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Jena Gray

12/08/2014

Prof. Cochrane

ANTH 308

“It’s Not Your Language That Is Lost, It’s You.”Capstone Essay—Language Revitalization

“I think that people being displaced happened. I think war happened. And I think

Christianity happened.” (Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân)

Michael Krauss (1992:4-7), as cited by Laura M. Ahearn (2012), defines dead or extinct

languages as “languages that are no longer spoken by anyone, even if there are written materials

or recordings in those languages” (245). The processes by which these languages become extinct

are “either the speakers of that language all die, or they all stop transmitting their language to

their children” (245). These processes of extinction can be spurred on by many different means,

alluded to in the quote above which was taken from the documentary directed by Anne

Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân: We Still Live Here. The documentary is based in Cape Cod,

Massachusetts and focuses on the revitalization of language within the Native American

community of the Wampanoag tribe. The opening quote references reasons why the loss or

“death” of the Wampanoag language occurred: displacement, war and religious imposition. The

film records the process of language revitalization while highlighting the complexity of the

rebirth of the Wampanoag language, a language which now proudly boasts of its first native

speaker: Mae Baird, daughter of Jason and Jessie Baird.

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When working towards language revitalization, it is vital for linguists to humbly

approach a community whose language has been extinguished with the understanding that while

“it can be very beneficial for a language revitalization program to have the help of linguists to

document their language,” it also can be unproductive and even detrimental to have non-

community members come and teach the community’s language to them without belonging to it

themselves (Hinton 11). Âs Nutayuneân: We Still Live Here shows scenes where Jessie Littledoe

Baird reminisces of the time when white linguist Kenneth L. Hale came to speak to the

Wampanoag. He asked the community who wanted to bring the language home (Wampanoag),

who wanted to bring it back to the community. Jessie Littledoe explains how she was very

brusque with Dr. Hale and remembers thinking, “Well, here’s this white man who can help bring

our language home. And I thought, isn’t this ironic… That bothered me to my core, that we

would have to depend on some white person” she later adds, “I was really ill-behaved”

(Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân). In communities such as the Wampanoag’s, history played a vital

role in the extermination of their language. White settlers came over and displaced the Native

Americans, brought war and disease, and sought to convert the people to Christianity. Thus, to

have a white linguist come in and proclaim to have the answers for the Wampanoag community

to regain their language back drew upon historical wounds not yet healed. One “affective” (by

the colonial Englishmen’s standards) method by which the Englishmen attained “converts to

Christianity” was to take away young Native American boys and girls from their families,

oftentimes as payment to familial debt. The Englishmen sent the young natives to schools (such

as the College of William & Mary’s very own Brafferton Indian School constructed in 1723) and

educated them on how to read, write, and speak English with aims of indoctrinating them into

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Christianity rather than allowing them simply the option of adopting the religion as their own

personal faith.

By stripping away the native language from the Native American children, the

Englishmen in effect cut off the passing down of language from one generation to the next while

additionally cutting off the connection to the wealth of knowledge embedded within the native

language. Ahearn (2012) explains that “a great deal of ecologically specific knowledge is

encoded in [the] language that goes along with particular cultural practices” (248). Knowledge of

a culture is so uniquely implanted in the language of that culture that to know the language is to

possess the cultural knowledge which can be expressed through the words or sounds of that

language. Ahearn regrettably expresses that “it is not surprising, then, that much of that

knowledge is not passed on when the language (and often the way of life as well) dies” (248).

With the extinction of language comes the extinction of cultural knowledge.

Like Ahearn, Makepeace’s documentary hosts the Chief of the Wampanoag tribe and

Jessie Littledoe Baird as they explain how a word in Wampanoag expresses the process of when

the Englishmen took the land from the native people. Translating the notion into English, it

necessitates more words to describe how to lose the land is “to literally fall off your feet, to have

no ground under you. Prior to the arrival of White people, our feet never left the ground”

(Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân). Without understanding the language of Wampanoag, one misses

the vitality of the land and the intimate connection between the Wampanoag people and their

environment: the land which the White people stripped from them, cut away from them, much

like one whose rug was ripped up from beneath them. On the other hand, for a Wampanoag

Native American to re-obtain the language of their ancestors, it is like regaining “the lost

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connection with our families,” regaining the intimate knowledge of the environment and the

culture which has existed around them for centuries (Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân).

Âs Nutayuneân: We Still Live Here exemplifies the successes of language revitalization

similar to those that Leanne Hinton (2001) suggests as viable options to revive a language from

extinction. Hinton articulates the importance and benefit of “teaching families how to bring their

native language into the home in such a way as to produce bilingual children” (14). In

Massachusetts, the Wampanoag people understand the significance of having the entire family

learn their native language in order to bring the language into the homes and to raise their

children to speak the language. The Wampanoag tribe recognizes that the rebirth of their

language will come from their children’s generation. Therefore, the adults strive to create an

environment, by learning the language themselves, in which their children will grow up speaking

and comprehending Wampanoag—an environment in which “the parents…spend relatively little

time on the language that is dominant in the general environment [English] and concentrate

instead on speaking in the endangered language [Wampanoag]” (Hinton 13). Jessie Littledoe

Baird earned her linguistics degree at MIT and uses the knowledge gained to instruct members of

her Wampanoag community with the aim to revitalize and reclaim the language of their

ancestors. She emphasizes the importance of the language being spoken at home and she and her

husband, Jason Baird, have made concerted efforts to learn Wampanoag in order to speak the

language in the home. Jason and Jessie’s young child, Mae, is now the first native speaker of

Wampanoag.

Language revitalization within Native American communities is especially

groundbreaking as languages like Wampanoag are being renewed solely from written accounts

without any native speakers of the language. Beyond the incredulity of this feat, Hinton (2001)

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describes “a frequent historic event for Native Americans has been for separate communities to

be joined together on a single reservation” (Hinton 15). A Wampanoag community member also

notes that for the differing communities to come together and agree to learning the language of

their ancestors is “an historic decision in and of itself” (Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân). The

documentary by Anne Makepeace exemplifies the thrilling success story of the revitalization

program of the Wampanoag language in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Âs Nutayuneân: We Still Live

Here highlights the valor of Jessie Littledoe Baird and the entire community’s efforts in restoring

the cultural knowledge and intimate connection with their ancestors that so many Native

Americans yearn for, yet lack. As one consultant expresses, “the only way we can hear our

families is through learning the language” and that is exactly what the Wampanoag community

seeks to do (Makepeace, Âs Nutayuneân).

Works Cited

Ahearn, Laura M. (2012) Living Language: An Introduction to Linguistic Anthropology. Wiley-

Blackwell.

Âs Nutayuneân: We Still Live Here. Dir. Anne Makepeace. Perf. Jessie Littledoe Baird and Jason

Baird. PBS, 2010. Documentary.

Hinton, Leanne. (2001) Language revitalization: An overview. In Leanne Hinton and Ken Hale

(ed.s), The green book of language revitalization in practice. Brill.