This story was originally posted on MyNorthwest.com
As waves crash along the shores of Puget Sound, the descendants of the region’s earliest residents hear the words created by their ancestors.
“They heard what the waves said x̌ʷəlč,” Zalmai Zahir said, uttering a swooshing sound very similar to the echo of a rising and falling wave. “That’s what our people call the salt water or Puget Sound, x̌ʷəlč.”
“They went to the crow, and they said, ‘What’s your name? Tell me your name.’ And the crow said ‘k’aʔk’a.’” The word instantly brings to mind the caw of a crow. “And so that’s what our people call the crow.”
Zahir is a language consultant and member of the Puyallup Tribe of Indians, and he’s speaking Lushootseed.
Lushootseed and its dialects are spoken by 13 of the region’s tribes. It is a language intrinsically tied to their music, stories, and culture, but there was a time when the voices of those who spoke it were nearly silenced.
Losing Lushootseed
“The language of our people is our identity and, for so many years, the government tried to take our identity away from us,” Sylvia Miller, the vice chair of the Puyallup Tribe, said.
She explains that as settlers pushed into the region in the 1800s, tribes weren’t just losing their land; they were losing their words.
“Our children were taken — put in boarding schools — and if they spoke the language or sang a song or even hummed or drummed anything of their culture, they would literally be punished severely,” Miller said.
Even after the boarding schools were shuttered, she says fear of embracing the language lingered.
“My uncle would try to give us names, you know, our Indian names, and my mother wouldn’t allow it … because she didn’t want us to be punished like they were when they were children.”
Miller said she can’t point to one sentinel moment, but eventually those fears began to ease and were replaced by a desire to revive the language.
“You know who wouldn’t want to speak your ancestral language?” Amber Hayward, director of the Puyallup Tribal Language Program, said.
It was established in 2007 to teach Lushootseed. There were few fluent speakers at the time.
“However, we are blessed to be able to have actual audio recordings of first language speakers,” Hayward said. “Not everybody has that, but we do.”
She said something happens when you learn your ancestral language from your own people. You learn your stories and traditions, too, such as the creation history lesson that Hayward translated for an online class.
“They went down to the water to circle around the food,” she said in the lesson, which not only teaches the language but also traditions practiced by Lushootseed speakers generations ago.
Reviving the language is also invigorating the tribe’s customs.
“I would say that all of us in our [language] department maybe didn’t participate as much in culture or sing or dance, and then when we started speaking the language,” Hayward said. “Now we do all of that.”
The Language Program serves the tribal community with resources available for others online. Miller was adamant that the tribe not limit who would be taught Lushootseed, arguing, for instance, that you don’t have to be Hispanic to speak Spanish.
“Everybody should learn this language,” Hayward said. “The whole language will not exist if we don’t push it everywhere.”
And Lushootseed is becoming more prevalent. Lushootseed words are being added to street signs at 61 intersections in Tacoma.
“This is more than just a name,” Tacoma Mayor Victoria Woodard said in a City of Tacoma video of an event unveiling some of the signs. “This is a story of a people.”
The importance of sharing Lushootseed
Zahir is a firm believer in sharing and learning languages.
“You will find that the more multilingual you are, the more your brain expands,” Zahir said.
Using a different language helps you look at and experience things in a different way. One example rests in the region’s iconic Mount Rainier. The Puyallup Tribe commissioned Zahir to write a paper about the correct traditional name for Mount Rainier.
What he found was several names, but many connected to one central concept: taqʷuʔmaʔ
“There are several different variations of that form, which means the unique source to go fetch or dip water,” Zahir said.
Water. Of critical importance to the area’s earliest residents.
“This is a nurturing liquid that flows from the mountains, that nurtures all life,” Zahir said. Life from the mountains to the ocean, as said in the language of our region’s first people.
Read more of Heather Bosch’s stories here.
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