Module 14: Repatriating Languages

               In this module we’ve been covering the repatriation of materials on Native languages like dictionaries as well as the rights of a language community to restrict who has access to such materials or even an entire language in general. But what about John Peabody Harrington’s notes? We all know that Harrington collected almost a million pages of notes on over 130 native languages here in North America. Should his notes be repatriated as well? The Hopi aren’t the only indigenous culture with a strong tradition of secrecy, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody if another native community didn’t want outsiders knowing the specifics of their language, especially considering some of the ways Harrington went about collecting his field notes. Furthermore, according to the John Peabody Harrington Collection’s home page, “Recognizing language as a key to understanding a culture, J. P. Harrington assembled information on a wide array of cultural practices”. There are many communities out there that would prefer to have the details of their languages not made public, but imagine how they must feel when some of their cultural practices are also available for anybody to see. All it takes is access to the internet and someone can see almost everything Harrington ever recorded on dozens of languages regardless of whether the people who identify with that language or culture approve. Should that still be the case when in the past language communities have been able to copyright their own languages and completely put a stop to the publication of language materials? But if not, then what can be done? Harrington’s notes are already in the hands of the Smithsonian, and if someone really wanted to, they could easily copy them for him or herself. In addition, it’s quite possible that a culture with a strong tradition of secrecy that Harrington may have collected notes on wouldn’t even know about the collection or know that anybody can see his notes. So, these are all things to consider when addressing the repatriation of his field notes, but should a language community ever decide that it want his notes for itself, it may have a hard time getting its way.

Reference: http://anthropology.si.edu/naa/harrington/index.html

Module 14: Repatriating Languages

A Toy of Cultural Appropriation

By Aidan Gibbs

As a young kid, I loved toy Legos. If I still had any today, I’d probably enjoy messing with them. Other than the pain of walking on them, most people would agree that they are an enjoyable, creative, and iconic toy. Along with the blocks that everybody knows, LEGO company also has other toy lines, such as Bionicle, which debuted in 2001 when I was just five years old. Bionicle toys combine the classic building blocks of LEGO with the story of a fight between good and evil characters in a setting very reminiscent of Polynesia (Osborn). Along with traditional Legos, I also bought and played with Bionicles. What I could not have known at the time I was playing with them, however, was that the Maori tribes of New Zealand were not so thrilled with Bionicles.

They felt that LEGO was stealing and marketing their language and culture. The Bionicle fantasy world is centered around a tropical island called Mata Nui, which contains a populace that were originally named ‘Tohunga’ (Osborn). The Bionicle naming scheme contains many more Polynesian sounding words, of which a few, including ‘Tohunga’, which means ‘priest’ in Maori, were real words from Polynesian languages (Osborn). The Maori saw this, and hired a lawyer to confront LEGO. They were especially afraid that LEGO might try to trademark these words. They called LEGO’s use of these words ‘unauthorized’, ‘inappropriate’, and a ‘trivialization’ of the words (Griggs). In response, LEGO dropped the use of some of the names it had chosen and agreed to not adopt any names from native cultures without consultation of the native people (Osborn). This legally satisfied the Maori tribes. It did not halt anger, however, as a hacker disabled BZPower.com, a Bionicle news and discussion page, for more than four days in an attack against LEGO for its Maori appropriation (Griggs). The website was forced to remove its online forums completely to stop the attack (Griggs).

Since 2002, when this controversy occurred, LEGO has not had any more issues with native peoples, but the case helps to provide an understanding of why native people are not happy about just anybody using their languages and cultures. LEGO is a Danish company, and in 2000, they were doing poorly financially. Bionicle is partially credited with moving LEGO out of its financial slump (BIONICLE). A licensing director for LEGO described Bionicle as an ‘almost unbelievable’, ‘lightning success’ for LEGO company (BIONICLE). As a Polynesian, you might feel that LEGO has made that success by appropriating your culture. Regardless of LEGO’s legal freedom to make a product line like Bionicle with obvious similarities to Polynesian culture, it can be upsetting that a corporation can market or stereotype the culture as something that it is not, and that the profit from that corporation will not touch the native groups themselves. In these two ways, LEGO’s Bionicle could be viewed as another affront in the long history of abuse of native peoples.

With the LEGO controversy in mind, and the long history of destruction of native cultures, it should not be such a surprise that native people are unwilling to give out their language and cultures freely. Even when the culture or language is on the verge of disappearing, giving the language and culture to the outside might be viewed as another form of destruction. Non-native peoples, like myself, should be more careful to understand the traditions, and deep trauma, that still exists for these people.

BIONICLE Fever Heats, Blazes Into New Categories; Key Players in Five Children's Merchandise Categories Jump on BIONICLE Bandwagon. 2004. Business Wire. Business Wire Inc. http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20040607005672/en/BIONICLE-Fever-Heats-Blazes-Categories-Key-Players. Accessed April 26, 2017.

Griggs, Kim. 2002. Lego Site Irks Maori Sympathizer. Wired. Conde Nast. https://www.wired.com/2002/11/lego-site-irks-maori-sympathizer/. Accessed April 26, 2017.

Osborn, Andrew. 2001. Maoris win Lego Battle. The Guardian. Guardian News and Media Limited. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/oct/31/andrewosborn. Accessed April 26, 2017.

Module 7 - Choctaw Code Talkers

In the video “Module 7 – The Code Talkers”, Amy talks about the Navajo Code Talkers of World War II, and the incredible code system they used to help the United States armed forces communicate without fear of being compromised. This fascinated me, and after speaking with Amy about how I could write a blog about their story, she informed me that the Navajo were in fact not alone in their accomplishments! In this blog entry, I am going to tell the story of the first code talkers: a small group of Choctaw speakers in World War One.

The Birth of Code Talking

In the fall of 1918, the United States was fighting along the Western Front in Northern France in what was known as the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The United States had committed a large number of their troops to the front lines and were facing a significant problem. The Germans had successfully managed to tap into the phone lines, intercept communications between American forces, decipher the codes, and then use this knowledge to gain a tactical advantage over the American troops.

The story goes that in the 142^nd Infantry Regiment, American Colonel A. W. Bloor was walking through camp when he overheard two Native American soldiers speaking to each other in their native language, Choctaw. After realizing that the Germans would not know how to decipher Choctaw and discovering that there were a number of other Choctaw soldiers in the military, the Choctaw Telephone Squad was quickly formed and sent into action, and the first example of code talking was born.

The Perfect Code

According to Dr. William Meadows, an Anthropologist from Missouri State University, there were significant advantages to using the Choctaw language as a code.

“It was a largely unknown language. Only a few American Indian tribes had more than 20,000 people so their languages weren’t widely spoken and most weren’t written down. Even if they were, it was usually only the Bible and hymns.”

This new code absolutely confounded the Germans, who seemingly couldn’t even begin to understand how the sounds they were hearing were being made, with some stories claiming that the sounds were created underwater! A captured German officer reported that the Germans were “completely confused by the Indian language and gained no benefit whatsoever”.

In addition to being all but unknown to the Germans, there was an added level of complexity to the code. Choctaw itself did not have words for some of the military terminology, so new words were created to represent them. I have included a small list of examples, with the direct translation of the Choctaw code on the left and the intended meaning on the right.

• ‘Little gun shoot fast' ----- Machine Gun
• 'Big gun' ----- Field Artillery
• 'Twice big group' ----- Battalion
• 'Eight group’ ----- Squad
• 'Scalps’ ----- Casualties

Here I have also included a memo, directly from Colonel A. W. Bloor to headquarters, discussing the success of the Code Talkers, sent on January 23, 1919.

               

“It was recognized that of all the various methods of liaison the telephone presented the greatest possibilities… It was well understood, however, that the German was a past master of “listening in” … We felt sure the enemy knew too much. It was therefore necessary to code every message of importance and coding and decoding took valuable time. The regiment possessed a company of Indians… there was hardly one chance in a million that Fritz would be able to translate these dialects and the plan to have these Indians transmit telephone messages was adopted. The Indians were used repeatedly in preparation for the assault on Forest Farm… The enemy’s complete surprise is evidence that he could not decipher the messages.”

A Terrible Irony

Despite the importance of the Choctaw soldiers towards ending the war and saving the lives of countless numbers of Allied troops along the Western Front, back in America, the Choctaw people were feeling incredible pressure from the government. The Bureau of Indian Affairs established boarding schools and forced Indian children to attend, where they were forced to “assimilate” into American culture. It is truly a cruel and terrible irony that while Choctaw soldiers were serving America by speaking their native language, back in Oklahoma, the American government was quite literally beating that very same language out of children.

Once the war ended, very few people got to hear about what the code talkers did. The government didn’t want to spread word of the strategy, especially in face of their attempts to eradicate Native American languages, and the code talkers themselves were incredibly modest, viewing what they did “as just doing their duty.” However, their work paved the way for many other tribes to serve as code talkers for the military, perhaps culminating in the work of the most widely known code talkers, the Navajo. In 2008, the Code Talkers Recognition Act was passed to recognize the overlooked work of the Choctaw, as well as the hundreds of code talkers from numerous tribes that followed in their footsteps.

References

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26963624
https://www.choctawnation.com/history-culture/people/code-talkers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choctaw_code_talkers

If you are interested in learning more about the Choctaw code talkers, it may be slightly challenging to find any more information! The Navajo code talkers have been widely researched and discussed, while the original code talkers have been researched much less. That being said, there are a number of interviews and videos relating to the topic that are not very hard to find!

Module 13: Revitalizing Languages

A:ñi cem s-ma:c g Oʼodham Ñeok ban nt o ñ-mai.

“I know a little Tohono ‘O’odham, but I’ll learn (to speak it fluently).”

               I came to the University of Arizona specifically to study linguistics so I could specialize in Native American languages and aid in their revitalization efforts. Since my first semester here, I’ve been able to pursue learning the Tohono ‘O’odham language and help with research on the Hiaki language, and I am very grateful for these opportunities. However, through talking with people involved in the field and through taking classes like this one, I’ve learned a valuable lesson about doing Native language revitalization work: There’s a line between language revitalization and abusing the rights and wishes of a particular language community, and it must not be crossed.

For example, as part of my work on the Hiaki language, I often ask our native-Hiaki speaking consultants about particular words to see if there is anything more to a word such as certain expressions it may be used in or cultural knowledge attached to it. Quite often there is indeed more to a Hiaki word than what’s recorded in the dictionary, but whether our consultants want to share that with us is a different story. Sometimes certain linguistic or cultural knowledge is too significant to a language community to be shared with outsiders, even if it’s for the sake of revitalization. Obviously our Hiaki consultants understand that we have no malicious intent, and that part of why we do what we do is for the purposes of learning everything we can about the language and developing teaching materials and resources for it. Nonetheless there are just some things they won’t tell us, and we have no choice but to respect that.

Ultimately, a language community has the last word when it comes to language revitalization. It’s up to the community of speakers or people who identify with a certain language to decide whether it will live or die. We can’t just go full blown J.P. Harrington on people and make them tell us everything there is to know about their language. In fact, we can’t make people do anything at all. All we can do is offer our services should they want them and be grateful that they’re welcoming to people like us who want to pursue learning and studying their languages.

Special thanks to Andrea Ramon, Ofelia Zepeda, and John Havier for teaching me all the Tohono ‘O’odham I know and to Maria & Santos Leyva for sitting through our Hiaki elicitation sessions every Friday morning.

Module 13: Revitalizing Languages

Sign Language Needs Revitalization Too!

Aidan Gibbs

                When most of us think about American Indian languages, we often think about spoken languages like Navajo, Lakota, or others. Personally, unaware of the history of non-spoken languages, I often unconsciously think of signed language as a relatively modern communication form, that might only recently have become well used and regulated. It was surprising, then, to realize that American Indian languages do not only include spoken languages, but also signed languages, and that these signed languages, like many American Indian languages, are at risk of becoming dormant or extinct. American Indian signed language users are no less concerned about the future of their languages, and revitalizing them comes with its own set of unique issues.

                One formerly common sign language in North America is Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL), briefly discussed in one of our course modules. Today, only about 100 users are thought to be alive, but it was once used by many different cultures and groups across the plains of North America, all the way from Texas to Canada (Davis 544). So many groups used varieties of it because, in addition to being a first language for the deaf, it was the lingua franca of the plains, a way for all people to communicate without needing to speak the same languages (Hilleary). According to Brenda Farnell, PISL likely became prevalent because it is natural for humans who cannot communicate vocally to resort to gestures, which then could become standardized. Additionally, no Plains Indian group became dominant enough for their language to take hold in a lingua franca role, so PISL became the de facto method (Farnell).

PISL is at least hundreds of years old, with other American Indian sign languages being documented by the Spanish almost from the beginning of colonization (Hilleary). Unfortunately, like other spoken American Indian languages, PISL was heavily damaged by government boarding schools and policies meant to destroy them (Davis 544). One might conclude it is lucky PISL exists today at all. According to Jeffrey Davis, “PISL has survived due to the pivotal role it has played for many generations, spanning a range of linguistic communities…” (546). Still, we are left in the present with a few handfuls of people capable of using PISL.

Like spoken language, signed language contains a variety of knowledge about human experience, the world, and the ways humans communicate, so losing PISL, or any signed language, would be a major loss to the cultural heritage of humanity. Keeping a sign language from disappearing can be both easier and more difficult than spoken languages in different aspects. They can be easier to teach, in that gestures are easier to learn than pronunciations, which we have learned in this course can be difficult to hear for second language learners (Farnell). However, just like spoken languages, sign languages struggle to find meaningful use when dominant communication forms like English or American Sign Language are much more prevalent. They can also be difficult to record, as the best dictionary often comes in the form of videos of the gestures, which has only become easy to do in the modern era. A retired army general, Hugh Scott, tried to create a movie dictionary of PISL in 1930 by organizing and recording a meeting of many PISL users from different tribes. His footage was only discovered many years later, and he died before completing the project (Hilleary). While signed languages can be easier to learn, they can also be more difficult to record and find use.

Today, PISL can find use both with the hearing impaired, but also with the larger Plains Indian community. Hearing impaired community members have been a great resource for revitalization, as they have remembered the language longer than hearing members have. Hearing members, like Ron Garritson, have also been able to recall and find interest in PISL based on experience with hearing impaired relatives from the past who used it (Hilleary). For the Plains Indian community as a whole, PISL is now mainly being used for storytelling (Farnell). The website PISLresearch.com contains many videos of traditional stories being told with PISL. PISL use can accompany spoken language in these cases. In this way, PISL can hopefully maintain use into the future.

               

Works Cited

Davis, Jeffrey. 2016. The Linguistic Vitality of American Indian Sign Language: Endangered, yet Not Vanished. Sign Language Studies. 16. 4. 536-562.

Farnell, Brenda. 2006. Plains Indian Sign Language. Journal for the anthropological study of human movement. 14. 2. 106-107.

Hilleary, Cecily. 2017. Native American Hand Talkers Fight to Keep Sign Language Alive. Voice of America News. https://www.voanews.com/a/native-american-hand-talker-fight-to-keep-signed-language-alive/3794333.html. Accessed April 18, 2017.

Module 12: Language Documentation

The Linguist’s Perspective

Evelyn Wicklund

            In this class we read about linguists and what their work has showed us. We’ve learned how their hard research has discovered large sets of organized information, saved languages from becoming lost forever, and it has even given us information on how the America’s became populated. Through linguist’s work people are able to translate languages and understand different cultures. Vast amounts of information can be stored in a language, and without linguist these niches may have never been discovered by people who don’t speak that language. However, how does this affect the linguists themselves? Do they face problems when doing their work? Do linguists have to change how they view the world in order to understand a different language?

            In the beginning it turns out many linguists didn’t intend to become a linguist. Jane Hill states that “by historical accident I am a sociolinguist” and Ofelia Zepeda started out as a sociology major but changed it to linguistics after learning about her own language, Tohono O’odham (Zepeda). Zepeda started out as a teacher during her graduate years, but had to learn the hard way about teaching a language to people who speak that language. When she taught Tohono O’odham to people who didn’t speak it very well, it was easy. However, when she started teaching her language on the reservation, she got lots of negative feedback, one example of this is something one of her friends told her:

You know what [Mr. So and So] is saying about your book? He is saying that many of the things you wrote about how the language works [are] all wrong. He is telling everyone [with emphasis on “everyone”] you just made up some things about the language and the white people believed you and let you publish it. He says you probably don’t really speak the language anyway. (Zepeda)

There are many problems linguist face, especially from the cultural barrier. One account a linguist had stated, “However, upon arrival in Indian Country, academic linguists must learn to become fluent in the dynamics of Indian communities. If they do not, they will fail the test presented by that community, where failure is often accompanied by expulsion.” (Bigler). All linguists will face this struggle, whether they’re a linguist in their own language or not because of all the different dialects. Every person experiences their own culture differently too, it may be universal to a group of friends that ‘American culture’ is fast food and burgers, whereas to do a different group of friends that same American culture is actually capitalism and nationalism.

Once a linguist can get past the cultural barriers, they must start selecting individuals who will have the patience and fluency required for breaking down the grammar and syntax of another language. Many American Indian languages for example, do not have that many speakers left. This creates a small data set. Small data sets are not good when trying to create universal grammatical rules and even just learning their vocabulary (Ellis). If you take American English and compare it to the English spoken in England, biscuits, chips, and torch (just to name a few) mean very different things to each speaker. Still looking at this example, take the words “favorite” and “favourite” for example, in American English one is correct, and in England English the other spelling is correct. This makes it difficult to create grammar rules, because it is different, so when you have a small data set you may not even notice that there are differences in grammar between dialects (Bigler). An even worse possibility is that the small data set has multiple different dialects being put together and not knowing they’re different at all (Bigler). Small data sets can also favor one aspect of a language over another without anyone being aware. “De Bot undertook an analysis of his informants in terms of their gender and regional location, noting that his sample weighted in favour of males” (Ellis). If he was looking into Tohono O’odham for example, he would have missed the fact that women speakers of that language talk differently than the men. Being a linguist is not easy, they face many problems and only a select few have been mentioned here. Being an outsider is not easy, and many linguists studying dying languages have even more problems than being allowed into the new culture.

References

Bigler, Gregory, and Mary S. Linn. "Acting Responsibly: Linguists in American Indian Communities." Practicing Anthropology, vol. 21, no. 2, 1999, pp. 34-38, doi:10.17730/praa.21.2.x2w7xgp824123t24.

Ellis, Rod, and Ebooks Corporation. Becoming and being an Applied Linguist: The Life Histories of some Applied Linguists. vol. 101;101.;, , 2016.

Zepeda, Ofelia, and Jane Hill. "Collaborative Sociolinguistic Research among the Tohono O’odham." Oral Tradition, vol. 13, no. 1, 1998, pp. 130-156.

Module 12: Documenting Languages

Breath of Life at UC Berkeley

As we have learned throughout this course, language is an important part of both a person and a community’s identity. For American Indian communities with endangered languages, fluent speakers offer a resource to retain, and potentially reverse the decline of the languages that are so important to their cultural heritage. But what does a community do when the speakers are gone? Are they forced to forget about the language of their grandparents forever? Thankfully, even when the last speaker of a language dies, hope of restoration is not completely lost. One program discussed in this module, the project of Leanne Hinton appropriately named ‘Breath of Life’, has been helping indigenous people rediscover and reinvigorate their native languages, even without fluent speakers, for more than 20 years (Breath of Life).

How does Breath of Life work? Although there may be no current speakers, many ‘dead’ American Indian languages have extensive archived notes, stories, and other materials from the work of linguists over the decades and centuries before they ceased to be spoken. Breath of Life uses these works as a foundation for rebuilding. Every other year, Breath of Life invites community members to the University of California Berkeley to help teach the members how to access and use the language archives, which are often difficult to understand without special linguistic education (Breath of Life). For each session, every language group present is assigned their own expert linguist to work with, who shows them how to find and interpret the archived material, and how to use that material on meaningful projects of their choice. The session itself culminates with participants presenting projects they have worked on during the event. Projects can include both written and oral demonstrations of the language, such as starting a phrase book or telling a story in the native language (Hale and Hinton). The hope is that after a workshop, participants will know how to continue working by themselves, finding their own methods to use and discover their language, and to bring it back to their community. As Hinton herself states, “one of the key lessons taught in these workshops is that any person wanting to do research in the archives of a university has a right to do so.” (Hale and Hinton 421) Linguists are not the only ones with the power to help languages. Thus, the program shows native communities can themselves become the source of energy for, and dictate the terms of, language revitalization.

The success of the Breath of Life program at the University of California Berkeley has led to similar programs beginning across the United States, and participants have been very satisfied with the workshops. The University of Oklahoma also started a Breath of Life program using their language archives, and there is now a national event working with the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (Breath of Life). Both programs run on very similar designs to the original program at Berkeley. For the native tribal members, these sessions can be quite powerful. According to Hinton, archivists often tell her that bringing in the indigenous community members, “[Has] brought life to the collections that has never been there before.” (Hale and Hinton 422). Participants often feel that they are there keeping their heritage alive, so that it can live on for future generations. The archives are not mere books of scrap notes, but instead the key to a people’s identity. Wilfred Starkey, a Northern Sierra Miwok, in a reflective moment during a video interview described the program as making him, “feel more Miwok than I have ever felt, in my whole life.” (qtd. in Maclay). Creating this feeling is part of why Breath of Life exists. With indigenous people armed with new knowledge, and strong passion, ‘dead’ American Indian languages can still find a way back into a meaningful presence in the modern world.

Breath of Life. Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival. http://aicls.org/breath-of-life/. Accessed April 10, 2017.

Hale, Kenneth L. and Leanne Hinton. 2001. The Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. San Diego: Brill NV. 419-424.

Maclay, Kathleen. 2014. Giving the ‘Breath of Life’ to endangered languages. Berkeley News. UC Regents. http://news.berkeley.edu/2014/08/05/giving-the-breath-of-life-to-endangered-languages/. Accessed April 10, 2017.

Module 6 - Number Systems

In Chapter 10 of “Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages”, Leanne Hinton discusses the different counting methods present in various American Indian languages and how they came to be. I’m an engineering student, so numbers are very near and dear to my heart, and this chapter in particular really blew my mind. My immediate thought was to find the counting systems of the world that are most unlike the English system. In this blog, I’m going to try and explain some of those systems and hopefully help you learn something new!

Number Terminology and Binary

Before I start getting into some different counting systems, there is some terminology that is worth mentioning. Going forward in this blog, I will be referring to number systems with the word “Base” followed by a number. The “Base” refers to the number of unique digits that are used to represent the numbers within a specific number system. As an example, English (and many other languages around the world) use a “Base-10” system. We have ten, single digit numbers – 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Another system you may be familiar with is called “Base-2” or binary, which is a system most commonly used in computers. Below this paragraph, I have included a table that will show you how to count in binary. Notice that after you count to 1 in binary, you have now run out of single digits! This means that you represent the next number larger, in this case 2, with a 10. Similarly, in Base-10, once you count to 9, you have run out of single digits, and the next number you represent with a two-digit number, or 10.

With that, I think we are ready to begin with our first language!

Up First Is… French?

If you know nothing about French, you may be slightly surprised to see this language on this list. After all, English and French share a wide range of words, and a number of the grammar rules are shared between the languages. On top of that, French, Spanish, and Italian are among the “Romance Languages”, a group of languages that evolved from Latin, and only French has a system that deviates from the “Base-10 norm,” so to speak.

French is primarily Base-10 with a light sprinkling of Base-20 in the larger numbers, along with some extra special quirks that seem to be thrown in to trip up new learners of the language. There is a single word to represent every number from 0 to 16, and then at 17 there is a sudden shift to using two words hyphenated together. From 0 to 69, French uses a Base-10 system that has a sudden switch to a Base-20 system at 70. Included in a table below are some direct translations that show this change in Bases.

Multiple Methods in Mountain Arapesh

In Papua New Guinea, there is a language called Bukiyip (or Mountain Arapesh) with around 16,000 speakers that has a very interesting system of counting, primarily due to the fact that it actually has two systems in place, each with its own base! One system uses Base-3, while the other system uses Base-4. How does this work you ask? Well, the counting system used depends entirely on what exactly you are counting! The table below, taken from page 191 of K. David Harrison’s “When Languages Die”, gives a list of objects and things that are counted in each system.

On top of the fact that, according to this list, there are two systems in place for counting yams, Bukiyip also has a word that is present in both systems. The Bukiyip word “anauwip” translates to “hand” in English, and when used in the Base-3 system, “anauwip” means 6, corresponding to the “five fingers plus the thumb joint” (Harrison: 191). When used in the Base-4 system, “anauwip” instead means 24, “because it implies multiplying each of the six points on the hand [by four]” (Harrison: 191).

This Last One is in Base-27

When doing my research for this blog, I found a bunch of different numbering systems that I found interesting and slightly strange by the English counting system standards. I saw Base-6, Base-12, as well as a few systems that only have words for a small selection of numbers (1, 2, 5, and 20 for example) and build the rest of their numbers from there. However, there was one system that made me quietly gasp and whisper “Oh my god” all alone in my room. And that honor belongs to none other than the Base-27 number system from the Oksapmin people of New Guinea.

The Oksapmin people use a counting system that is based on body parts. The words used for the first 27 numbers are also the words for the body part used in counting. The counting begins with the thumb of one hand, cycles along the fingers, travels up the neck, across the face, and then travels back to the other side of the body where it ends with the little finger, before starting to loop back in the same direction. To help visualize this, I have included a photo describing how to “count the 27 body parts” and linked a video below of an Oksapmin woman counting across her entire body (Saxe).

I hope you enjoyed this blog entry! If you enjoyed reading about these languages and number systems, I highly recommend a quick google search to learn about more. The world has some really interesting languages and systems in place and I merely scratched the surface with these!

Link
Oksapmin Woman Counting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aZZcErLYJQ

References

Harrison, K. David. 2007.  When Languages Die: The Extinction of the World’s Languages and the Erosion of Human Knowledge.  Oxford University Press.

Hinton, Leanne. 1996.  Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages.  Berkeley: Heyday Books.

Saxe, G. B. 1982.  The development of measurement operations among the Oksapmin of Papua New Guinea.  Child Development.  53. 1242-1248. 

Module 11: Language Policy

The Long Walk

Evelyn Wicklund

            Forced from their homes, the Navajo walked at gunpoint to their imprisonment 300 miles away. In 1864 approximately 9,000 Navajo walked from their home in Arizona, to Fort Sumner at Bosque Redondo (also known as Hwéeldi) where about 400 Mescalero Apaches were already being held. To make matters worse, these tribes have a large history of disputes and raiding each other. The encampment was able to hold 5,000 people, but by the time all the Navajo arrived, there were about 10,000 people. 10,000 people were expected to survive off the resources that were provided for the estimated 5,000, which only caused more discord between the Navajo and the Mescalero Apaches. After a deplorable walk, the Navajo came to a land that would be unable to provide for them.

During the trek that lasted 18 days, a least 200 Navajo died. When they started the walk, many of them were not physically able to walk such a large distance. One account of this was passed down through many generations:

“It was said that those ancestors were on the Long Walk with their daughter, who was pregnant and about to give birth [...] the daughter got tired and weak and couldn't keep up with the others or go further because of her condition. So my ancestors asked the Army to hold up for a while and to let the woman give birth, but the soldiers wouldn't do it. They forced my people to move on, saying that they were getting behind the others. The soldier told the parents that they had to leave their daughters behind. "Your daughter is not going to survive, anyway; sooner or later she is going to die," they said in their own language. "Go ahead," the daughter said to her parents, "things might come out all right with me," But the poor thing was mistaken, my grandparents used to say. Not long after they had moved on, they heard a gunshot from where they had been a short time ago”

The U.S. soldiers who led them provided no aid, if fact they made matters worse for the people walking, and the soldiers did not even tell the Navajo how long they had to walk or where they were going or why they were being relocated. Howard Gorman said, “our ancestors were taken captive and driven to Hwééldi for no reason at all. They were harmless people, and, even to date, we are the same, holding no harm for anybody ... Many Navajos who know our history and the story of Hwééldi say the same.” Laura Tobe asked her grandmother about the Long Walk, who did not tell her much, only that they walked to a gathering place. Although her grandmother did remember a story about a girl who escaped the journey at a great cost:

“She was a young girl and lived with her mother, father, and her brother. One day the soldiers came and the family ran away. They hid wherever they could. The next day the girl went home to see if her parents were still alive. When she got home her home was burned down and the place was still smoking. Then she saw the beads of her mother and father on the fence posts. The girl left after that.”

            On June 18, 1868 the Treaty of Bosque Redondo was made and marked the end of the Long Walk. This treaty included establishing a reservation, restricting raiding, established an agency, declared that children would be sent to school, regulations on seed supply were made, Navajo rights were to be protected, arrangements were to be made for the Navajo to return to their homeland and more. The many people imprisoned there for four years then made the 300 mile walk back to their homeland. In just four years, the Navajo population was massively reduced. This reduction of population caused a genetic bottleneck making certain genetic diseases become more prominent amongst the Navajo. The Long Walk has affected many generations of the Navajo by forcing their children into schools, this put their language and culture to be at risk of endangerment. Not only the people who survived walking the distance to and from Fort Sumner were affected, but their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren as well.

References

"The Navajos begin 'Long Walk' to imprisonment - Timeline - Native Voices." U.S. National Library of Medicine. National Institutes of Health, n.d. Web. 31 Mar. 2017.

Tohe, Laura. “Hwéeldi Bééhániih: Remembering the Long Walk.” Wicazo Sa Review, vol. 22, no. 1, 2007, pp. 77–82., www.jstor.org/stable/30131304.

Module 11: Language Policy

"The Trail Where They Cried" : a brief history of the "Trail of Tears"

The Cherokee nation began a small scale migration in the 1800s, before the occurrence of the ‘Trail of Tears’ was in anyone’s eyes. The reason for this migration was to simply because they didn't want any white community intrusion of their culture, so they voluntarily moved west, to lands given to them in Arkansas. Later, they were forced out of this land and forced to migrate to Indian Territory. The Cherokee Nation had adopted some very European style government choices, so they could trade and maintain their own voice and culture. They established a a supreme court, and a constitution. As this occurred, their previously friendly white neighbors, turned against the Cherokee whilst affect by ‘gold fever.’ Eventually, President Jackson, out of the blue (after aiding the Cherokee nation in the Battle of Horseshoe Bend), authorized the removal of the Cherokee so the US could obtain valuable land. The Indian Removal At of 1830 began its term and the Cherokee were forced out of their land and homes. There was music opposition against President Jackson decision of the removal from many senators and reverends, however not enough to eliminate the sanctioned act. There were two main court cases that would decide the removal, Worcester vs. Georgia (1832) and Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia (831). The 1831 case ruled against the Nation, but the Worcester case affirmed Cherokee sovereignty. 

Even so, President Jackson defied the decision of the court and still went through with the uprooting of the Cherokee Nation. Further along the road, in 1835, the Treaty of New Echota was signed by the Cherokee people known as the Treaty Party. This treaty allowed for the US government to obtain all ands east of the Mississippi if the Cherokee could have land in Indian territory, along with money, food, tools and other benefits. Although only 100 Cherokee had signed this treaty, the US government used it as an excuse to follow through with the removal of the entire people. The US Army began to impose the Removal Act during the summer of 1838. The Cherokee were rounded up and loaded tightly into boats to travel across four rivers into the Indian Territory. While this was happening, other Cherokee were held in many prison camps awaiting the journey, or death. The living conditions of the Trail were extremely dangerous for the Cherokee people. At least 4,000 died from the hunger and exposure to numerous diseases. It is also widely assumed that hundreds were murdered by the Army if they did not comply to the orders given to them. 

In my personal opinion the acts performed on the Cherokee people as well as the people of Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw, and Choctaw nations, are simply horrific. I cannot personally imagine being uprooted from my home and lifestyle to be locked away or forced on a boat to live in an unfamiliar land without the comfort of my family. From my view, this can almost be considered a genocide of the American Indian people. Though it doesn’t fit the exact terms of what a genocide is, this wide scale removal of a people to gain a little land and wealth is frightening. To show the effect the removal had on the American Indian nation, below I am adding a few quotes that I think fully express the hardships the people had to go through.

"We, the great mass of the people think only of the love we have for our land, we do love the land where we were brought up. We will never let our hold to this land go, to let it go it will be like throwing away (our) mother that gave (us) birth."

- Letter from Aitooweyah to John Ross, Principal Chief of the Cherokee

"I have a little boy...If he is not dead, tell him the last words of his father were that he must never go beyond the Father of Waters, but die in the land of his birth. It is sweet to die in one's native land and be buried by the margins of one's native stream.”

- Tsali, Cherokee Medicine Man awating execution, 1838.

"We are overwhelmed! Our hearts are sickened, our utterance is paralized, when we reflect on the condition in which we are placed, by the audacious practices of unprincipled men, who have managed their stratagems with so much dexterity as to impose on the Government of the United States, in the face of our earnest, solemn, and reiterated protestations."

- Letter from Chief John Ross of the Cherokee, Georgia, 1836

Sources:

“A Brief History of the Trail of Tears.” Cherokee Nation. 2017. cherokee.org.

“Native American Legends: Great Words From Great Americans”. Legends of America. http://www.legendsofamerica.com/na-quotes.html

Cherokee Quotes. http://www.aaanativearts.com/cherokee/cherokee-quotes.htm

“‘Our Hearts are Sickened’: Letter from Chief John Ross of the Cherokee, Georgia, 1836.” History Matters. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6598/