{"id":4157,"date":"2024-05-15T18:28:12","date_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/?page_id=4157"},"modified":"2024-05-19T23:48:42","modified_gmt":"2024-05-19T23:48:42","slug":"surrounded-by-selis","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/surrounded-by-selis\/","title":{"rendered":"Surrounded by S\u00e9li\u0161"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Surrounded by S\u00e9li\u0161<\/strong><\/mark><\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Rigorous program amplifies efforts for Salish language transmission<\/strong><\/mark><\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Story by Madeline Jorden. Photos by Renna Al-Haj.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she learned she was pregnant with her first child, her daughter Manin\u0142p, Aspen Decker remembered the words of her teacher, the elder Pat \u201cPatlik\u201d Pierre, with whom she\u2019d spent hours practicing the S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 language at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm, the language immersion school on the Flathead Indian Reservation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou need to talk language to your kids,\u201d Pierre told her. \u201cIt\u2019s our kids that are going to be the ones that keep our language going and alive.\u201d <\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And so Decker began speaking to her unborn daughter in S\u00e9li\u0161. After Manin\u0142p was born, she narrated their life out loud to her new baby. \u201cDo you want this food? Are you ready to nurse?\u201d she\u2019d say to her in their ancestral language. Manin\u0142p wasn\u2019t immersed in an English-speaking environment until she left the S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 world her mother had shaped for her to start preschool on the reservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Children are born with the innate ability to become fluent in the language used around them, usually without any explicit instruction. Research shows that fetuses in utero can not only hear some of what\u2019s happening outside, but can also start to remember specific voices and distinguish the particular rhythm of their mothers\u2019 language. Within the first year of life, a baby\u2019s brain begins to ignore phonetic differences that don\u2019t carry distinct meanings in the language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before children can even speak, their brains begin to wire into the framework of a particular language, and Decker wanted to make sure that her baby\u2019s brain was forming S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 patterns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For many Indigenous people, language is closely tied to culture and tradition. Words are intimately connected to place and reflect a community\u2019s unique worldview that is laden with meaning. \u201cIt\u2019s your identity. It\u2019s who you are,\u201d Decker said. \u201cIt\u2019s who our ancestors are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But tribes across the country have seen a dramatic loss of Indigenous languages in the last century. According to the linguistic database Ethnologue, 98% of the nearly 200 active Indigenous languages in the United States are endangered, meaning the traditional speakers have started teaching  and speaking different languages to their children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Ethnologue classifies S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 as one of those endangered languages, learned as a first language only by the generation now considered elderly. In 1910, more than 95% of the tribal population was fluent in the ancestral language. By 2016, the rate of fluency had dropped to less than 1%. Today, there are only a handful of elders still alive who grew up speaking S\u00e9li\u0161 as their first language. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many tribes have tried to reinvigorate their traditional languages with various types of programs, to varying levels of success. But with the last generation of first-language speakers passing on, there are not enough proficient adults in many communities to teach the language to the next generation. Even for those who complete immersion programs, there are few, if any, spaces to find other speakers to converse with and solidify the learned language in daily use. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 adult apprentice program on the Flathead reservation is attempting to address that gap through an intensive format that requires students to dedicate themselves to language learning as a full-time job. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Although versions of an adult language learning program have existed for several years, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribal Council agreed to provide funding in 2018, allowing the program to offer compensation at a rate of $15 an hour to its students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move is significant in a state where minimum wage stands at $10.30 an hour. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paying the students is crucial, said Leora Bar-el, a linguistics professor at the University of Montana, because it recognizes the amount of time that adults need to invest to make significant progress. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMotivation alone is often not enough,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to learn a language as an adult, period.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Every weekday at 8 a.m., the apprentices clock into work at the tribal longhouse in St. Ignatius and, for the next eight hours, are drilled on vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar. Starting with the basics, they eventually progress, over the course of two years, through a three-level curriculum that amounts to 116 college credits, or 1,160 hours of language learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lessons continue year-round, with vacation days only on federal holidays, just like other employees of the tribal government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On top of that, many of the apprentices enroll concurrently in a language teaching program at the tribal college and do additional coursework in the evenings and on the weekends to work towards a bachelor\u2019s degree in education.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur apprentices, we always tell them, that this is intense,\u201d said Melanie Sandoval, who manages the program. \u201cYou\u2019re getting a lot of language thrown at you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

S\u00e9li\u0161 can be challenging to learn for a first-language English speaker, since it involves a new alphabet, new patterns of sentence structure and new sounds that require the speaker to move the throat and tongue in new ways. \u201cI\u2019ve never had a headache that bad in my life,\u201d said Daniel Brown, who was a member of the first cohort of apprentices in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the academic rigor of the program, some of the students had emotional responses that arose during their training. The deeper they got into the language learning process, the more clearly they were able to see the connection to their Indigenous identity that had been taken from them through decades of cultural suppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPeople who knew me before think I\u2019m so different now,\u201d Brown said, noting that he also quit drinking over the course of the program. Today, he\u2019s a teacher at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm, the immersive language school, and is raising his own kids in the language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emerging research suggests that using ancestral languages can have beneficial health impacts on Indigenous people, including decreased rates of suicide, alcohol consumption, illegal drug usage, violence and diabetes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cI feel like I would have gone down the wrong path again, if I didn\u2019t have this program in my language and culture,\u201d said Kristina Mays, another member of the first apprentice cohort who now teaches the second-year cohort. \u201cIt saved my life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over 80 people have been through some level of the adult language curriculum, and at least 18 have finished the whole program. But once they graduate, the apprentices face the question of where to go next to continue their language development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe program lays the foundation and shows you the way, but it\u2019s not going to make you fluent,\u201d Brown said. \u201cYou have to continue to push yourself, if you really want it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If there\u2019s nowhere to use the language outside of the classroom, it\u2019s easy to let that knowledge slip away after the program concludes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have nowhere to really go to hear,\u201d said Chaney Bell, who founded the apprenticeship. \u201cSo we really have to try and create those environments, almost artificially create these speaking places, so that we have a place to hear it and practice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As more adults gain access to the language, Bell hopes it will make its way into more homes on the reservation. He dreams of one day hearing S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 on the radio, television, and seeing it on the menu at McDonald\u2019s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But some language apprentices already have another speaker within their family who they can practice the language with at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mars Sandoval, a current first-year apprentice, began learning S\u00e9li\u0161 at the age of three, as one of the first students enrolled at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm. Due to that early exposure to the language, he has a verbal dexterity and natural aptitude for the pronunciation of complicated sounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

When the class learned body parts, his teacher turned to Sandoval to pronounce s\u010dk\u02b7\u019b\u0313k\u02b7\u019b\u0313us, the word for eyes, a tongue-twister of consonant sounds that are formed at the back of the throat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou move your mouth the same way you do for beatboxing,\u201d he said, demonstrating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sandoval\u2019s partner, Lydia McKinney, graduated from the apprentice program in 2023 but didn\u2019t grow up exposed to the language. Her family moved to Utah for her father\u2019s job, where the community was predominantly white. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When McKinney\u2019s aunt, Michael Munson, who works at the tribal college, reached out to her about applying for the apprenticeship, she felt called to do it and enrolled in the third cohort in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She said learning the language felt like something she could do to help her people. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Before McKinney, it had been three generations since anyone in her family spoke S\u00e9li\u0161. Now, she and Sandoval stay in the language with one another at home. Their skill sets complement each other, which allows them to grow their language knowledge in different ways. Sandoval has a natural facility with pronunciation, having absorbed the sound inventory as a young child at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm, while McKinney has a wider and deeper vocabulary, having completed the entire apprentice program.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBefore I met him there was this feeling where, I\u2019m learning so much, but I don\u2019t have anybody to talk to,\u201d McKinney said. \u201cWhen me and (Sandoval)  got together and started talking to each other, it brought it into the real world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They send text messages to each other in S\u00e9li\u0161 or use the language to name the worlds they create when they play video games. But on a deeper level, it\u2019s even more special to speak S\u00e9li\u0161 with someone they love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cK\u02b7 in x\u0323men\u010d x\u0323\u02b7l esya l i spu\u0294us,\u201d they\u2019ll tell each other. I love you with everything in my heart<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a stronger connection,\u201d Sandoval said. \u201cYou get to do something that no one else is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

After McKinney graduates from the tribal college next year with her bachelor\u2019s degree in education, she hopes to teach at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm. She\u2019s not as interested in teaching in the public schools, because the time she\u2019d be able to spend with her students would be so limited. \u201cIt\u2019s great that they can learn some language, but they\u2019re never going to be able to achieve fluency,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To achieve the goal of making the language more accessible and widespread within the community, more proficient teachers are needed in all levels of the reservation schools. In a 20-year strategic plan for language revitalization that he authored in 2017, Chaney Bell estimated a need for at least 40 proficient teachers to fill the positions in every school, but the real number is likely even higher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not where we want it. Definitely not where we want it yet,\u201d Bell said of language learning in the public schools. On the reservation, where only about a quarter of the residents are Native American, the cultural will to prioritize language and culture would have to come from school boards and school superintendents that serve a majority white student body.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The legacy of excluding Indigenous language from schools stems from the establishment of boarding schools that aimed to assimilate youth into Anglo-American culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Just two street blocks away from the longhouse, where the apprentices sit and study the language every weekday, is St. Ignatius Mission, a Catholic church established on the reservation in 1855 by Jesuits. A nearby school was later established by the Ursuline order of nuns, where many Indigenous children were sent. A black-and-white photograph from around the turn of the century shows a line of young girls, mostly dark-skinned, arrayed before the camera in knee-length dresses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When recent construction was done on the parking lot for the longhouse, the crew unearthed some of the old foundations of the mission outbuildings \u2013 including an industrial work room where some of the students were assigned to work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat\u2019s how close we are to our history,\u201d said Melanie Sandoval, the apprentice program manager.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

Many of the tribe\u2019s elders either attended the Ursuline school themselves or had family members who did before it closed in 1972. Shirley Trahan, who was born in 1944 and is one of the few remaining first-language speakers on the reservation, was kept out of the Ursulines\u2019 school by her mother after one of her sisters passed away as a boarding student. \u201cNo one knows why,\u201d Trahan said. \u201cAfter that, my mother said, \u2018None of you are going to go to school there again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Trahan stayed at home, where she was able to speak S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 with her family, the environment in the local public school she attended was also repressive. As she recalls, all of the teachers were white and punished students for speaking S\u00e9li\u0161. \u201cThat\u2019s one of the reasons why our language started to fade away,\u201d she said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t allowed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Trahan remained proud of her culture and traditions, she watched others stop speaking the language after being shamed into using English. \u201cThey were made fun of and they were mimicked and stuff like that,\u201d she said. \u201cIt made kids and people feel ashamed of speaking their language. That\u2019s why they didn\u2019t speak it anymore. Those were tough times.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Learning English also provided an economic incentive. Stephen Small Salmon, an 84-year-old first-language speaker, remembers how many people felt that they had to make a choice between living their traditional culture and going to college to pursue a prosperous life. Those that chose college often lost their language, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, through the apprentice program, the tribe has assigned a tangible value to learning S\u00e9li\u0161. And although paying students is essential to making it possible to devote two years to the language, some argue that it\u2019s not enough. Daniel Brown made better money working as a bus driver, and the decision to take a pay cut while supporting a family was not easy. The apprentice contract also provides no benefits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is hard work,\u201d Chaney Bell said. \u201cBut it\u2019s also awesome work. Our language is just so beautiful. It just makes you feel so good. And I just want our people to be able to have that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aspen Decker\u2019s oldest child, Manin\u0142p, is now 11 years old. She and her three brothers are skilled S\u00e9li\u0161 speakers, thanks to the persistent instruction from their mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting around the kitchen table of their family\u2019s white farmhouse in Arlee, Manin\u0142p and her 9-year-old brother N\u0161tews watched as their mother showed them how to weave pieces of tk\u02b7tin\u0313, or bulrush, into drying mats. In a gentle, even voice, Decker spoke in S\u00e9li\u0161 all the while, prompting Manin\u0142p and N\u0161tews to tell stories as they worked, the family speaking to each other in their traditional, tribal language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA long time ago when I was four years old, Manin\u0142p had a cut,\u201d N\u0161tews said carefully in S\u00e9li\u0161. \u201cMy mom said get a bandage.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou said sticky,\u201d said Manin\u0142p, correcting her brother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, and be quiet Manin\u0142p!\u201d yelled N\u0161tews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe bandage for your wound,\u201d said Decker, encouraging N\u0161tews to continue with his story. \u201cNk\u02b7\u1e31\u02b7\u00e1 is the name of that medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Decker believes her children are among the first to speak S\u00e9li\u0161 as their first language in more than 60 years. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Story by Madeline Jorden. Photos by Renna Al-Haj. When she learned she was pregnant with her first child, her daughter Manin\u0142p, Aspen Decker remembered the words of her teacher, the elder Pat \u201cPatlik\u201d Pierre, with whom she\u2019d spent hours practicing the S\u00e9li\u0161-Q\u1ec8isp\u00e9 language at Nk\u0313\u02b7usm, the language immersion school on the Flathead Indian Reservation.\u00a0 \u201cYou […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-4157","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4157"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4425,"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4157\/revisions\/4425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nativenews.jour.umt.edu\/projects\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}