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About Spilyay tymoo. (Warm Springs, Or.) 1976-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 21, 2024)
~ Student lessons for the classroom ~ Numu ~ Paiute by Rain Circle From the Madras High School Kiksht Class, It’ukdi wigwa! Ichachachaq aktmin is done and ‘the shoulder month’ is happening. As it was… so it is that your White Buffalo Ichishkiin, Kiksht and Numu students are still hard at work in the Native Language room at MHS. The Native Language learning group at the high school is still doing great things and they con- tinue to make long strides. These kids are still balanc- ing essential required classes with their newest sports changes. They are still jug- gling their social, home lives and whatever challenges in their daily routine, new and old, on top of learning one of the hardest languages there is to learn, and we haven’t lost any learners to dropping the class, expulsion or academic issues, they make me proud. It is impor- tant to note that we were only able to utilize 15 of 21 learning days because of the weather last month. As we are... Over the hump in this school year, you should know that in the beginning we had about 16 days of learning in the edu- cation year, we are now down to about 10. See, if you add up the minutes we have in class then divide the answer for hours, your Wasco White Buffalos have 16 eight-hour days to get as much learning done as they can. It might not seem like a lot but it is concentrated learning and we get a lot done in three quarters of an hour. I try not to give them much time of inactivity un- til the end of the session. They get about 5-10 minutes to recover the classroom— put it back how they found it—depending on the work load and subject matter. For example if the day was vo- cabulary building: memoriz- ing-spelling-using new words, then I try to use a memory game for recalling the words already covered, and give the new stuff time to settle in to long term memory to repeat the pro- cess the following week. If the learning day is more technical—for ex- ample, prefix use and com- binations or word conjuga- tion—I give them more re- covery time at the end of the period to start the long term memory storage ear- lier, before they have a new school district subject that might push what they just learned in Native Language out and replaced with what- ever the next class material, and we can’t have that. Longer sentences, more vocab and review, review, review is where we are in the Kiksht group. I am sure that it would be a much differ- ent class if we had new ad- ditions to the class this new semester but I am sure that we will adopt a Montessori aspect of learning when that happens. This method of teaching is vast and the part I am re- ferring to is the ‘senior stu- dent teaching and tutoring the junior student’ aspect. Most of us learn some- thing from our contempo- raries, such as you start a new job and you get shown the ropes by somebody who has been there longer. In a structured education envi- ronment, this can be more helpful than just a teacher teaching everyone some- thing. I am the class of 1993. I am from a very different time in learning than they are, and it helps the process if one’s contemporaries assist in the learning. The environment in which they are coming to age is re- moved enough from mine that our methods of commu- nicating can be a hindrance vs a benefit. I am over 40 and I think like that. They are in their teens, and they think as such… so who better to teach them in a way they can un- derstand than a peer in age and experience: another teen- ager (besides, it’s how you learned most of the stuff that rules your life and per- sonality anyway, right?). Why do we look so fondly upon our ‘formative years’? Because everything was new and you soaked it up, you had the ability to choose, to some extent, and you chose. You found new friends and inter- ests and they forged your life from then on and you hold them dear… I want Kiksht to be part of these students lives in that way. Their love for the Awawat will lie in the little society they had for four years and their fellow stu- dents, senior classes to jun- ior, pass the knowledge they are given with each other and all I have to do is introduce new stuff and ensure that what they teach each other is correct. That is too easy! We aren’t there yet but we are definitely OTW there. With that idea… I believe that Madras High School has the largest Kiksht speaking community in the Pacific Northwest, in any classroom, and quite likely the entire counrty. Being eight students, they are the only regularly held class of Kiksht speak- ers I have ever heard of, ever. I know that our cuzzins north of the Wimat have a Wishram program, I’ve met one of them, but I’m pretty sure they don’t have a pres- ence in their high school like we do but I don’t know ev- erything and I am primarily focused on this program so, can’t say for sure but I’m pretty damn sure. Tune in next month for a review on what we learned in ‘kinship’ or family relation- ship terms. Kiksht has many words on family relationships and that list is extensive. There are words for your aunts on your father’s side, ‘my father’s sister(s)’ and your mother’s side, ‘my mother’s sister’s’ and the same applies to your uncles. There are words in this sec- tion that describe the relation- ship, cannot be completed without being in a sentence and words that would only be used when talking directly to that individual and the beauty of that word structure is that it would be hard to mis- take who is related to who when they are using their tra- ditional words… simple. At one time we had the community of speakers on the WSIR, the different speaking groups knew, or at least some of their neighbor groups lingo but it’s not like that anymore. Our community hasn’t taken the time and effort to undo all of the damage the Americans caused in lan- guage erasure and we’re pay- ing for it now. What this means is that the majority of our elders can’t really serve as mentors to languages any- more so their grandchildren have to step-up and be those people. I am sure that you have had somebody in your fam- ily ask you questions about something they needed an- swers to but today that elder can’t even say K’aya enxulxat to them, when the question is their traditional Native Language. This time I speak of wasn’t the ‘ancient past’ ei- ther… my grandmothers’ gen- eration could do that, to some extent, and I heard more people ‘speakin’ ndn’ in the 80s (not a lot but more) than I hear now, and so our kids can’t even pick up bad words by eves dropping but I am positive with your help, par- ticipating and finding others to revitalize Native Language along with you, we can change that. It is just a question of reducing one’s own time nurs- ing at the electric teat, that is the internet and all of its forms of delivery. Just start the ‘language turn around’ by reading the INK (Ichishkiin, Numu & Kiksht) Native Lan- guage section in this newspa- per. As before, I want to im- part that what I learned as a trainer of soldiers was that people want a challenge. People need a challenge... large or small they want to succeed and they want to have someone to be proud of them in their accomplish- ments and be cared for. Please, tell our young war- riors that you are proud of them as often as you can. Re- enforce it by showing up and listening, ask them about their day and just listen. You will find that you have a lot in common and most of your differences are in your head… They are the kids you raised after all and you just might learn something new. Listen to the Kiksht words they learn, the sentences in our ancient language of the Big River… learn with them. For those of you who say things like, ‘I don’t have the time to learn Kiksht,’ if you were on Facebook? You had time to learn Kiksht…if you were watching TV or if you were on your phone? You have time to learn Kiksht… If you were casino (not if you work there duh!) you defi- nitely squandered your Kiksht learning time! There are three Language classes at Madras High School and a department dedicated to teaching those languages; so, if you haven’t learned your language, it’s about allotting the time and making ‘the hard-right deci- sion’ vs ‘the easy-wrong deci- sion’. I have nothing but good feelings about these stu- dents and their future in Na- tive Language. They are dedi- cated, focused and smart. They are going to have their lives expanded and learn to see Warm Springs, Oregon and the greater region in a way that non-speakers won’t and that makes me happy for them. It is hard learning a new language, the rules of Bashtenemt are confusing and infect all aspect of the speaking the Language of the Big River but doing things that are hard is what makes everything we do, worth our time and these kids make it look easy but maybe…. I can meet you half way (thinking face?). I just got the suggestion from somebody in our community that I could try to create casino phrases, like ‘Grandma needs a new pair of shoes!’ or ‘Hit me,’ ‘Free spins,’ ‘Big hit.’ etc. Being an Indian is hard. It’s hard holding on to our cul- ture and beliefs in a country that actively works against us, and has for centuries. It’s hard maintaining our collec- tive identity as Indians in a country that always wants us to assimilate. Kiksht is a hard language to learn; word pro- nunciation, emphasis, compo- sition, sentence structure are all significantly different from other languages and just simi- lar enough to cause much con- fusion but, as one of my sol- dier taught me after her time in Basic Training: “If it isn’t hard, it isn’t worth doin’”- PVT Erikson/ORARNG.
