S moke S ignals
july 1, 2014
1
Language staff enters publishing business
By Ron Karten
Smoke Signals staff writer
It is evening in Grand Ronde and
approximately 30 to 40 pre-kinder-
garten through third-graders in
Chinuk Wawa immersion classes
and their families meet in the gym,
or the plankhouse, for an evening
of language fun called Chinuk Lit-
eracy Night.
Before the evening activity was
over last November, they were
all saying, “Goodnight, Grand
Ronde.”
“For Literacy Night,” said Ali
Holsclaw, Chinuk Immersion teach-
er, “we always pick a book (already
published), read it aloud and every
family goes home with a copy.
“We would buy books easy to trans-
late,” she added, and before Literacy
Night language teachers translated
the books into Chinuk Wawa. They
then pasted the Chinuk Wawa words
over the English ones.
For words that are not among the
ones that have come down from the
Chinuk Wawa language, teachers
have to either use the English word,
like they have in the case of spoon
or pizza, and spell them phoneti-
cally with Chinuk Wawa letters;
or they have to make up a word
by piecing together Chinuk Wawa
words that exist.
Take cell phone, for example.
They turned it into “lima,” which
means hand, and “tintin,” which
means sound or ring.
Starting last fall, that all changed.
Literacy Night was scheduled right
around Restoration time and “we
decided to have our own Grand
Ronde local story,” Holsclaw said.
The program is working with a com-
petitive three-year Administration for
Native Americans Esther Martinez
language grant used for kindergarten
and first grade. The last three-year
grant, averaging $250,000 a year,
ends at the end of July, said Tribal
Planning and Grants Development
Manager Kim Rogers.
The program has won this com-
petitive grant every year but one
since 2001. A new rule, however,
limits Tribes to only two wins in
a row, meaning that Grand Ronde
cannot apply this
year. Next year,
said Rogers, the
Tribe will seek to
win another ANA
Esther Martinez
three-year grant
that would start in
August 2015.
The idea of pub-
lishing a Chinuk
Wawa book fo-
cusing on Grand
Ronde moved the
project forward.
Next came the
writing, illustrat-
ing and publishing
process. Holsclaw
chose the book’s
model and wrote the story.
Crystal Sczcepanski, Chinuk
Wawa Language specialist and
liaison, and an excellent artist, il-
lustrated it.
She said she used “a mix of pro-
fessional and kid craft materials. I
used a variety of mediums: Acrylic,
color pencils, watercolor pencils,
construction paper, poster paper,
oil-based markers and children’s
washable markers.
“It reminded me of how creative
our recent ancestors were with
materials they had access to. I was
just using ingenuity like my great-
grandmothers.”
Esther Stewart, also a Chinuk
Immersion teacher with a degree
in graphic design, put the book in
the proper form and dealt with the
publisher.
“I set the book up in InDesign and
did all of the layout work,” Stewart
said. “I was able to use Photoshop
and InDesign programs to scan,
size and modify the images, and put
them in a PDF file format.”
Stewart saved money by doing
what any publisher would have
charged to do.
The first edition of 50 copies went
to families at Literacy Night in
November. The book was so popu-
lar that the immersion program
ordered a second printing of 100
to raise money for other language
literacy activities.
The book was introduced to
the community at the opening of
Chachalu/Summer Kick-Off on
June 5. The department’s first pub-
lished Chinuk Wawa book had sold
about 10 copies by June 16.
“Goodnight Grand Ronde” (ɫush
pulakʰli shawash-iliʔi) now sells for
$7 through Tiffany Mercier at the
front desk in the Youth Education
building. It also is available at the
Tribal Library.
The immersion program intends
to continue writing, illustrating
and publishing Chinuk Wawa
books for future Literacy Nights.
With the one-year gap in the grant
funding, the program is going to
have to sell many books to keep the
extra activities going. n
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