The white man kept a journal.
Language has power to transform the soul. Language. We are speaking. Knives. Sharp Rocks. To the Dwelling School they want us to go. Exchanging our knowledge for sign and symbol. Big Norman's school for delinquents runs out of the back of his Honda Civic. Knives— he distributes them to his students.
"Don't shit your pants. Learn how to use it."
They laugh but he's not kidding. One of his hands can wrap around their head. His eyes small as hawk's, his nose as big. His legs long thin muscles—they support him.
You don't sign up. You are chosen.
Get in touch with your dark side on the 26 Valencia. Food. They sell it at the store. Whole Foods and Rainbow. Dimitri, the Greek, runs Noriega Produce out near the ocean. Everyone needs their people. Practical choices, you make them. Miss Navajo Nation must butcher a sheep and then she must cook it. Take your knife. Develop some skills. Language is life. The Headlands. Armed resistance is tongue tied. You can take the bus or walk. The feet work when you use them.
L. Frank, the dandy, will likely be there. 'anó' is never no missing person. Sunrise gathering. Everyone makes their own, prayers to their creator. Tolowa. Yurok. Hilula. Karuk. Shasta. Modoc. Wiyot. Hupa. Wintu. Achomawi. Northern Paiute. Chimariko. Wintu. Atsugewi. Mattole. Nongati. Yana. Maidu. Lassik. Wailaki. Nomlaki. Sinkiyone. Kato. Coast Yuki. Huchnom. Konkow. Pomo. Patwin. Nisenan. Washo. Lake Miwok. Wappo. Coast Miwok. Mono Lake Northern Paiute. Sierra Miwok. Ohlone. Northern Valley Yokuts. Owens Valley Paiute Shoshone. Esselen. Saianan. Southern Valley Yokuts. Foothill Yokuts. Monache. Tabtulabal. Kawaiisu. Southern Paiutes. Chumash. Kitanemuk. Serrano. Tataviam. Chemehuevi. Mojave. Halchidhoma. Quechan. Tipai. Ipai. Gabrieleño. Luiseño. Lakota, Tslagi and Diné.
We gather at the food hall for eggs, fruit and Alvarado Street Baking. The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, 8th annual conference, second morning.
Point of fact: they sleep on wood slat platforms, a mattress of wadded cotton beneath them. This gathering is of their creation. We eat. We walk to the Sunset Room. The bay forms a small lagoon where fresh water collects, running down from Mount Tamalpais. We sit on chairs laid out in lines. Beautiful women, some with flowers in their hair and beautiful men, all ages. Introductions are made. 2008. They have their linguist, Leanne Hinton. L. Frank walks with two feet, both of them are broken.
She wears her face, where ever she goes, she wears it. Standing between two aluminum crutches, her Calvary jacket on, she wears it.
Blessings and introductions. 9AM. Board of Directors and one linguist. Ten minutes each, count them. Leanne Hinton is given the lead, "Language Revitalization must begin at home, because that's where language ended. That's where it's got to begin." She passes the mike over to L. who rests her arms on the tops of her crutches, her legs two reeds below her.
"I'm Tongva and Ajachmem." Pause. "When I tell people that they look at me like, 'What?' so I say, 'I'm a Hollywood Indian.' My Grandpa used to play a white cowboy."
We laugh.
"My tribes are extinct."
We laugh again.
"My family told me to get in the closet and don't ever come out." Pause. Obviously she didn't.
"What affected me most were the places I played. I'd hear things. At the bottom of Mount Loyola Marymount. It has a big L that lit up at night." She jumps like she was falling downstairs in a dream, "Oh, I'm at the house o the lord." She says looking up in the sky, arms raised at the bends. Her face unadulterated amazement.
We laugh, together, with one mouth, we are laughing.
"Ravens would teach me things, but I wasn't very bright." She is looking at each of us and at no one. Just beyond our bodies into our souls, she is looking.
"I search things out that made sense to me. I knew who I was early on."
Time is passing like it does, differently when she is speaking. A river of words, a watch a dam. Everyone, they are listening.
"Do I have 20 minutes? The Lakota guy did."
Everyone is laughing.
The Lakota guy squirms. California Indians sit around us. We're in a room and they are sitting around. Home. We have found it. They make it easy to stay. Listen, her introduction, she is still giving.
"I was learning to weave. We were living across the street from Disneyland. I could see the Tea Cups from where I was sitting." She raises her hands up at the elbow joints and leaks a slow sound out of the balloon of her belly—aaaaAAAAAaaaaaaaAAAAAAaaaaaaa. "An old guy was teaching me and he told me I had to do it naked."
Everyone laughs and she maintains the deadpan of her persona.
"I would start my basket and start hearing voices, 'Oh, someone's coming" and I jumped up and put on my clothes and run out front. 'Who's here?' My brother would say 'what?' Looking confused. 'No one. There's no one.' So I'd go back and take my clothes off and start weaving. I heard them again. The voices. 'Oh. Someone's coming.' I put my clothes on and ran back out. My brother looked at me again. 'I heard voices.' 'No.' He said. 'Nobody.' I went back—to the cement square— and started weaving. This time when I heard the voices I kept weaving. It was the basket. So I stayed. I was so intrigued. I had to know what they were saying. I went and asked; I need someone to teach me my language. They said, 'good luck. Your people are extinct.'"
Every one sat. Silence standing among us. We allowed it, each one.
"It was a long journey me, myself and I'd like to make that journey shorter for everyone else."
In the silence—the moment between then and now—in that moment they met, L. Frank Manriquez and Nancy Richardson Steele. They had a gathering to access the language in California. Dire. In response they decided to form an organization. In the silence we sit. Some of the women wear flowers in their hair. Their bodies heavy on the folding chairs. Dan Golding stands at the back. His son running between him and his beautiful wife Mercedes. The rest of the board introduces themselves.
Nancy Richardson Steele, Karuk, returns to speak. Thanking the ancestors and the people because we're all here to learn language. She and her husband brought presents for the board. To each one they are given.
L.
L. Frank Manriquez.
She hangs there between her crutches, an eagle feather she is receiving.
Nancy speaks.
Leanne speaks, "L. is the initiator of Breath of Life."
Carol Lewis remembers, "L. was telling a story about learning a language where there are no speakers. After lots of work she finally found a recording. She got the tape and carried it carefully around. Waiting till she was ready, for the first time, to hear words spoken. She put in the tape and pressed play. Nothing. How she cried. Something was wrong. Grief. She thought she would, then at the moment, for the very first time hear it." She paused and we all sat without our knowledge of L. and of our own language. "Every time I want to get lazy I think of L. Frank. I wish you the best and I want to recognize you." She turns and embraces her.
Breath of Life: Revitalizing Languages Without Speakers begins at 10:15. We walk, each one, to the place they’ve chosen. Decisions, we make them. We gather, in the rectangle room. Someone wheels L. Frank up in a clunky chair, her feet resting on the metal stays. She looks ready for discharge at county. She manages to stand, then shuffles to the table and sits. Everyone continues to file in around her.
There are few. With four workshops at this time, you choose one. We, a few, have chosen this: Breath of Life, AICLS program for learners with no living speakers. Two women sit next to L. at the table, they begin speaking.
"This is for us invisibles." L. Says. "You're given a linguist, well, not yours to keep. When you get to UCB you're given cryptic field notes. You know what you want: to pray, to sing, to live with your children, to get through the land of the dead. Then you come up with your project."
She starts like this, somewhere in the middle and we follow. Quirina Luna and Deb Murillo sit by her side. She asks them to make their introductions.
A young woman with a newborn rises and introduces herself in her own language: Quirina Luna.
"My language was dormant for 70 years. . . it was intimidating going to Cal. The first year we translated old stories. The workshops really gave us boosts. We developed different materials because we had no dictionary. Decisions had to be made. We decided to design our own orthography. We made new words for things that didn't exist, like far talker for phone. We went back to basics. What's important: learning, immersion and studying and teaching children. It takes a conscious effort to learn. The only way is to use it. Use it in your every day life."
She sits. The baby makes sounds to the voice of her mother. The second woman stands. Deb Murillo. She tells us, because of the land her grandma spoke three languages, but she, she just had words and pieces of words. Her grandpa said, "You gotta know how to pray in your language,” so the first year of Breath of Life she did prayer. She had failures. Her computer broke and she lost everything.
"Keep it simple. Your life, everything."
She posts cards up around her house in language.
"Read your signs. In order to speak you have to hear it." She pauses. "Practice. Do whatever you can with the language." She does. "Three hours at night, I devote to language. This year my goal is to know all the names of all the living beings, because when you pray that's the next step."
L. Frank leans on the table like she's going to dig into a bowl of acorn mush.
"Put your language everywhere. Make your immersion. It's a lot of work, but such a joy that you wouldn't change. Try to create a community, especially when you're working alone. See that language is not a stodgy thing. It has all the emotions you do. Take that education and use all that we have."
She tells a story about a drawing she made of Coyote in a dress with a rolling pin raised over his head. "It's about inflicted cultural transvestism. We are wearing someone's culture. Why not take it off? Our ancestors used to be naked, why not us."
She sings a song about when Coyote was a beautiful piece of driftwood floating downstream.
Coyote, his cry.
Sage, it’s breath.
Memory, memory, it’s desires.
I am not Coyote, I am not Coyote.
I am a beautiful piece of driftwood.
"If laughter is not coming something is wrong."
She says, "put downs come from fear. We don't want people to be afraid. Language will straighten this out. It's time to take a look at ourselves. I say to the grantors, 'you want to feed us and house us. It's in our language. We can live on beans and rice. We can live 20 to a house. What we need is language."
We sit. We listen. She talks.
"The mandate is to go out and tell people the world has changed."
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