Whether it is ironic or harmonic, there are two language movements that are "rhyming" at the moment, but yet they have no relationship at all. One is the recovery of the indigenous languages of the Americas and the other is represented by an English writer, Robert McFarlane, who pursues the old words of England based on vocation or place. One could say that both are a result of re-empowering the response of the whole body and brain to the world, but that's probably not so interesting right now, a little abstract. Rather, people give these nearly forgotten words the power of incantation, able to cast spells.
Once I subbed at the Piegan Institute, an immersion school for Blackfeet language. This was not usual because I'm white, but it was a product of friendship with Darrell Robes Kipp, founder and director, who was caught by a deadline. The idea was for me to "teach" for a couple of hours. The kids were junior high students, non-standard indigenous, and the dynamics were interesting but not relevant here.
One girl stood out. I can't remember why, but I asked for Blackfeet words about horses. She went to the board and quickly listed and explained the words for a whole series of ages of horses, states they were in, their uses, and so on. I was stunned! Not that they existed, but that she knew the words. And I had confidence that she knew these kinds of horses, could point them out in a band, and probably learned the words from growing up on a ranch with older generations.
That was forty years ago. Kipp and his philosophical partner Dorothy Still Smoking had composed a questionnaire as preparation and were startled that most respondents said they didn't approve of learning the old language. It was useless, too hard, and would just get a person into trouble. They themselves and their parents had been punished harshly for speaking the old words. This attack on indigenous languages has become a mantra in tribes.
It is partly because of the efforts of people like Kipp and Still Smoking that this view has reversed. Before Piegan Institute, there was Marvin Weatherwax at the Blackfeet Community College, Marvin's mother collaborating with Terri Sherburne to use the classroom French mastery sound system for Blackfeet. People made fun of Peter Redhorn's little brochures for tourists that listed basic words, but I learned some of them. Nowaday, one can earn a degree in anthropological linguistics in Missoula. Robert Hall, defender of Rez Dogs, has done that.
Jack Holterman, a free-lance public scholar now gone, was a good friend of Darrell Robes Kipp and encouraged Piegan Institute. He says this:
"In more recent times, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Baha'i of Canada issued a Message to the Blackfeet Indians, written in both English and Blackfoot. In 1989, Donald Frantz and Norma Jean RusselJ compiled a Blackfoot Dictionary published by the University of Toronto Press. This was followed by a grammar book published a year later. . .
"Among the South Piegans, today called the Blackfeet, several members of the tribe are noted for their dedication teaching the language. Peter Red Horn, Nellie Reevis, Molly Bull Shoe, and Elizabeth Butterfly Lewis made solid contributions to the understanding of the language during the last forty years.
"In 1983, at the tribal college, younger members of the tribe began to acquire a respect for the language, and a strong desire to re-Iearn it. Much of the written work was gathered and studied. Fluent speakers of the tribe soon found themselves sought after in the midst of a renaissance that continues today."
There were compelling reasons for the Blackfeet to revive their old language, but it's more difficult to explain the runaway success of Robert Macfarlane in books that are glossaries of unspoken languages. The pursuit of language and its development both in depth and across continents, is somewhat similar to exploring genomic information or the broad linguistic questions about how humans learn to speak and write, how languages separate and braid back together.
Entomologies, the history of specific words and where they came from, are a force back towards standardization instead of being distorted by guesses or simple mispronunciation. But the only real way to get back to the richness and meaning of old languages is to go to the places and pursuits the words came from, as in Macfarlane's strategy of going to the place where peat is cut in order to understand the many specialized words. A common use of Macfarlane's concrete but intense vocabulary is in classrooms where the group collaborates on a poem that is a list or a definition of something the students know. Some of them are quite striking and commonly show up online in social media.
The title I used for this post, "oki, cheekee!" is what Bob used to say if a local tribal person came into the shop, usually to sell something. It means, "Hello, what's up?" Sorta. But besides that is what Darrell explained to me and Bob only half-knew, which is it's a way of addressing a kid, off-hand, not quite respectful. Bob learned it while clerking at the Browning Merc, his dad's store when he was himself a kid.
My niece, a pretty young mother who drives a pickup, was visiting and we had stopped for gas. When she opened her door, a big scruffy Blackfeet man, a little bit drunk, came and crowded in beside her behind the steering wheel. He wanted to borrow money and she was flummoxed by the invasion. I waited to see what she would do, but she was caught between her romantic notions of Indians and this ruffian. So I said, "Oki, cheekee!" He did a quick double-take, got out, and stood at attention. "I'm Mary Scriver," I said. Now he could hardly be respectful enough. He was old enough to remember Bob Scriver and drunk enough to forget he'd been dead for decades. For once, the slightly patronizing tone was exactly right. Except that my niece had no idea what I said that worked so effectively.
I laughed and laughed. It's good to know languages.
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