For The Wild - ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on Land, Language, and Love S1_2

00:00:00.000 Over the past few months, I have journeyed to the Yukon in partnership with Illuminating

00:00:14.200 Worldviews. Illuminating Worldviews serves as a space to examine the worldviews amidst

00:00:19.800 which we find ourselves and see how they actively shape the material realities of our lives.

00:00:25.480 This project, rooted and colored by the land of the Yukon, makes space for questioning, examination, and future visioning centered in indigenous ideology and the sentiment of journeying.

00:00:38.860 in person and on the land i had the chance to speak with incredible thought leaders with

00:00:44.840 deep connections to the yukon all with a live audience in the beautiful city of white horse

00:00:51.300 except for the last event which was in dawson city though the series is deeply local it has

00:00:59.480 broad implications for our culture as a whole and i'm so excited to share it with you this series

00:01:04.900 was produced thanks to the generous support of the team at Illuminating Worldviews held by the

00:01:09.780 River Collective and the Northern Council for Global Cooperation. We are so grateful to the

00:01:15.420 organizers, speakers, and audience members who made this series possible, and also a very big

00:01:21.380 thank you to the land of the Yukon, the boreal forest, the rivers, the lakes. I am honored to

00:01:27.640 have been asked to be part of this.

00:01:34.900 in this episode we hear from zuni lance twitchell on language culture and the words that tie us

00:01:43.860 together i was so sad that i wasn't able to make this one uh in person with lance but this episode

00:01:51.060 holds a specific place in this series and my heart as it centers the clinket language and ways love

00:01:58.100 locality, and communication can shape our futures. Azuni Lance Twitchell is a professor

00:02:07.780 of Alaska Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast. He lives in Juneau with his wife

00:02:13.700 and bilingual children. He speaks and studies the Tlingit language and advocates for Indigenous

00:02:18.900 language reclamation through teaching, program development, legislative change, and healing.

00:02:24.940 Twitchell is an author of poems, stories, and screenplays,

00:02:28.640 and is a filmmaker, musician, and Northwest Coast artist.

00:02:31.980 but we got to support each other

00:02:54.180 so we can stand with this language

00:02:55.740 and not give up

00:02:57.620 You're not going to give up.

00:03:06.580 You're going to succeed with love and kindness.

00:03:14.800 One thing I think would be really helpful for people to know is where your journey in language started.

00:03:23.980 And, you know, watching the videos, seeing those moments of connection, what was that sort of moment for you in reconnecting with language? Where did that start for you?

00:03:53.980 I'm just so thankful to be here on the land of our inland relatives.

00:04:23.980 You all are such wonderful stewards of this land and have endured a tremendous amount from colonization. So I just always want to be thankful for the folks whose land we're standing upon and working upon.

00:04:38.540 And I'm grateful that we're talking about language.

00:04:42.760 I'm so filled with courage from people who study,

00:04:48.960 from our three kids who are raised in the language

00:04:53.440 and have responded well to being raised in the language.

00:04:57.200 My journey began when I was, well, it was 1996.

00:05:04.200 And my grandfather, his name was Gushtihin.

00:05:07.480 His namesake is over there.

00:05:09.400 His other name is Kaja.

00:05:12.320 He and I were always close.

00:05:14.820 They said when I was real little, I would cry.

00:05:17.140 They'd put me on my grandpa's lap and I would stop crying.

00:05:20.660 His guitar hero, I can't remember his name.

00:05:24.640 He was one of these real old cowboy type of guys.

00:05:29.500 We were at Disneyland and I was just barely big enough to walk.

00:05:33.940 and they said there's your guitar hero you should go say hi to him my grandpa said no

00:05:40.040 he's too shy and they weren't looking and I walked over there and then that guy carried me

00:05:45.340 over to my grandpa and he got to meet him so we're always closely connected and he got really sick

00:05:52.580 he had something in his stomach and so I came home from college to stay with him and

00:05:58.980 And we'd watch baseball game after baseball game, which was fun.

00:06:03.140 But after a while, you know, 20 baseball games later, you've got to do something else.

00:06:07.840 It was his sister, Kathy, who said, you know, he's the only one in our family who could speak Shingit.

00:06:15.160 And I said, oh, what?

00:06:16.740 And I didn't know a word, oh, Shingit.

00:06:20.000 And so I said, teach me. 0.91

00:06:21.740 Teach me Shingit. 0.99

00:06:23.140 And he pointed at the salt shaker.

00:06:24.920 He said, A.

00:06:26.220 And I tried to say it, and he'd laugh at me.

00:06:28.980 And I thought, well, I'm going to get him to stop laughing at me.

00:06:33.020 So that was goal number one, get grandpa to stop laughing at me when I speak the language.

00:06:37.760 But it made a connection because no one else in our family at that time was learning.

00:06:43.420 And so I went back to college.

00:06:46.120 I said, grandpa, I got one more semester of college.

00:06:49.400 Why don't I just stay here through the winter?

00:06:51.500 You and I will study shinget.

00:06:53.300 He says, no, just go finish.

00:06:54.820 You got one semester left, go finish.

00:06:56.260 So I go back, and he calls me, and he says, you should come home.

00:07:00.820 I said, the semester's almost over, and then I'm done, and now I'm done.

00:07:06.040 And he got real sick, and I had to come home, and he died.

00:07:13.080 And I thought, I didn't answer his call, and I should have.

00:07:18.300 but after I got through the hardships

00:07:21.780 and it was such a

00:07:22.800 I really felt his death

00:07:26.280 like I felt it on the earth

00:07:27.780 there was this place I liked to go to in Skagway

00:07:29.800 and I went out there and I watched the fog

00:07:32.040 roll in real fast

00:07:33.200 and go out real fast and I thought

00:07:35.380 okay it's going to happen

00:07:36.380 and I go home and there's ravens

00:07:39.660 and all of the trees around my grandma's house

00:07:41.900 and I said okay it's going to happen

00:07:44.060 and I walked in and five minutes later

00:07:46.200 he was gone but I held his hand

00:07:47.940 when he left. We shared a meal before he went to sleep, and it was blueberries, frozen blueberries

00:07:54.460 and sugar and canned milk, which we both loved. And I was going to give him the last bite, and he

00:07:59.400 said, it's your turn. And that was the last thing he ever said, and I watched him go to sleep.

00:08:06.420 But after I dealt with sadness for a while, I tried to go to Ketchikan and learn some shanget,

00:08:11.020 and it was wonderful, but my life there didn't work out. And I got back to college, and I'd found

00:08:17.580 these tapes called Beginning Klangit by Kekhne and Nora Marks Dauenhauer, Hawaii Naq Richard

00:08:24.520 Dauenhauer, and Kunak, Fred White. And I would just walk around and listen to them, listen to

00:08:29.700 them, listen to them. And I had these two little books, a yellow book with verbs and an orange

00:08:35.160 book with nouns. And I learned all the nouns. I couldn't figure out how the verbs work. I was

00:08:39.220 like, well, I could learn all these nouns. I could learn all these names. I could learn how to say

00:08:42.180 them all. And then I came home, and I met Nora, and I met Richard, and they were legendary. Just

00:08:49.600 the amount of work they did, recording, making 500 different tapes of our language, making all

00:08:55.060 these different language materials. And I looked at them, and I said, I want to be you. And then

00:09:01.600 that became my journey. And as I started to learn how to speak, I decided I don't care if I sound

00:09:10.180 bad, I'm going to speak

00:09:12.200 thing it whenever I meet someone

00:09:14.240 who knows how to speak it

00:09:15.760 and I'll see if they will talk to me.

00:09:19.280 Wow.

00:09:19.800 I

00:09:20.320 want to thank you for

00:09:23.660 sharing that story and certainly

00:09:25.660 the synergy

00:09:27.660 between, you know, learning

00:09:29.760 something new

00:09:31.020 and vulnerability

00:09:33.420 is really important.

00:09:35.940 And that

00:09:37.080 you know

00:09:39.720 The walking into the language immersion camp or the introduction when your sort of voice is shaking, all of those pieces come together.

00:09:47.860 And so thank you for acknowledging that and for also being vulnerable and sharing some of your story.

00:09:55.280 And in the film, particularly, and seeing some of the carving that was happening and the kids dancing and the paintings being held up, there's this connection that would be really great to hear from you about with respect to language and healing.

00:10:18.200 and how those two are going down that river

00:10:24.740 almost at the same time.

00:10:27.720 And so interested if you could share with those

00:10:30.920 the connection perhaps with the film,

00:10:33.040 any observations that stuck out for you

00:10:36.200 with respect to healing and language.

00:10:39.900 Yeah, the film was incredible.

00:10:43.260 It was just incredible to watch.

00:10:46.000 I had consulted on a couple of the language things

00:10:49.500 and then just to see what they had made of it.

00:10:52.240 We filmed this part in Juneau, which is very fun.

00:10:56.800 I look kind of like a dork when I'm speaking and teaching Tlingit,

00:10:59.980 but that's okay because I'm having fun.

00:11:02.960 But what I think about is all these people who talk to me,

00:11:09.020 and I think especially over the last two decades,

00:11:12.840 as I've learned to speak Tlingit

00:11:15.260 and I would just go to people who knew how to speak it

00:11:18.060 and who were always so kind.

00:11:21.560 I have a colleague named Ronalda Cadiente-Brown

00:11:24.620 and she was one time talking to me about

00:11:26.380 wanting to become an elder with the soft eyes

00:11:29.620 who's always kind

00:11:31.140 because this world can be a really hard thing.

00:11:35.000 It could be a really, really hard life.

00:11:37.640 And I always think, how can I continue

00:11:39.840 and just, what I want is

00:11:43.260 hundreds of years from now

00:11:45.760 for our descendants to look at us and say

00:11:48.000 gee, our ancestors were kind

00:11:50.640 they were such kind people

00:11:53.120 because I think sometimes the way things are written about us 1.00

00:11:56.980 we're always out here, oh the Tlingits are coming 1.00

00:12:00.160 they're so tough and they're so mean 1.00

00:12:02.040 you just don't even know us, good grief

00:12:05.240 people say, point at one of our aunties 1.00

00:12:09.100 and say, oh, she's so mean. 0.73

00:12:10.340 I was like, that?

00:12:11.060 I don't know.

00:12:11.420 She's so nice.

00:12:13.260 You know, I was teaching Tlingit one time,

00:12:16.100 and this lady came up,

00:12:17.780 and her father was a teacher at Sheldon Jackson,

00:12:21.580 probably at a time when it wasn't a good place to be,

00:12:24.560 when they actively prohibited language use.

00:12:28.760 And she was having a bit of dementia as well,

00:12:32.460 so I think maybe her filter was not quite installed that day.

00:12:36.700 And we were teaching Tlingit,

00:12:38.100 And she came up after, she said, I didn't know that anybody could learn Shinget.

00:12:43.800 I said, well, you live on Shinget land, so you should learn the Shinget language.

00:12:47.640 It's just, everybody should learn it and speak it, it'd be great.

00:12:51.620 And she said, and I also didn't know that Shinget people laughed. 1.00

00:12:57.420 And I said, oh, well, when you were young, like, your people were taking our land and, like, prohibiting our language. 1.00

00:13:07.260 And it was really not a very fun time, but we were still over here telling jokes.

00:13:11.420 And so I don't, you know, and I think about as I was able to communicate with people and then raise children who threw a series of incredible blessings.

00:13:26.160 I watched our kids sit down with these elders

00:13:30.540 and I thought

00:13:32.240 that elder's probably been waiting their whole life

00:13:35.680 to have new people to talk to

00:13:37.940 and now they're speaking Tlingit with that little kid

00:13:41.160 who can understand them

00:13:43.160 and I just thought, what a beautiful moment

00:13:44.860 and I thought, as I continued to come to these people 1.00

00:13:49.800 these old people 1.00

00:13:50.660 and it's a dangerous thing to make 1.00

00:13:53.740 if all your friends are 90 years old

00:13:55.980 i tell my learners i said you're gonna learn this language you're gonna learn how to understand what

00:14:02.620 these people are saying they're gonna share some wonderful stuff with you as one of the few people

00:14:07.740 in the world who could really understand them and then you're gonna lose them but i said we are the

00:14:14.040 bridge we're the bridge between these people at this point where we almost lost everything

00:14:19.220 and look at us now

00:14:21.580 look at us now

00:14:23.260 there's such a bright and amazing

00:14:25.700 and an inevitable

00:14:27.760 future of language

00:14:29.780 reclamation that's going on right now

00:14:31.700 and it's because of the

00:14:33.860 courage of people, I was sitting next

00:14:35.920 to

00:14:36.540 Kaseya Selina Iverson

00:14:39.100 and we're arguing for legislation

00:14:42.020 and I was ready

00:14:43.920 to fight with all these legislators 0.95

00:14:45.720 who were saying silly things 0.95

00:14:47.940 Like, they just don't know. But I think ignorance is not always a good excuse. So one of them said 0.86

00:14:54.740 to me, well, you guys are doing so much for your language, but when my ancestors came here,

00:14:59.980 they stopped speaking Russian, and they started speaking English. And I said, okay, well, Russia

00:15:05.900 still exists. And like, if you don't speak it, you could go there and you could learn.

00:15:11.980 But if these languages stop being used, we'll never recover them. There's nowhere else we

00:15:17.860 can go. This is where they belong. And so sometimes I get so angry and I'm so thankful

00:15:23.320 to have an elder next to me because she was my calming force. And one time I listened

00:15:28.540 to her give testimony and she said, our language saved us. And I thought, of course it did.

00:15:38.120 And it will again.

00:15:47.860 The following audio excerpt is from the premiere of the powerful short film, The River That Untangles One's Mind, by Scotta Ujuls, Gunna Jensen, and Zuni Lance Twitchell, produced by Douglas Jo, Creative Crow Media.

00:16:03.860 We hope you enjoy it as an addition to this incredible conversation.

00:16:17.860 When the patient will come, listen and listen to what their brain hurts.

00:16:28.620 When the patient will die, the patient will die.

00:16:35.460 If the patient is theенить,lia夢 presste.

00:16:42.020 Hintana khad dakt wu aadipa khudz hastsu hastu ya paheyaagul khudziti

00:16:56.020 aahayakh tish kawkh yae sakhaak hastu yaa ayakane

00:17:07.020 Qashqa was Cyril George from Angoon, the basket bay people.

00:17:13.780 He told it to us that, in our Shingit ways of being, the way we are taught, respect for

00:17:20.160 each other, love for each other, there is a spirit in everything they say, we are taught.

00:17:27.640 The salmon in the water, the ones who roam in the interior, the brown bear, them too,

00:17:34.940 have a spirit, just like us. Don't any of you say the wrong things to them. All of you

00:17:42.480 respect them. When we speak our languages, we're engaging with a distinct world view,

00:17:50.380 one that is intrinsically and holistically connected to our environments, our ancestors,

00:17:57.520 non-human relatives, and our communities.

00:18:27.520 I almost was looking at Guna to also do like a foot stomp there because that was

00:18:39.040 incredibly powerful the way that you describe those relationships. And in language

00:18:49.680 from learning from many who are doing the work, the heavy work, the hard work on the ground,

00:18:56.880 Um, as you alluded to, it's, it's also not easy work. Um, that is one part of it, right? Uh, but also, but also is the, as you describe, um, the challenge to move beyond perhaps the tucanay baby Tlingit, as, as Guna described, to having conversations with other people or describing feelings,

00:19:25.940 putting things from English to Tlingit.

00:19:29.980 And you and I have talked about this.

00:19:31.640 There's just, I don't remember what the conversation was,

00:19:34.320 but you're like, well, there's not, it's not quite there.

00:19:36.480 But let me share something with you that's close to what I think you're thinking, Corny.

00:19:42.780 And when we're talking about, you're talking about language is going to save us.

00:19:52.560 what are some moments that that you've seen um that that sort of have brought life to what

00:20:01.900 um the late selena and i i don't recall her her link at name um but what are some of those moments

00:20:08.480 that that have really you've been like wow like this is it this is this is what we've needed or

00:20:15.700 This is what people need to know or need to see.

00:20:20.740 Yeah. 1.00

00:20:21.940 Kulchish.

00:20:23.560 Kaseich, Selina Iverson.

00:20:26.580 So, well, I think of, there's another elder I worked with.

00:20:29.880 Her name is Shikshani, Marge Detson.

00:20:32.680 And I remember I was in Hawaii,

00:20:35.440 and someone was talking about this linguist named Dr. Michael Krause.

00:20:39.580 And I was like, oh, I love his work.

00:20:41.020 His work is so amazing.

00:20:43.360 I've really studied it.

00:20:44.380 And they said, there he is, go talk to him.

00:20:45.860 I was like, what?

00:20:46.580 And so we went and talked to him, and he said, he was a really neat guy.

00:20:53.140 I embarrassed him one time because he came to Juno for a conference,

00:20:56.540 and I was talking about this wonderful moment when I was talking to him

00:21:00.080 because he had written a lot about how we're probably going to lose all these languages.

00:21:05.340 And as he looked at it, he said,

00:21:08.220 we stand to lose more languages in the next 50 years than in the entirety of contact.

00:21:14.380 with European nations and it's incredible to think about it's very challenging to not say okay

00:21:21.680 well it's it's all over but instead to sort of I was so thankful to sit in his kitchen at one point

00:21:29.440 and say yeah I know a young person who who's speaking IAC and learning IAC he said I'll be

00:21:35.960 damned and I said and I've got these three kids I'm raising them and I guess I guess anything I

00:21:42.220 want to them and sing it and they can understand it and he said i'll be damned you know so i said 0.99

00:21:48.280 well my goal is to keep him cussing so i understand like we're doing this thing that

00:21:53.380 people thought was would be impossible but i think colonization tries to get you to believe

00:22:00.180 that it is impossible that it's already over that these things already happened and it also removes

00:22:05.560 the human agency from it and to say like oh these languages just it's real sad what happened it's

00:22:11.840 like, well, it's tragic, and it's horrible, and people did this to our people. We never asked

00:22:17.780 people to come and to take our land and to keep people from speaking languages. Because one of

00:22:24.640 the things that Michael Krause told me to do, he said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to

00:22:30.320 go to these old people who went to these residential schools, went to these boarding schools,

00:22:35.180 and I want you to get them to tell you in the language what happened to them. 1.00

00:22:38.820 because nobody's going to believe you.

00:22:42.340 But you're going to have this story directly told.

00:22:45.380 And so I, Marge Dutson had told me this story and I said,

00:22:49.940 would you tell it and sing it?

00:22:52.160 And would you let me record it?

00:22:54.300 And she said, let me think about it.

00:22:58.000 And so one day she called me and she said, okay, let's do it.

00:23:01.260 So I went to her house and we made this incredible recording.

00:23:05.760 And there was just a few things I remember about it.

00:23:08.680 One is, she talked for about 20 minutes, and then I stopped the camera,

00:23:13.860 and she said, tell me the first thing that I said.

00:23:17.220 And I was sweating.

00:23:19.460 Well, there was something about tlachish, and I could hear it,

00:23:23.540 but I couldn't understand all of it.

00:23:25.040 And she said, she said,

00:23:27.660 And I said, okay, I don't know if I understand that.

00:23:40.580 And so I went to three of the most advanced language learners that I knew,

00:23:45.760 and I said, do you guys know what this is?

00:23:47.140 And they didn't know.

00:23:48.740 And Marge, she told me, she said,

00:23:51.840 well, if I was going to tell you the story,

00:23:53.380 I had to start it with that sentence,

00:23:56.020 which is, it's impossible for you to feel how much we suffered when nobody wanted our language.

00:24:05.120 And then she proceeded to tell the story about being a five-year-old girl, first day of school.

00:24:11.200 Her oldest sister said, don't speak Tlingit at the school. Don't do it, you'll get in big trouble.

00:24:17.520 But she's five years old, and this is the language that she knows. All the kids in the 1920s,

00:24:22.820 They know that language, all the Shingit kids. 1.00

00:24:24.900 They had to go to their own school there.

00:24:28.900 And so she goes and she's speaking Shingit with her friends.

00:24:32.680 And the school teacher, she said she was a big lady.

00:24:35.380 She calls her up in front of the class, 0.71

00:24:37.920 and she grabs her by her hair and lifts her off the ground 0.99

00:24:41.980 and shakes her violently, saying, 1.00

00:24:44.080 I'm going to hit you if you do that again, 0.97

00:24:46.440 and drops her on the ground. 1.00

00:24:49.440 She's hurt. She's scared.

00:24:52.420 She's crying.

00:24:53.400 She goes and grabs her stuff.

00:24:54.820 She's embarrassed.

00:24:56.140 And she makes this long walk home crying and so, so terrified.

00:25:01.460 And then she watches her parents get into this giant fight

00:25:04.340 because her father is going to go murder that teacher for hurting his child.

00:25:09.340 And the mother had to stop him.

00:25:11.800 And then she told me about how she survived all these things.

00:25:15.160 And she told me, she said, they tried to scare it out of me.

00:25:18.380 They tried to beat it out of me.

00:25:19.960 They tried to shame it out of me.

00:25:21.560 but I held on to my language.

00:25:24.180 And that courageous, beautiful woman taught me so much stuff.

00:25:29.540 And I was able to be a person that she could communicate with,

00:25:34.300 and I would be able to tell her,

00:25:36.400 I said, anything you want your grandkids to know, tell me,

00:25:50.060 and I will try to teach them.

00:25:51.560 And so I was able to make that connection and let her know.

00:25:55.920 I said,

00:25:57.560 I said, I feel good that you were stubborn.

00:26:05.240 Because there's this phrase, which means to have fortitude, to have determination.

00:26:12.980 And that's what we inherit from our ancestors, to keep going.

00:26:16.820 And as we look towards what's going on in the world now,

00:26:19.680 as we could challenge people to say,

00:26:23.880 what if all of our languages were equal?

00:26:26.700 I remember I was somewhere and I saw a little information graphics

00:26:32.180 that the official languages of the Yukon are English and French.

00:26:38.460 I thought, well, you're missing about a dozen of them.

00:26:41.140 So fix your face, Yukon, so that we can sort of just be equal.

00:26:49.680 I love that. I'm going to actually, next time I have a meeting with one of our federal government officials, I'm going to say, fix your face.

00:27:00.740 uh and but going going back to so many parts of what what you had just shared and again that sort

00:27:14.920 of you know on this river journey tonight that that pattern of of vulnerability uh matched with

00:27:21.620 courage uh you know has has been um that has been what has continued to be showcased through our

00:27:30.060 people, uh, meaning not just Hlinget people or people in land, um, but, but indigenous peoples

00:27:36.820 all around the world. And, and that's where, when we're talking about language, uh, I recall a quick

00:27:46.200 anecdote for, for those of us here in, in Canada, eh? Um, but, um, you know, admittedly, I, I do

00:27:54.380 speak French. Um, that's not something that's widely shared, but at the time, um, at the time,

00:28:01.080 my mom, when putting me into, into kindergarten, there was an opportunity for me to learn another

00:28:06.580 language. And so she jumped on that. Um, there wasn't, you know, the, the same option to have

00:28:11.740 dunke, daquanje, uh, ringette. Um, but oftentimes it's, it's having other people understand to your

00:28:22.820 point from that place of empathy that example you shared from um the russians who want to learn

00:28:27.580 russian um but but for people who are are french speaking to understand that like who would you be

00:28:33.420 as a francophone person if you didn't speak french is is very much similar to like who are you

00:28:39.380 as a southern tishoni woman if you don't speak your language right like there's it's it's that's

00:28:45.260 a hard truth. And to your point, one that a truth or reality that we did not ask for,

00:28:53.560 but that has been pushed upon us for generations of people. So in this work that you're doing,

00:29:04.460 one theme that I've noticed has been about empathy and about love and about compassion.

00:29:10.780 And how and why is that so important? I mean, for some of us who are on the train, right, we might have some examples or thoughts or reflections around why that's important, but there's a whole lot of people out there that need to know, right?

00:29:28.500 a whole lot of Yukoners that need to know that there needs to be, you know, all nine Yukon First

00:29:34.720 Nation languages acknowledged in the same way that Northwest Territories acknowledges all of

00:29:39.380 their Indigenous languages as official languages. For the record, that is the only region that does

00:29:44.760 that. So what about empathy? What about love? What about compassion in this work?

00:29:58.500 Oh

00:30:01.400 Oh

00:30:05.620 Oh

00:30:17.300 Oh

00:30:25.940 Yes the

00:30:28.500 Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, eres mi amor

00:30:34.060 Oh, oh, oh, oh, eres mi sol

00:30:40.040 Oh, oh, oh, oh, eres mi amor

00:30:45.940 Oh, oh, oh, oh, si quieres regresar al sol

00:30:53.040 Si quieres regresar al sol

00:30:59.280 Si quieres regresar al sol

00:31:04.700 Si quieres regresar al sol

00:31:11.660 Si quieres regresar al sol

00:31:16.760 Si quieres regresar al sol

00:31:22.860 If you want to return to the sun

00:31:28.780 If you want to return to the sun

00:31:34.740 If you want to return to the sun

00:31:52.860 So, coming back to love and compassion, a lot of my work is every day I try and think, how do I improve the lives of indigenous peoples? How can I make the lives of indigenous peoples better?

00:32:12.080 I don't want people to feel ashamed because they don't know their language.

00:32:15.440 I don't want them to feel scared.

00:32:17.640 Sometimes people see me and they say,

00:32:19.040 I was going to speak Hlingit, but I was too nervous because you were there. 1.00

00:32:23.160 And I thought, well, I want you to feel nervous to speak English in front of me. 0.99

00:32:27.420 Like, I must be doing it wrong.

00:32:29.300 Like, what am I doing?

00:32:31.060 But the way I think about it,

00:32:34.880 Kalkaw with Cyril George used to tell this story all the time.

00:32:37.920 He was such a beautiful storyteller, such an amazing person.

00:32:42.940 And Shtiotin Cathy Reddy, she was a person, she brought him to my classes all the time.

00:32:50.180 She brought him to these, there's these recording sessions,

00:32:53.760 and it was the only time I think people recorded him telling stories in Shinget.

00:32:58.020 And we were able to do that about a year before he passed away.

00:33:01.800 It was 92.

00:33:02.260 too. But he would say, in their village of Angun, one time the village got raided, and people were

00:33:09.660 going there to take people to be slaves. And this man, he got away. He escaped.

00:33:17.340 And he was feeling like a sense of relief. It was so scary. And then he hears the cries of his son,

00:33:24.880 who got captured. And he didn't think about it. He just ran straight down there.

00:33:30.040 I'd rather be with my son

00:33:32.100 than have him be a slave by himself

00:33:35.160 and I think about that love we have for our people

00:33:38.640 and that love we have for ourselves

00:33:40.460 and that respect

00:33:41.940 there's so much of a balance I think

00:33:45.260 that comes back into being

00:33:47.140 when we speak our languages

00:33:49.460 it's very hard to be

00:33:50.940 in English

00:33:52.220 it's easy to be very disrespectful

00:33:55.160 very mean

00:33:56.260 very harsh

00:33:57.840 and I think in our languages

00:33:59.840 is, it requires us to think a lot more about our relationships with everybody around us.

00:34:06.260 And then I think as well, like, how do we replace what's been taken when it's been taken

00:34:13.100 so harshly?

00:34:14.780 So there was a person a long time ago, you can find him in the history books, I'm not

00:34:20.560 going to name him, who said, the only good Indian is a dead Indian.

00:34:25.240 and then there was someone else who said

00:34:27.820 well this guy said that, it was really cool 0.95

00:34:29.920 but actually you could kill 0.99

00:34:32.200 the Indian and save the man 1.00

00:34:33.760 and then someone after that thought

00:34:36.000 well what if we built a school

00:34:37.920 and we put them in the school

00:34:39.680 and we made them speak only English

00:34:41.180 and we cut their hair and we get them different clothes 0.53

00:34:43.680 and we force them to be

00:34:45.800 what we are

00:34:47.240 and that was

00:34:48.780 this town

00:34:52.400 on Sheetka

00:34:54.320 In Sitka, Alaska, the boarding school movement in North America begins, and it's the residential school movement here in Canada. These places of such horror, of such suffering, and such intense inhumanity that I think we have so much work to do right now collectively.

00:35:14.060 When I say we, this is everybody who lives on these lands. These are all indigenous lands. Everybody is accountable and responsible. And that's a blessing. It's a blessing to be alive right now and to say we could forge a different future than one of genocide by being aware and alert and saying we need to put just as much energy into language reclamation as the people who were here 100 years ago did.

00:35:43.440 into trying to kill off every single one of these languages. 0.69

00:35:47.300 But through these conscious efforts, 0.53

00:35:49.520 we can find the erasure of inhumanity

00:35:53.340 because the type of colonization that happened here

00:35:55.720 required the colonizer to see the indigenous as non-human.

00:36:01.320 And they also had to become inhumane themselves

00:36:04.220 to torture children.

00:36:06.680 They put chemicals in their mouths. 0.95

00:36:09.140 They hit them.

00:36:09.780 They did so many horrible things.

00:36:11.720 but that doesn't mean that we have to accept those things

00:36:16.220 as what should have happened

00:36:19.100 and we should not accept the results as what should happen

00:36:22.520 but instead we say we all have

00:36:25.120 the future of these languages firmly in our hands

00:36:28.680 and if we can be compassionate people

00:36:32.040 to say like we feel pity in ourselves

00:36:38.820 not to feel sorry not to make people feel bad but to say we can be courageous human beings

00:36:45.640 who can do something better than that who could do something to counter all of those

00:36:51.700 decades and decades and generations of inhumanity by saying there's a coexistence

00:36:59.100 that is healthier for the entire earth and for all of the humans who live on that earth

00:37:03.800 And it's that coexistence, right, that you talk about, the interconnection between all living beings. An elder had once said we were talking about declining moose populations, particularly in my community. I unfortunately don't spend as much time there as I'd like.

00:37:26.140 But the reality is people just aren't getting the same amount of moose.

00:37:30.140 And so as an elder was saying, you know, we're talking about the impacts, what that means.

00:37:35.000 Disco, right? Moose, I guess.

00:37:37.800 Disco.

00:37:38.500 Disco, okay.

00:37:39.680 Tiana has a little disco, like anyone seen those things that you pull?

00:37:43.260 The little antlers go, doo, doo, doo, doo.

00:37:45.160 Anyway, point being, the moose isn't like an American moose or a Canadian moose, right?

00:37:55.300 Like the moose is a moose and it moves around and it does what it needs to do.

00:37:59.060 And that's its job is to do what it needs to do.

00:38:03.180 This language work, right?

00:38:05.060 We've got, you know, lots of people in here who are doing the work and would be remiss if I named, started to name people because there's so many of you and I don't want to miss anyone.

00:38:16.660 But you know who you are. People that are doing this work in Alaska, in Yukon, in Northwest Territories, in Nunavut, in BC, northern Manitoba. How have you seen those connections? How have you seen this, I would say, resurgence, right?

00:38:40.720 Like we're, I forget who the young woman, I think it's J.C. Firth, right?

00:38:44.960 It was like, speak Gwich'in to me.

00:38:46.600 And so she started this whole sort of movement there.

00:38:49.520 How have you seen those connections being forged and like opportunities to grow and learn together?

00:38:55.080 Really curious about that because it sometimes can feel, as I've heard from people who are in this space, kind of isolating, right?

00:39:00.840 Like you're doing all this work.

00:39:02.180 There's not a lot of people you can talk to all the time.

00:39:04.540 Some people have cohorts and groups that they're connected with.

00:39:07.060 Others might be living in their community trying to do this with maybe one other person, one language speaker. That's the reality that we're in. So how have you seen these connections form?

00:39:16.740 well i understand that some people smuggle things across the border and i might have brought some

00:39:24.460 butter up here when i came but sometimes i'll get asked so many quite like they're really trying to

00:39:31.600 grill me on these questions i'll say well you come here a lot don't you i say yeah and they said why

00:39:39.460 I said, because this is all our land

00:39:42.000 this is Shingit Ani, right there

00:39:44.320 right there

00:39:45.140 and so

00:39:47.160 sometimes I think it's hard for people

00:39:50.180 to conceptualize

00:39:51.360 what longevity is when it comes

00:39:54.140 to languages, like if you just hopped

00:39:56.040 in a time machine and you went back

00:39:58.340 500 years and tried

00:40:00.100 to speak and found someone who spoke English 1.00

00:40:02.200 like I don't even know if you could

00:40:04.140 have a conversation, it would take so long

00:40:06.400 to have a conversation

00:40:07.840 because you'd be saying skibbity-toilet-riz,

00:40:10.340 and they'd be like, what is even a toilet, right?

00:40:15.940 But for Tlingit, you're talking about a language 0.89

00:40:20.220 that's been in its same place, and this is not our land.

00:40:23.360 This is our relatives, our northern relatives,

00:40:25.620 who we love and respect.

00:40:27.560 But if you go down to Tlingit country,

00:40:29.880 and you say, well, what if I went back 15,000 years,

00:40:34.320 and you could speak?

00:40:35.120 you'd have to learn the language

00:40:37.880 but if you went back, we listened to these tapes

00:40:39.900 of a hundred years ago and we're like

00:40:41.820 listen to them, they're speaking the same way

00:40:44.040 we are, look at this

00:40:45.960 name

00:40:46.440 look at this name

00:40:49.960 this goes back ice ages

00:40:54.400 we're talking

00:40:55.700 geologic time and our language

00:40:58.060 was still here

00:40:59.000 so who on earth 1.00

00:41:01.280 is qualified to say this language

00:41:03.660 should go away now

00:41:04.680 nobody

00:41:05.880 and so I don't

00:41:08.700 have any hatred for English

00:41:11.280 I think it's fun, I think it's a great language

00:41:13.280 it's a great tool

00:41:14.180 but you know

00:41:15.360 one of the things I guess I want to share with folks

00:41:18.900 is sometimes people talk about how difficult

00:41:21.460 their languages are to learn

00:41:22.860 and I remember us

00:41:25.000 visiting with Kingy C. David Katzik

00:41:27.240 and he said

00:41:28.280 He said Tlingit is not hard.

00:41:46.160 It's not difficult if you have Tlingit thinking.

00:41:50.660 But if you're thinking about it in English all the time,

00:41:53.460 it's going to be difficult because you're going to want to have to translate it to your other brain. 0.96

00:41:57.660 Because if we just keep speaking Shingit, it's going to be easy.

00:42:01.040 So one of the things I think we really need is to develop safe spaces of language use.

00:42:06.400 A place where we can walk in that door and it's going to be Tishoni.

00:42:11.140 We walk in that door, it's going to be Tagish. 1.00

00:42:13.340 We walk in that door, it's going to be Shingit. 1.00

00:42:15.520 So our languages have a space and have a time 0.74

00:42:18.380 and that we can go there and celebrate and be joyous with each other.

00:42:23.780 Because, you know, talking about connections,

00:42:26.940 one time I went to Teslin

00:42:29.480 and it was a very difficult situation 1.00

00:42:31.520 because one of their elders

00:42:35.520 was going to pass away

00:42:36.880 and I came up here

00:42:39.260 and they told me

00:42:40.080 a friend of mine

00:42:41.760 she said my grandma's passing away

00:42:43.200 and she's only speaking Tlingit

00:42:44.660 will you come and talk to her

00:42:45.960 I said I would love to

00:42:47.600 and I went and I had this

00:42:49.600 very intense conversation with her

00:42:51.520 but then you know

00:42:54.400 when we got done I said

00:42:56.080 I have to go

00:42:58.180 and she held my hand

00:43:00.980 and she said in English

00:43:02.020 now I know I'm not alone

00:43:04.100 and I was able to be there

00:43:06.580 and make that connection

00:43:07.480 and then we went to Teslin

00:43:09.780 to take care of some business

00:43:11.160 and it was their clan

00:43:13.320 and they were Dukloidi

00:43:14.360 and they went to talk about

00:43:15.440 their clan business

00:43:16.380 and then

00:43:18.360 there was an elder there

00:43:20.760 and she said

00:43:21.360 what are you here?

00:43:22.160 What are you here for?

00:43:23.200 I said I'm going to teach Lengit

00:43:25.140 and she says

00:43:25.560 do you know a thing? I said, yes. And she started speaking to me and I was like,

00:43:28.760 and we had this wonderful conversation and they came out of the back room. They were done with

00:43:35.220 their clan business. And I said, oh, well, we're going to go. And she said, I haven't talked like

00:43:40.060 that since my dad died. And it's been almost 20 years. And it was just, just to make that

00:43:47.380 connection and just to see that these elders would be able to find someone else to talk to

00:43:53.240 after going probably 60 years without having new people to talk to.

00:43:58.360 So that's the connection that we look at.

00:44:00.800 That's the medicine.

00:44:02.480 That's the energy that we hold on to.

00:44:13.820 Six days, six de mañana.

00:44:18.040 Six days, six de mañana.

00:44:21.300 Horas que sé, horas que me acompañan

00:44:25.460 Horas que sé, horas que me acompañan

00:44:29.500 Con la amor de, con la amor de mañana

00:44:33.340 Con la amor de, amor de mañana

00:44:37.280 Voces que ven, voces que me acompañan

00:44:41.500 Con paz de laberinto que sana

00:44:51.300 All the roses of my singing

00:45:05.700 All the mantos of my santo

00:45:09.700 All the roses of my singing

00:45:13.700 All the mantos of my santo

00:45:17.700 Oh, todas las rosas de mi canto, todos los mantos de mi santo.

00:45:25.740 All the traveling spirits

00:45:44.140 Come to understand

00:45:49.120 For all the bustling teacups 0.97

00:45:53.840 Try to sip the sweet blue scent

00:45:58.480 Mercy for the fallen

00:46:02.680 May they rise to shed the shell 0.52

00:46:07.720 Honey for the children

00:46:12.340 May they be clothed in gold and well

00:46:17.100 And all that we do and all that we say

00:46:21.440 And all that we cry and all that we pray

00:46:25.480 And all that we plant is all that we sing

00:46:29.480 And all what we give is all that we gain

00:46:33.540 Continue in grace, continue in grace

00:46:37.580 Continue in grace, continue in grace

00:46:41.660 that was beautiful i thank you and lots of really moving reflections um that you've shared

00:47:01.020 that you've shared tonight that we've seen um through the video um and i know that there may

00:47:07.780 be people who are here tonight who are curious who um maybe have wanted to uh connect with you

00:47:15.380 before or if you have if there's a question from the crowd per se yeah so the question is um

00:47:24.600 how important are verbs to indigenous languages

00:47:27.680 yeah so we love verbs in chlingit we're like uh we love them so much that we've got special verbs

00:47:38.760 for certain things like and so as a learner you're always going to encounter this because

00:47:43.620 they're like okay so i'm gonna take the guts out of this fish it's like we got a verb for that

00:47:47.920 and like okay i'm out of breath we got a verb for that that's right and so

00:47:52.760 one is we got a verb for so many different and some of them you're like really we got our own

00:47:58.880 okay fine okay ancestors okay but so if a verb goes through so many different changes

00:48:05.900 in um not did any languages and think it is the one that i can speak but one of the things that

00:48:12.540 we say is we say well our verbs don't change for time they change for event so time is not

00:48:19.040 at the driving factor for language. And I think that takes a while to just wrap your head around

00:48:23.760 because it's not about when it happened. It's about whether or not it did happen.

00:48:28.880 But then we have a whole bunch of things that pop up in the front of the verb. So you're going to

00:48:34.440 have this verb root, which is going to be this little short part. Like you might say,

00:48:39.820 tea, to be, ya tea, right? And so they're like, oh, well, Hamlet was like to be or not to be.

00:48:46.740 Well, Hamlets, what is it being? Is it being alive? Is it being like something?

00:48:51.940 We have to know more information.

00:48:54.560 And so you could say,

00:48:56.260 to be, to not be.

00:49:01.060 And that's not the only question, because you have more questions beyond that.

00:49:04.740 Because the verb could change so much.

00:49:07.560 You could say,

00:49:08.080 it cannot be.

00:49:12.580 And so one of the things with our language programs,

00:49:15.940 I remember I was in Hawaii, and they would have these phrases up,

00:49:19.280 and they would sort of like have this, say, this is our phrase of the year.

00:49:23.860 And the phrase of the year that year was, go for the deep-sea fish.

00:49:28.820 Don't just live on all the fish that you can grab right off the surface.

00:49:32.720 So learn some nouns, learn to count, learn some colors.

00:49:37.040 But if you want to sit down with an elder and talk to them,

00:49:40.680 you are going to have to change the verbs around.

00:49:43.520 So this is where we have to build up an entire consciousness inside you.

00:49:50.620 And I just want to say this will not hurt English or French in any way.

00:49:56.400 But also, I think as an individual, I think people get nervous about fully speaking an indigenous language.

00:50:07.420 because it requires you to let go

00:50:10.420 of what you've always known a language to be.

00:50:14.480 And this is the situation we often find ourselves in.

00:50:17.860 We might have someone who's very smart,

00:50:21.000 very capable,

00:50:22.820 but as they learn another language,

00:50:26.060 they have to change their whole way of thinking.

00:50:29.300 And it doesn't mean you're going to lose your sense of self.

00:50:32.960 This is not going to damage you.

00:50:34.900 This is an additive thing.

00:50:37.420 Because colonization also tricks us into thinking there's not enough time, there's not enough money, there's not enough of anything except for everything that's already there.

00:50:48.320 But I think that's a mythology.

00:50:50.600 But we do have to change our approach.

00:50:53.020 We have to say, okay, what are the top five things in my life?

00:50:57.480 One of them is going to have to become number six, and language will take its place.

00:51:02.480 And that just means every single day, go, go, go. 0.79

00:51:06.800 And you also, even as an adult, don't be afraid of sounding silly.

00:51:13.160 I remember someone, they made fun of me one time.

00:51:15.840 They said, he used to stand up and nobody could understand what he was saying.

00:51:21.020 But he just kept talking.

00:51:22.640 And I was like, well, yeah, that's how I got here.

00:51:25.800 You know, it's not like I just stepped on the court and I was Michael Jordan day one.

00:51:30.540 and so like but believe in the long-term goal believe in yourself support each other if you

00:51:38.960 see someone else who's learning an indigenous language don't stop them sometimes we do we'll

00:51:44.720 say don't say it until you could say it right which i thought how strange like can you imagine 0.73

00:51:51.180 if you talk to babies like that stop your babbling baby right i mean just to sort of be kind to

00:51:57.360 people and have an expectation that it's going to get there. I was giving a talk on a reservation

00:52:05.260 and afterwards the principal came up to me and he said, thank you, thank you. What you said was

00:52:13.600 really great. I tried to get someone to teach the language in here, but you know what? They wanted

00:52:17.860 to get paid. And I said, well, if you love this language, wouldn't you do it? I said, okay. I bet

00:52:24.400 in your school, you've got someone who teaches history. What I want you to do is I want you to

00:52:28.300 call them into your office and say, okay, next year we want you to teach the same classes,

00:52:32.860 but we're not going to pay you any money. But if you love history, you'll teach these children for

00:52:38.960 free. And just let me know how it goes, because that's what you're saying to us. So some of the

00:52:45.400 things that we do have to do is we should say, being a language teacher should be a six-figure

00:52:52.980 salary. It should be a career that you can live off of and be comfortable. We should look at our

00:52:59.340 elders, and we should buy them nice houses and move them in. The ones who could speak, like 1.00

00:53:04.080 when I was doing work in Juneau 15 years ago, there were probably five people I went to. I went

00:53:09.660 to their homes on a regular basis, and they lived in one-bedroom apartments, and they lived in 0.94

00:53:15.880 trailers, and they were poor people because they decided to hold on to our language.

00:53:22.680 And I thought, well, it's been so deliberately devalued that what do we do to put value onto

00:53:29.120 our language? What if someone becomes a speaker of our language? Kind of a check. I don't know

00:53:34.760 what to do. Give them $100,000. Just do something. But also, like, we have to consciously put value

00:53:43.420 onto it in ways that we might feel are odd and foreign to us. But it's because we have to

00:53:50.900 demystify the illusion that this is not something useful. This is essential to our survival as

00:53:57.060 indigenous peoples. It doesn't mean you're not indigenous if you don't speak the language.

00:54:02.740 What it means is this whole identity of being Khingit is in jeopardy if we all don't start

00:54:09.680 speaking the language. And this means we're all going to have to take a close look at ourselves, 0.85

00:54:15.280 but not be judgmental and not be harsh with ourselves, but to be kind and to say,

00:54:21.040 hey, let's build a house. And anytime you go in that house, you speak the language.

00:54:26.440 Let's fill it full of wonderful food, great coffee. Let's make it a place where people want to be.

00:54:32.740 And let's be honest about being good, healthy people who don't cause harm.

00:54:37.160 and now let's spend time together

00:54:40.220 make this our thing

00:54:41.880 because again, colonization is going to want us to be

00:54:45.000 like a little mouse in a wheel

00:54:46.280 run, run, run, run, run, run, run

00:54:47.660 until you just die

00:54:48.860 but it can be something different

00:54:52.920 and that doesn't mean

00:54:54.360 well

00:54:56.280 what it means is our identity

00:55:01.300 does not have to be only what is prescribed to us

00:55:04.380 but we have to create those safe spaces

00:55:07.080 of language use, and we have to make it places that people want to be, and where people feel

00:55:13.320 welcome. And this, you know, we're going to have to be kind, we're going to have to be loving with

00:55:18.040 each other. But this one elder, like, I was working with him, and I packed up all my recording gear,

00:55:25.760 I was getting ready to leave, and he said, let me tell you something my mom used to always say.

00:55:29.860 And he said this wonderful thing in Shinge. And I could understand it all, but I took out my phone,

00:55:36.260 and I hit record, and I said, could you say it one more time?

00:55:40.200 And it's such a beautiful thing, and it comes down to

00:55:42.840 do not speak with ill will and do things with ill will

00:55:48.360 to the people of the world who are just like you.

00:55:51.660 Just put love and kindness in your heart.

00:55:54.820 The world spins around, and what you put out there is going to come back.

00:55:58.760 And if you're causing harm,

00:56:01.540 then maybe a big sickness is going to come upon you.

00:56:04.000 but if you just put love and kindness in your heart

00:56:07.280 when your life is spinning out of control

00:56:09.580 those people you are kind with

00:56:11.880 maybe they will help you

00:56:13.340 and it's just such a core thing of who we are as people

00:56:17.860 to be kind people

00:56:19.060 to pay attention to each other

00:56:20.380 to help each other out

00:56:21.480 so as we're raising babies

00:56:23.200 this is what they did in Hawaii

00:56:24.720 as they raised babies

00:56:26.060 they thought let's just do this together

00:56:28.140 and I don't know what we do

00:56:29.860 maybe we all move somewhere

00:56:31.280 and we all just live somewhere

00:56:32.560 and we just behing it

00:56:33.720 and we just figure it out

00:56:35.700 because we've got groups here, groups there, groups here.

00:56:38.840 But we've got to support each other

00:56:40.180 so that we can stand with this language

00:56:41.760 and not give up.

00:56:46.680 You're not going to give up.

00:56:52.520 You're going to succeed with love and kindness.

00:57:03.720 Thank you for listening to this episode of For The Wild's collaboration with Illuminating World Views, made by Ayanna Young, Erica Ekrem, Julia Jackson and Victoria Pham.

00:57:17.240 The music from this episode is from Cole Pulse's new album, Lands and Eternal, courtesy of Leaving Records, Corey Fader and Paloma.

00:57:26.540 to learn more about this series and access the study guide

00:57:30.480 please visit forthewild.world forward slash IW

00:57:35.060 thanks for listening

00:57:56.540 Thank you.

For The Wild - October 09, 2025

ILLUMINATING WORLDVIEWS on Land, Language, and Love S1_2

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