuents.
Honor and recognize the
uniqueness of communities across
the state.
Support schools in health and
safety planning to meet commu-
nity-specific needs and strengths.
The plan also notes: As schools
plan for the fall 2021 in-person
school year, it is important to re-
member: We will be living with the
virus until there is widespread im-
munity.
Covid-19 continues to change
with new variants. The under-
standing of virus mitigation grows
over time, so guidance for re-
sponding to Covid-19 also
changes.
As we have known for some
time now: The best way to pro-
tect individuals are vaccination
game inspired by the covid. These
use moving cartoon images and
corresponding sound.
So CarlaDean puts the two
things together—her computer ap-
plications or games for kids, and
her desire to the keep the North-
ern Paiute language alive. She found
a website that helped her develop
an application that teaches how to
count one-two-three in Northern
Paiute. Another one teaches the
names of four-legged animals. A
program narrator she uses, in her
own voice, is a wolf by the North-
ern Paiute name, Assa.
Her idea is to approach the lan-
guage using the technology famil-
iar to young people today, “To see
if I can make things come alive,”
CarlaDean says.
So far, she has used the com-
puter app development service
available on the internet. Her goal
is to be independent of any third-
party service, developing on her
own language application learning
programs.
And if you think about it: This
could apply beyond the Northern
Paiute to any endangered or criti-
cally endangered Native language.
Last week, Oregon Humanities
and the Oregon Community Foun-
dation recognized her vision with
a Fields Artist Fellowship. This is
rare: CarlaDean is one of only four
of the Fields Fellows awarded for
2021-2023.
The Fellowship will allow her
to pursue the dream of teaching
the Northern Paiute language, as
a way of honoring the elders who
have passed the language on to
the present day.
for those who are eligible, physi-
cal distancing, face coverings, ven-
tilation and air flow, hand wash-
ing, and staying home if ill or ex-
posed to some with covid.
During this summer term, the
school district required the wear-
ing of face coverings while on a
school bus.
This is a mandate as required
by the Centers for Disease Con-
trol, applying to the use of masks
on public transportation, including
school buses.
You can always check for school
district updates, and check the
school calender at the website:
jcsd.k12.or.us
Dave McMechan
Update: Reservation community covid data
C.Taylor photo
CTWS Covid-19 Response Team
The Covid-19 data chart for the reservation and tribal community, from April 2020 through
mid last week, showing the incidence of positive testing. (See page 5 for details.)
Dylan Heath, here with his goat Hayseuss, showed and sold
livestock with his brother Hayden this year at the County Fair.
Dylan this year graduated from Madras High School. He will
be attending Lane County College, studying in the field of
Physical Therapy.