Siletz Powwow Dancers OHS Folklife Program Photograph P 17-13.24

Imagine the scene: On a winter night in an Alsean village on Oregon’s central coast, Native elders share tales around a fire with visitors from a nearby Yaquina village.  Each would have belonged to one of a multitude of bands speaking nearly twenty local languages that flourished in the eighteenth century. Oral tradition gave birth to over ten thousand tales told to entertain and instruct. Few of those languages were mutually intelligible. While visitors from the Yaquina village could understand Alsean elders, coastal groups speaking Chinookan, Salishan, Siuslaw, and other languages needed a lingua franca.  Tribes developed a language both utilitarian and rich in metaphor—Chinook Wawa to indigenous people, Chinook Jargon to outsiders. The basic vocabulary was Chinookan, augmented by Nuu-chah-nulth, English, and French loan words. Terms for objects unknown to local Indians such as “fork” found form through relationship—“opitsah yakha sikh” or “friend to the knife.”

Indigenous material arts mirrored linguistic creativity, creating a distinctive worldview through utilitarian objects. Cedar bark torn into strands became a woman’s cape, a dress, or a man’s breechcloth. Gathered and harvested shells adorned clothing for ritual and ceremony.  Everywhere in archaeological excavations is evidence of beauty married to necessity, the hallmark of folk arts.

Imagine another scene, this one in 2004: At the Siletz Reservation, young people prepare the ground for a traditional dance. The smell of frybread fills the air as a group begins to perform. For weeks before the event, Alfred “Bud” Lane III has been preparing Tututni shell dresses.  Lane has served three times as a master artist with the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program of the Oregon Folklife Program. He passes on knowledge of the shell dress construction as well as teaching basket weaving and the creation of baby baskets.  Lane searched throughout Oregon and California for Tututni Indians who remembered the shell dress creation, then pursued a ten-year apprenticeship. The Siletz may not need baskets to store food as they once did, but they may seek this knowledge for another kind of survival—to understand who they are.

Bud Lane knows about cultural survival, for his heritage was nearly destroyed. The Siletz Reservation is actually an amalgam of twenty-seven bands forced onto a reservation of 1,300,000 acres by the U.S. government in the mid-nineteenth century, then gradually reduced in size. In 1954, these bands lost their land along with their tribal status during a period of U.S. Indian Policy typically referred to as “Termination.” The government tried to assimilate Native people by outlawing dancing, the speaking of native languages, and other forms of cultural expression. With the restoration of tribal status in 1977, people like Bud Lane began to revive cultural knowledge. Especially important are public events like powwows, pan-Indian celebrations featuring music and dance. “Survival” has a different face in the twenty-first century, as cultures become hybrid blends of past and present, of creative reconstruction and preservation.

An equally important form of revival is that of indigenous languages. Language is a life force within culture—the source of oral poetry, stories, and everyday folk speech. Many indigenous languages were destroyed during colonization and the many years of forced assimilation. Yet veer off Highway 101 and you can hear Chinook Wawa spoken by a new generation today. Not far from Spirit Mountain, the Grand Ronde’s casino, you’ll find Tony Johnson at the tribal educational center with a group of children.  They read from Golden Books with terms in Chinook wawa pasted over the English text. Some Chinookan words such as “Skookum” (strong or powerful) have entered Oregon’s folklore, appearing in the names of boats, restaurants, and other linguistic markers. Yet continuation of these languages is hardly ensured. Linguists predict that between twenty and fifty percent of the world’s six thousand languages will disappear during the twenty-first century. Of the 175 indigenous languages currently spoken in the United States, only twenty likely will remain by the year 2050. Unless steps are taken to counter this trend, we will lose the unique knowledge embedded in different languages. Revived linguistic and folk art forms reflect a world of complexity: the tragedies of colonial encounters, the creativity and resilience of Native people, and the elasticity of culture.

© Joanne B. Mulcahy, 2005.

Themes: Social Relations,Folklife

Regions: Oregon Coast

Date: Pre-contact-Present

Author: Joanne B. Mulcahy

Summary:
Unless steps are taken, only twenty of the 175 indigenous languages spoken in the U.S. today will remain by the year 2050 and we will lose the unique knowledge embedded in them.