Native American literature: themes and cultural significance

Native Americans

The introduction of the video discusses a prophesy that "language would leave" and then come back. The language is noted as a metaphor for the person -- "It is not the language that is lost, it is you." This sets the theme for the video wherein the Wampanoag language, an Algonquin language, is representative of the people and the heritage of the people is restored along with the language.

The last fluent speaker of the language is believed to have died more than a century ago, but the language lives on in many place names in Southeastern Massachusetts. Successive generations grew to believe that the people and the language were gone. The people were separated from their land, and the Christian religion destroyed much of the culture. A yellow fever epidemic had already wiped out much of the native population before the Pilgrims arrived in the area, weakening their ability to retain their land. This was a major part of the cultural and linguistic decline among these people.

One lady's ancestors spoke to her in a dream and this began the path to restoring the language. The tribal leaders made the decision to try to revive the language and have set up courses to teach people the language. The written language still existed because many towns had the language in their civil records. This is the largest corpus of Native written language in North America. Many Wampanoag had learned to read and write their language and that provides the material for those learning the language today.

They brought in Ken Hale, a linguist from MIT, to help with the speech aspect and the teaching aspect of the language. One lady named Jessie Little Doe got a research fellowship at MIT, which has a leading linguistics program.

They learned a lot about their culture as a result of learning the language, such as their creation myth that the first man and woman were created out of pine trees. There are many different words for water, depending on the type. The way that phrasing of losing one's land is important -- you fall down, your feet leave the ground. There are animate and inanimate nouns, so for example the stars move across the sky and these are animate nouns, while the sun does not move so it is an inanimate noun. The first Bible published in the Western Hemisphere was in Wampanoag, because missionaries wanted to convert the people. Christianity was used to break the culture and spirit of the native people. A lot of the written language comes from records about people's conversion experiences.

Slide One: The Wampanoag language is the eponymous language of the people of Southeastern Massachusetts, the area that includes Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard and the adjacent land. Prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims, the people had lived as far north as Cape Ann and throughout New England but were mostly wiped out by a yellow fever epidemic. After that English arrived, they began publishing Bibles in Wampanoag in order to hasten the conversion process. Through the 17th and 18th centuries, there were extensive written records in the language including both civil documents and stories about issues of the day, including conversions. This gives Wampanoag the largest written corpus of any native language in North America, something that has proven beneficial in reviving the language. The language would eventually be discouraged and the last fluent speaker died over a century ago.

Slide Two: There is a now a revival effort underway. Jessie Little Doe is a Wampanoag lady who had a dream about bringing the language back. She spearheaded an effort to bring back the language, working with Ken Hale and other linguistics at MIT. They used the old texts and pronunciation from other Algonquin languages. A program to teach Wampanoag has been underway for about ten years now.