Closed Captions

Lucy Vanderburg, program manager at the People Center in Pablo, Montana, discusses efforts to preserve and teach the Salish language on the Flathead Reservation. She covers the language's history, its documentation beginning in 1978, the development of a 43-sound alphabet, and current educational initiatives including immersion schools. Vanderburg shares cultural practices tied to the language and describes challenges in training new speakers among younger tribal members.

Transcript

0:02 Introduction, the introduction at the top of the hour. But for those of you who weren't here, welcome to The Tent of Many Voices in the Corps of Discovery II. The Tent of Many Voices was designed as a place for people of different professional backgrounds and cultures to come and share with us their knowledge and wisdom as it relates to the Lewis and Clark expedition. And so we're very happy to have Lucy Vanderburg with us here today. She's going to be talking about Salish language.
0:27 So without further ado, let's welcome Lucy to our stage.
0:35 Thank you. Um
0:39 in our language, we would say [speaks Salish] Which is thank you, [speaks Salish] Um And this is the Salish, the Salish language. Um Like I said, my, my name is Lucy Vanderburg and I'm the program manager at the People Center in Pablo uh which is seven miles north of uh Polson.
1:02 The People Center is a museum and an education uh facility and uh a gift shop. We and also our, we call it Native Ed.
1:16 It's uh the tours that they combine with education. I am, our mission statement is to educate um the public and the public includes not only the tribal members but non-tribal members about
1:37 the three tribes that reside on, on what is known as the Flathead Reservation. Um We have the Salish and we like to be called the Bitterroot Salish because this, this is actually our homeland. And uh somebody made a comment this morning and said, ask me where I was going and I told them that I was going to Hamilton. They said, oh, you're going back to your homeland. And I always feel
2:01 I wasn't born here or anything. But I always feel like when I come back to the Bitterroot that it is uh part of my, my background and my father was born in Stevensville and he was uh he was a year old when they were uh moved to the, to the Jocko area.
2:25 There are, there are um three tribes that reside on the reservation and that's the, the Bitterroot Salish and the Pend d'Oreille and that the Kootenai Um the Kootenai migrated down from Canada. And like I said, we went from here to there.
2:47 The Pond d'Oreille have always been in between Arley and Polson. They've always occupied that land. Um The Kalispel some of the Spokane's uh we've kind of had different tribes that have lived there. But um to date, we have um approximately about 7000
3:11 enrolled members on that. Um Not all 7000 live on the reservation. Um For whatever reason, a lot of people do leave the reservation. Um I left at one time and came back after about 20 years um
3:33 to be enrolled,
3:37 uh an enrolled member. You, you, uh there's, there's criteria that you have to meet. Um Either Salish Kootenai or Pond d'Oreille you have to have at least um 1/4 degree of either tribes, um
3:59 degree of blood to be enrolled, an enrolled member. And there's a lot of uh um descendants, direct descendants that aren't enrolled. Um because of the, the requirement that you have to be of 1/4. Um I consider myself a full blood Salish. Uh my mom was, was a full blood my dad,
4:24 um like I said, was born here and through the years of uh not keeping records, um not having that. Uh you know, the closest thing we have of the records being kept in this area. People that were born here in Stevensville in the Bitterroot are the,
4:48 the Jesuit uh the fathers and they didn't start keeping records probably until the late, late 1800s. Um My dad was born in 1891 or 1890. I'm sorry. And um they never did put a, a blood degree down for him until the reservation was formed in,
5:12 in uh the Jocko is actually where the first agency was. And somewhere down the line, he ended up being 7/8 and I could never figure out where that 1/8 went you know, uh, what is that 1/8? You know, I'd like to know, um, and nobody, you know, we can't, we can't track down our background.
5:36 Um, because there just wasn't any, any record of, of anything back beyond like 1890. And, uh, so I always, um, I was wondering, you know, what, what was that one? You know? Um, so I, I consider myself a full blood and we have, uh, to date probably
6:01 um a very small amount of full blood um members on the reservation. Uh Probably I would say 50 that are full blood and the full bloods are the ones that maintain our language. Um Pass it on. Uh We do a lot of uh
6:25 consulting with uh our elders. Um The Salish language was an unwritten language at one time. Uh The Jesuits did you know they did their version of writing the language after talking, you know, with the, the, the Salish. Um
6:49 And that was probably the closest thing we had to a written language was, is kind of like a dictionary, vocabulary word list uh that the Jesuits put out. And as years went on, you know, the elders became concerned because the language being um being lost and
7:11 the younger generations um not
7:18 because l life was changing. A lot of the parents encouraged the students to um you know, like when they go to school, you know, um don't, don't be speaking in your language because you need to learn, learn English. Um And for survival, you know, that makes sense. Um My mother who, who attended the
7:42 Ursuline Academy in, in St. Ignatius, she used, recalled a lot of the experiences that she had um there, I mean, they weren't allowed to speak their language. So that was, and that was in the, the early 1900s. And that was kind of when our language became uh threatened. Um
8:08 Parents, grandparents were encouraging everyone to um
8:16 not, not speak their language. Um stay in, you know, learn as much English as you can. Now, when they were uh brought to like the Ursuline Academy or the, the Jesuit, the, the, the fathers also had a school that a lot of the Indian children were brought to and they, you know, they stayed there, they just stayed there for uh
8:40 nine months. Um The hair was cut the, you know, I mean, they pretty much um
8:50 really discourage them from being, being themselves and living their own lifestyle. Um And when they would go home in the summer time for three months and then they would, you know, I have um be able to because sale issues in my home Salish was my first language. Um
9:13 until I went until I got older, um probably four or five. And I was the youngest, youngest child of uh of a large family. Um So I learned um English probably when I was about three or four. But when I was little, it was Salish was my first language because it was spoke in the home
9:38 um daily. I mean, that was, that was our lifestyle. Um So I have an advantage over uh the learners now that we're trying to, to bring back the language and teach uh the, the language is being taught throughout the reservation now. Um because there isn't, there isn't that many uh fluent speakers.
10:04 I, I feel fortunate that my parents did. Um you know, they spoke the language in the home all the time. Um
10:13 They encourage education. Um But they also encouraged us to keep our, keep our heritage alive and to keep our um culture. Um And I'm, I feel, I feel very uh fortunate that I, I have this ability to teach my children, my grandchildren, um other tribal members. Um
10:38 And I, you know, I've taught uh Salish language for probably the last 30 years. Um I was, was hired by, they formed in St. Ignatius they formed um it was called at the time, the Flathead Culture Committee. Um
11:01 And over the years, it became Salish and Pond d'Oreille Culture Committee. Um
11:07 And one of the things that we found out right at the beginning was the elders wanted to um keep, they, they wanted to document as much as they could tell us about history, uh families, uh the everything was done in the language. So we, we started interviewing
11:32 large groups of the elders in 1978 um and
11:41 tape recording them way back then it was a little cassette. We didn't have the, the, the, I guess the, the equipment that we have now, you know, we could have took videos of um you know, we just didn't do that in '78. Uh Plus we had a limited budget and um we were totally um
12:06 supported by the elders. The elders could see the concern back then that OK, if we don't document all this information, it's gonna be lost. So that was our job. And I worked for the Culture Committee for 19 years. And then I moved uh I moved up to Polson and uh went to work for the People Center.
12:30 Our job was to get large groups of elders together and just turn the tape, turn the tape recorders. We had them um different places around uh a big conference room and just turn it on and let them talk in their language. In '78 there was still um
12:52 and it was the elders, you still heard the language uh a lot. Now, it's very rare to hear the language openly. Um to hear the language spoken. You have to go to the Salish-Kootenai college to a language class
13:10 or go to a elders advisory council meeting to hear the language. It's just not, you don't hear it every day. And when I was, when I was a child growing up, um, if we were at the local grocery store in Arlee or at the post office and people were coming in, I mean, you heard the language all the time. Um
13:35 That's the big advantage that the fluent speakers have now over the learners. I mean, the learners have a real disadvantage because they don't hear it every day. They have to hear it from tapes, they have to hear it from, uh, language teachers. Um And like I said, it wasn't a written language.
13:57 Um Up until 1978 we had no alphabet. Um Nothing was really, I mean, you couldn't write it down. And after we had interviewed all these elders fo so long, um we knew that we had to translate these tapes and trying to put a Salish word
14:22 using the English alphabet uh became complicated because we have sounds that come from down in your throat and the English system. I mean, you, how can you say or even a simple one like [vocalization] it's just uh it, that's, that's a, that's a sound in our alphabet.
14:46 So we were, we were talking of putting T and L together and it um it became real obvious that we needed to, to work with a linguist. Um So what we did was we worked with a linguist out of uh British Columbia and his name was Larry Miller, a very young man um who was very patient with us, um
15:12 Stayed with, stayed at the in Saint Ignatius
15:20 listened to the elders, listened to the culture committee in everyday conversation and it was uh decided that we would use the international phonetic alphabet.
15:33 We ended up with 43 sounds 43 letters.
15:39 Um
15:41 We had the, the like the same vowels as, as English. Um English is a-e-i-o and u, we have the same, we use the same letter but it, instead of a-e-i-o and u, it's ah, eh, eu, ou and O um
16:02 some of the elders concern was the language was being shortened. Um We have a lot of words that we say like good day is [speaks Salish] And if you talk to some people that they, they cut off parts of it and it becomes [speaks Salish]
16:25 so when you're teaching the language, we try to, we try to, to teach the, the, the whole version of a word and, and that sometimes it, it gets to be a pretty long word. Um And there's also between the Salish and Ponder d'Oreille, the Salish and Pond d'Oreille speak the same language, but they have um
16:50 community differences uh
16:54 from like Arlee and Ronan, Saint Ignatius. There might be the dialect differences uh we understand each other. Um But it's just OK, we know that OK, this is how you say it in Ronan. This is how the Pond d'Oreille say it, this is how you say it in Arlee, you know. Um And when, when I was a teacher at the college I,
17:18 I tried to teach all three differences if there was three or two or four. because they're all right. They're not, you know, you can't say this one's wrong because somebody might have grow, had grown up with talking in North Crow of Ronan. This is how their family talked and you can't say they're wrong because they have a little bit of a difference.
17:43 It's, it's just like in the English, I mean, throughout the United States, everybody says things a little different. Um We do have an immersion school that started um in Arlee and it's, it's with a real small from probably a year old to age three. Um
18:07 They have an enrollment of 30 and um they, they are doing uh I think a fantastic job of uh instilling the language and the sounds and the um everyday cultural lifestyles into um the small, small children because they won't, they're not getting it at home. So,
18:31 um the school is, has taken it upon themselves to do this. And I think it's a, it's been in operation for probably about five years now and once they leave the immersion school and they go into head start at age four, they, it's, it's like it's picked up from
18:54 where they left off. Headstart will pick up uh the language uh instruction from there. And once they go into kindergarten or uh the first grade, all the, all the public schools on the reservation have the Salish Pond d'Oreille and the Kootenai language in the schools. Uh Arlee has one of the biggest, probably the biggest um
19:20 involvement. Uh They had the, you know, Arlee has always accepted um the Salish language as a language. Um And they get it from kindergarten through high school and once they get through high school, if they chose, if they choose to go to the Salish-Kootenai College, um they can continue to pursue that language
19:45 uh instruction there. Uh The college does, does a wonderful job of, of teaching, hiring teachers there. Um Polson school is the, the only school on the reservation that does the Kootenai. The Kootenai occupies the northern part of the reservation, Elmo Dayton, Big Arm, um and Polson. So,
20:09 um it's, it's, it makes me feel good when I go to the schools and I hear they're having, you know, I'll sit in on some of the Kootenai classes and sit in on some of the Salish classes. And, um, we are making strides, we are making um steps towards preserving and re and re
20:32 reintroducing the language throughout the reservation. Um
20:38 It's, you know, my, my children, I have three girls who have married and they, they're not around as much as I would like, I guess. But they, you know, they, they learned the most and I, and I'm ashamed to say this, they learned the most language from my mom. Uh because I spent a lot of time with her, you know, um she had a cultural camp that she ran for three months
21:02 every summer and they just stayed there the whole three months and they learned probably the most from her. And, but my grandkids, I have seven grandkids and I try to instill in them the urgency. I call it an urgency to, to, to remember your language, remember your heritage, remember your background. Um
21:27 And it, it helps that all the other schools are, are doing this. Um This past spring, I was um involved with the college with a, a group of nine and we'd always heard about the Māori in New Zealand that had this excellent, excellent program immersion program that they
21:51 totally turned around. Their language was like ours that was being uh pushed aside, that was being lost and they completely turned that around with uh the immersion school, like the one that we have started in Arle e we only have the one. But I was uh fortunate to, to go to New Zealand in, in March. And um
22:16 we stayed there for six weeks and we worked with all the different schools, the, the daycares, the head starts the junior high, the high school and the colleges, the universities in New Zealand. Um And we came away with a lot of, a lot of material, a lot of uh curriculum that we can incorporate into
22:40 our efforts to, to preserve our language. Um I enjoyed myself there. Um It was a little too hot for me but um it was, it was good to see little children speaking their language um All the time. I mean, it was like, I remember how my language used to be. Um So we're, we're
23:05 on the road to uh maybe getting another immersion school uh in a different location and uh you know, if we can just work together as tribes and work together as communities, um we can, we can get that language back. Um Like I said, we have 43 sounds,
23:30 I call them sounds because some of them have little extra things along them.
23:35 Um
23:38 teaching the language is, is a way of teaching your culture. If you, if you know your culture, you're gonna know your language and to know your culture, you have to learn the language. Um All these tapes that we did over the years uh is all in Salish.
23:59 And if you want to listen to those tapes and if it's gonna make any sense to you, you have to know your language. They've been translated and uh the Culture Committee is putting out um different. I don't know how many volumes but they, they just one was just uh released um about a month ago and it was on the Lewis and Clark um
24:23 encounters in, in the Bitterroot and it was a volume by itself. Um
24:33 All interviews of elders that have that have passed on. Um And they have a place names. Um All of these place names throughout the Bitterroot Valley. Um I in, in Salish and um sometimes II I would like to go back to the Culture Committee and work with them because they're
24:58 really struggling to keep, keep that preservation. And, um but that's what we're doing at the People Center too. Um This lady that came with me today, she's our education director and we hold classes at the People Center language, um history, uh stories, storytelling. Um
25:22 Plus we have the museum, we have a, we have a small museum. It's not a large one. We hope to, to
25:32 and, you know, expand on that someday. Um
25:39 We're limited in our
25:42 language teachers. Um
25:46 We have um a lot of the students that are now in college that have taken the language throughout the years, um are very capable of teaching the language but are um hesitant because they're put on the spot, you know, when you're teaching something you've gotta put on the spot and the
26:08 students expect you to not make any mistakes, you know. And these new learners, they're, they're fluent, I guess, um passive, fluent. They, they understand the language. They, they can do the basics. Um
26:27 And, but are afraid to get into a conversation with an elder because the elder will stay in the language. And you should too. But it's uh sometimes it's hard being um a fluent speaker and a teacher myself, sometimes it's hard to stay in, in the Salish language. Um because you,
26:52 there's so many things that we don't have words for and that's what the, the elders advisor Council, which we have one on the south end and one on the north end, we don't have words for microphone, uh camera, you know, the, the modern things. So it's, it's up to the elders to
27:16 sit down with a list and try to come up with something that describes a microphone, describes a video camera and just office equipment, you know, I mean, because we did, we didn't have those things when the language was. So it's, it's up to the elders to um
27:42 try to find something that describes that basically what we're doing is making up words. Um I don't want to be accused of making up any words. So I let the elders do that. Um And they've come up with a long, you know, it's, it's like an ongoing thing every time something new comes out the kids now wanna know, how do you say uh Xbox? You know,
28:08 and so we have to describe this to the elders
28:13 and they, so then they come up with, you know, so, you know, the, the kids always want to know, how do you say this? How do you say that? And, and that sometimes it's pretty challenging to come up with something that everybody's in agreement with I guess. And um
28:34 so the, the language is one of the things that the whole tribal membership um is struggles with but yet is in support of um within all the schools and uh the, the teachers, uh
28:54 we work with the state um to certify um language speakers. Um If, if you know, if you go to college and you have to take a foreign language, we're trying to get it so Salish is that foreign language, which is um it always
29:16 confuses the elders because they're saying, well, it's not a foreign language to the, to, to the
29:23 like the University of Montana um to them, it is a foreign language. So then they, you know, we have to certify our own learners in our language to qualify for that foreign language uh requirement. Um
29:44 The council, the tribal council um uh they're very supportive of uh the elders, the language teachers, um the schools supportive, I guess in uh
30:00 yeah, you're doing a good job kind of thing, you know, uh verbally. Um We don't always get the support and which is um like with anything uh any, any, any um business um your, your budget, your budget is limited. There's only so much you can do. And, you know, we try to fundraise, we try to get grants and
30:25 it's um it's an ongoing thing. I mean, it's like every day you get up and you, you're trying to think of, ok, what can I do today to make this more uh simple for the schools. Uh and the teachers in the schools on the reservation um throughout uh all the way to um Dayton. Dayton has
30:49 a real small school. They have like nine students um
30:56 in September every third week in September. We have our Native American Awareness Week and schools, all the schools on the reservation will come to the People Center. The People Center has been designated as the place to because it's big enough that we can uh um
31:19 accommodate probably, oh, we've had up to 400 kids at one time. Um And we go through stations um whether it's game, native Games, uh history language and they can also take um
31:38 tours of the museum. Um
31:43 I did bring along some, um some books of, of our language, uh the alphabet. Um It kind of describes it. I didn't, uh
31:52 you know, I didn't uh do copy, make copies, but if you're interested, uh we do have a, a website for the People Center and the college and just, you know, if you wanted to call anywhere, uh the Culture Committee or the People Center, we'd be more than happy to, to help with. We get, uh, we have a tribal member who is a teacher at Corvallis
32:17 and he always brings us uh bus load of kids to um to the People Center and we get people from the Bitterroot Valley a lot just coming to there and I have a really a good staff who's uh they don't have to be told every day to what to do. So they just kind of do it and
32:42 I'm, I'm happy for that. Um If you have any questions, I would be more than happy to, to answer them. Does anyone have any questions for Lucy? Oh one back here. Just a sec. Let me get the microphone so everyone can hear.
33:01 I just wanted to ask you if you are related to Agnes Vanderbu rg. Agnes was my mother. I have a picture after you're done to show you that I took of her in Washington DC.
33:14 OK. Well, any other questions here? Just a sec, this gentleman in the, is there any other language in the world that is close to the Salish language like Spanish and Italian is close. You know what I mean? Um
33:37 Some of the linguists that we worked with, uh we worked with Larry Miller and then we worked with um Anthony Matina at the university and then um Sally Thompson from Pennsylvania and um
33:51 Steve Vestal from Hawaii. Now he Steve tells me that um the linguistic part of, of like the sounds that we make is a lot like Russian. So I don't know, we have a lot of, a lot of words that come from, from here and then they move down. Um Like the
34:16 [vocalization] it's, you know, the, it's almost like clearing your throat it's, it's a sound that's made down here, which is good
34:30 and we have, um, some of the others like, [vocalizaton] and,
34:36 um,
34:38 it's, uh, we ended up with 43 sounds and, uh, we could probably have more according to one of the linguists he wanted to add the pharyngeal in. But, uh,
34:50 ok, 43 is enough. You know, let's just stick with those
34:57 question over here.
35:00 Can you in the Salish count slowly one through 10? And can you recite the, the months of the year?
35:12 [speaking Salish] It has a, uh, a glottal stop at the end. I mean, you're actually cutting off the
35:23 [speaking Salish]
35:37 and that's 1 to 10. And the once you learn 1 through 10, you pretty much got it made.
35:46 Uh, because what you do after you get past 10 is you take 10 and, and then you just start over 10 and one is 11 [speaking Salish] So you got 11. So learn 1 through 10 and you can kind of figure it out. Uh, the months of the year, January is [speaking Salish] We put [speaking Salish]
36:11 at the end of each, the first sound or the first word because that means month. [speaking Salish] is the, um,
36:25 how do I explain this? Um, but the, the new year, the beginning, they didn't go by years back then, they went by seasons, but it actually, it came out that January is the, the beginning of the winter season, the winter months. Um February is [speaking Salish]
36:50 Um And that means that's the coldest, coldest month. Um
36:58 March is, [speaking Salish]
37:04 And that's
37:06 the literal translation is the month of the geese. Um, when the geese are [inaudible] whichever way they go. I don't know. Um
37:18 April [speaking Salish] [speaking Salish] is the flower, the buttercup
37:27 and it's um, a lot of the, the seasons went by flowers, trees, animals,
37:36 June is um,
37:40 the month of the month of the camas, the bulb which we, we still gather today. Uh And that's uh
37:49 I just lost it. Um
37:53 [speaking Salish]
37:58 um but that after it's cooked, it's called [speaking Salish] And I was telling my students to remember um
38:09 the word [speaking Salish] is, you can eat it and it actually has a very, at the very beginning is kind of like eat uh after it's baked. Uh and you could eat it. July is the um celebration month after. If you wanna look at January, February March, April and May June
38:33 is right in the middle. Um July is the, the time to after gathering, gathering to do the, the, the harvesting the, the herbs and the, the berries in July was the time to celebrate the time to um I guess, relax
38:56 until you started the, the process again for the fall and the winter. Um July was, and now they call it [speaking Salish],
39:07 C-H-U-L-A-Y. Um
39:13 August. [speaking Salish] And that was Huckleberry. Um [speaking Salish]
39:24 that was when a lot of the people that went out and
39:29 picked huckleberries, choke cherries, all the berries that are ripe then September was [speaking Salish]
39:41 and that's choke cherry. Um, after the first frost is when they, they picked the choke cherries and they're pounded and kept dried and kept a lot of the foods were, was dried. Um, the drying process was after they're completely dried, you can put them away and they, they'll last, you know, they, they just like they do now with dehydrated foods.
40:06 Um, October is [speaking Salish] Um, and that means the hunting month, hunting for the big game, the elk moose deer and I'm sure a long time ago the buffalo, it was the [speaking Salish]. It was all the hunting
40:26 November. It was a trapping month. It's, uh, [speaking Salish], [speaking Salish] That was the trapping month when they trapped with the furs. The, the
40:42 um, muskrat. Um, in December is the, there's controversy on that. And One part, like I said, you know, the community differences, December was the [speaking Salish] the storytelling
41:05 because we don't, we don't tell any of our creation stories until the snow,
41:13 but like I say, until the snow flies, we don't tell any creation stories. And by creation stories, I mean, the, the stories that we have about, um, the Bitterroot Valley and, and the coyote, the coyote was instrumental in a lot of our creation stories and that was why they called it the, the month of storytelling.
41:38 Well, thank you Lucy. That was great. Thanks for that question. That was a good question.
41:44 All right. Thank you. If anyone has any other questions for Lucy, I'm sure she'll be around here for a little bit and you can come up and ask them personally to her. We're gonna.

Tent of Many Voices

Lucy Vanderburg on Salish Language Revitalization

Lucy Vanderburg

Salish

43:41

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Lucy Vanderburg on Salish Language Revitalization

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