Following in the footsteps of the wolf: connecting scholarly minds to ancestors in Indigenous language revitalization

čuucqa: Indigenous PhD student

I would like to introduce you to my friend and graduate supervisor T’łat’łaḵuł, assistant professor of Indigenous Education at the University of Victoria. I first met T’łat’łaḵuł in 2010 at a Master-Apprentice Program (MAP) language immersion (Hinton, Vera, & Steele, 2002) training. We were both undertaking 3 years of language immersion with our respective elders, T’łat’łaḵuł in her Kwak’wala language and I in ḥiḥiškʷiiʔatḥa, a dialect of nuučaan̓uł. I knew that T’łat’łaḵuł worked in government, but more recently I found out that she was the Director of Aboriginal Education for the provincial government at that time. I came to know that T’łat’łaḵuł was undertaking doctoral studies while she was learning her language through the MAP language immersion approach. I could not have predicted that she would one day become my doctoral supervisor. When we first met, she was raising her granddaughter, and through those language immersion training sessions I had the privilege of watching T’łat’łaḵuł do some impressive language immersion demonstrations with her Kwak’wala Elder Wosasugwi’lakw Florence Hunt-Vessey and young granddaughter Wadzidala̱ga Emily.

In the nuučaan̓uł way, it is considered honest and humble to speak publicly about others, rather than to speak about oneself. T’łat’łaḵuł and I apply an Indigenous relational approach to our research by introducing each other in relation to our respective families, our communities, and our place-based connections.

T’łat’łaḵuł: Assistant Professor, Indigenous education

G̱ilakas’la (greetings). I would like to introduce you to my friend and graduate student, čuucqa. When I first met čuucqa at a MAP training session, I was struck by the love she had for her language. Participating in the training with our language mentors, čuucqa and I were learning how to use the MAP method (Hinton et al., 2002) to recover ancestral languages into our lives. čuucqa’s application of the MAP model stood out for me. She understood the principles of the MAP and demonstrated the courage and willingness to take risks that I believe are essential to becoming a speaker. I was also struck by the way čuucqa’s family had embarked on this language journey together. čuucqa arrived at the MAP sessions with her nursing baby and her younger sister who cared for the baby, making it possible for čuucqa to participate in the training. I learned that čuucqa and her young family had recently moved, returning to her traditional territory to be near ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ speakers. She continues to impress me with her deep commitment to her language.

Indigenous language revitalization as a developing practice and field of scholarship

Indigenous communities in Canada are undertaking considerable work to revitalize their languages and to privilege the knowledge that our ancestors cultivated—knowledge systems that have been under attack for a century and a half and have been misrepresented in racist and inaccurate ways within education in this country. There is a growing community of practice and scholarship in the field of Indigenous language revitalization as we work to better understand effective approaches to recovering our languages (Coronel-Molina & McCarty, 2016; Simons & Lewis, 2013).

Revitalization of endangered Indigenous languages involves unique issues and challenges. Included in these challenges are few fluent speakers available to teach the languages, the passing of elder speakers who hold specialized cultural and grammatical knowledge, limited availability of language resources, and social-emotional barriers resulting from colonization and assimilation policies and practices. The urgency of the work is driving the need to know more about effective ways to teach and learn Indigenous languages. Emerging is a strong desire to recover languages in ways that honor Indigenous worldview and knowledge and strengthen spiritual and cultural connections. We see ancestral language as a means to access the fundamental knowledge base that has arisen from experiences and interactions with the places where those languages live.

In BC, there is increasing use of communicative and experiential language learning models (Kell, 2014) such as the MAP approach (Hinton et al., 2002). The MAP approach pairs a fluent speaker with a language learner to create one-to-one immersion sessions while doing everyday activities (Daniels, Gessner, & Virtue, 2012). The First Peoples’ Cultural Council (FPCC) began supporting language teams through the MAP in 2008. They continue to administer this language initiative under the name Mentor-Apprentice Program. First Peoples’ Cultural Council supports MAP teams to complete 300 hr of one-to-one immersion over a period of 1 year. First Peoples’ Cultural Council is seeing success through this approach as apprentices become more fluent in their languages (FPCC, 2016). In the MAP model, language learning takes place in the context of relationship and can include restoration of cultural values, knowledge and practices. In acknowledgment of the interconnectedness of language and culture, the FPCC MAP Handbook, advises “[w]hen setting your language learning goals remember that language is used in all day-to-day activities which make up a culture i.e. food, clothing, art, songs, dance, family, friends, relationships, technology and spirituality” (Daniels et al., 2012, p. 8). Master-Apprentice Program is one example of a strategy that allows for a more wholistic and Indigenized approach to language learning and teaching.

The movement toward wholistic and Indigenized approaches to language teaching and learning is parallel to approaches in BC’s developing body of research in Indigenous language revitalization. Within the last decade, BC has seen Indigenous language revitalization theses by emerging Indigenous scholars at the doctoral level (Johnson, 2013; McIvor, 2012; Michel, 2012; Rosborough, 2012; Thompson, 2012). Each of these scholars completed doctoral studies in faculties and departments where there were supervisors able to support research in Indigenous language revitalization. We are not aware of any doctoral programs in Canada that are specific to Indigenous language revitalization. Some of those scholars moved directly into teaching in the Masters in Indigenous Language Revitalization (MILR) program (https://www.uvic.ca/education/prospective/indigenous/courses/index.php) at the University of Victoria, which was developed and launched in 2012 to support the recovery efforts being undertaken by language champions and activists. It advances Indigenous language scholarship through a program of graduate coursework, networking, ideas exchange, and strengthening leadership skills specific to Indigenous language revitalization.

čuucqa

When I started graduate school alongside 17 fellow students in Indigenous Language Revitalization at the University of Victoria, Indigenous professors T’łat’łaḵuł and T’nax̱wtn Peter Jacobs taught the first courses. The learning environment that emerged in that introductory time was built around who we are as Indigenous people, as Indigenous scholars, and around who we are as social, cultural, and spiritual people. Since that time we have been guided to conduct scholarly research in ways that we self-identify as authentically Indigenous.

T’łat’łaḵuł embodies a spirit of Indigenous sharing and collaboration in Indigenous language revitalization. As an educator, her depth of caring for her own language extends to her students and to their languages. Particularly moving in her classes were the stories she shared from her doctoral dissertation, stories that reveal Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw understandings about a history of being colonized, countered by efforts to maintain and reclaim Indigenous knowledge and worldview as valuable in the local and global contexts.

T’łat’łaḵuł

Preparing to teach SKALs: Indigenous Epistemologies, my first graduate level course in the MILR program, I sought out the advice of my friend, Indigenous scholar, Dr Wanosts’a7 Lorna Williams. Wanosts’a7 was instrumental in the development and delivery of the MILR degree and had taught the first offering of the course I was about to teach. Wanosts’a7 told me that my job was to ensure the Indigenous worldview of the students had an essential place in their scholarship and that each of them would value the community knowledge that they brought with them. I understood the importance of placing this course at the beginning of the MILR journey. This first course would set the stage for the participants’ experience as graduate students.

Beginning in a good way meant creating the conditions to develop a strong community where we would learn from each other. We began the program, not at the university campus, but in one of the local Indigenous communities. During the first week of classes, we had a local Indigenous knowledge keeper join our circle. As a knowledge keeper, he introduced us to the place we had come to study, shared the teachings of the land, and guided our process of coming together. We opened our sessions in a circle, acknowledging the territory where we gathered and greeting the day with prayer and song. We invited students to show up by sharing their stories. As Indigenous scholars embarking on an academic journey, it was important to share who we are and where we come from.

čuucqa

I am inspired to share my own stories because of T’łat’łaḵuł’s doctoral research and because of her teachings in graduate courses. To preface my story, I will tell you about ḥaw̓iłsuuʔis:

[ḥaw̓iłsuuʔis, as told by Chuuchkamalthnii Ron Hamilton], is one of four nuučaan̓uł spirit chiefs, and is the chief of the realm beyond the horizon. ḥaw̓iłsuuʔis communicates to humans through dreams, visions, and moments of inspiration which can contribute to creativity. (Green, 2013, p. 159)

The same colonial history which silenced Indigenous languages in Canada has altered and quieted many Indigenous ancestral teachings, including teachings on our nuučaan̓uł spirit chiefs; those teachings need to be restored along with our language.

My own language revitalization journey began with a metaphysical encounter on the beach with a crab who yelled at me: “Learn your language! Do whatever it takes!” That was an admonition that shook me to my very core with its absolute urgency and truth. I would say I accepted my life’s work at that moment when I replied “Ok, I’ll do it,” even though I had not considered the possibility or even the viability that I could learn my own language since I was a child, listening to elders tell us that we needed to save our language. I immediately looked to the language efforts of my friend Kihlgula.G̱aaya Severn Cullis-Suzuki who was having some local success learning to speak Haida as an adult with one elder through BC’s pilot program that trained willing learner–teacher teams in Hinton, Vera and Steele’s (2002) MA language immersion approach. It was Severn’s hopeful example and encouragement that led me to ask my elders to teach me how to speak.

When I told my elders about the crab who yelled at me, they said it was probably my ancestor čuucqa speaking to me through the crab. That encounter with crab on the beach allowed me to feel for the first time the reality of my living Indigenous language, which caused me to seek out methods by which a language could be acquired.

Through ancestral Haida story and a recent ancestral dream communication story, Bell (2016) describes how the supernatural “Greatest Crab” from that same Haida island has continuously had a role throughout history both in association with medicine men and through supernatural interactions with Indigenous people on Haida Gwaii and has a pivotal role now in encouraging people to become committed learners of Indigenous language. When I encountered Greatest Crab, I had no prior knowledge of any supernatural crab, either Haida, ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ, or other First Nations. Indeed, metaphysical communication with crab is ancient; it continues to happen contemporarily, with crab assertively highlighting the importance of strengthening ancestral language and teachings.

In that spirit, I would like to share the following short story, which comes from my Education Masters project: 4 days of ḥiḥiškʷiiʔatḥa language immersion on ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ land in partnership with my parents, who operate Hooksum Outdoor school on our ancestral home at ʔayisaqḥ in nuučaan̓uł territory on Vancouver Island. The MILR coursework prepared me to undertake ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ centered research that targets spiritual, cultural, land-based learning. Although I am an intermediate speaker, I was able to teach this language immersion course on my own by verifying all of the planned language immersion lessons through the fall with elders before bringing the students out to our remote territories in the winter solstice of 2015. Afterward, I was able to create and deliver a 3-month curriculum of immersion lessons based on the models created through that project for nuučaan̓uł second language primary and elementary classes.

hisiikmitniš yacckʷiiʔak qʷayac̓iik: we followed in the footsteps of the wolf: a contemporary story from our ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ land

. . . [nuučaan̓uł have] a worldview that perceives reality to have meaning and purpose and understands everything as happening for a reason. (Atleo, 2011, p. 94)

An emphasis on speaking ancestral place names on ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ land brought us to hike our territory and revealed to me that our stories are still there and that our stories are still strong. When we followed wolf tracks back (to our ancestral home), it was reaffirmed to me that the intersection between the supernatural and physical realms in the work of Indigenous language revitalization is something we should heed. In the length between two areas we belong to as kinkʷaaštaqumł people, we walked in the path of the wolf. That wolf was our guide between the end of our kinkʷaaštaqumł territory at the end of hiłw̓inʔa until ʔayisaqḥ, where our territory begins anew. As we walked in that path, we were saying ancestral names into the misty air in the places where they have been spoken forever. As we walked, our whole universe rose to welcome us, to greet us, and to watch over each footstep, to make us really feel like that is a place where we belong (Rorick, 2016, p. 26).

In the evening after a language game my father talked about our kinkʷaaštaqumł family history, about clan (house) boundaries, and about wars between tribes. That day our hike had begun in an area within the traditional ownership of our kinkʷaaštaqumł house, and it was striking to me that where he marked the gap in boundaries for our house’s ownership was exactly the stretch of hike where the footsteps of a wolf appeared and continued all the way back to the next area of kinkʷaaštaqumł ownership-ʔayisaqḥ. For me as a language activist, following in the footsteps of the wolf has come to mean following in the path laid out for us by our ancestors. This path is tied to our land through our language. It is our desire to restore our languages to health and to a place of higher thinking once again. In delivering my research project, I learned that effective scholarship can take place in environments rich with connection to local spiritual knowledge. The restoration of Indigenous knowledge systems rooted in Indigenous epistemology requires the integration of spiritual knowledge acquisition strategies, including prayer, metaphysical research, and ceremony in the reconstruction or continuation of fundamental knowledge bases.

T’łat’łaḵuł

As I watch students’ research unfold, I feel good about the path we are on. Their research questions are connected to the language work of their communities and their approaches are built on foundations of Indigenous knowledges. I see them drawing on the work of Indigenous scholars who have created openings in the academy for Indigenous forms of scholarship. I see them asserting their identities and ways of knowing while doing meaningful research that contributes to the understandings of Indigenous language revitalization.

My scholarship, too, rests on the foundation prepared by Indigenous scholars. In “placing Kwakwa̱ka̱’wakw stories, language, and epistemology at the heart of my research, I engage in a process that strengthens my sense of identity and place in the world” (Rosborough, 2012, p. 22). Through learning and speaking Kwak’wala, I strengthen my connection to my ancestors, to cultural responsibilities, and to spiritual ties. The relationship is reciprocal in that these ancestral, cultural, and spiritual connections are a source of knowledge that supports me to learn and speak my language.

čuucqa’s research project took place in a context of cultural and spiritual knowing. At the core of her research was her desire “to take the language back onto the land” (Rorick, 2016, p. 2). She worked with family both as a source of guidance and as participants in her project. Through the development and delivery of a ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ place-based language learning course, čuucqa exemplified an Indigenous approach to research that honors ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ ways of knowing.

Indigenous approaches to scholarship

Indigenous scholars have identified a need to indigenize research in the academy; a need to transform Eurocentric research paradigms by including Indigenous ways of knowing in both design and outcomes (Battiste, 2008; Battiste & Youngblood Henderson, 2000; Rosborough, 2012; Smith, 1999). In the academy, our knowledge can be included, but for our research to become impactful, it should connect to the community, where it is needed.

Indigenous knowledge needs to be central to our research practice. Our research needs to be rooted in Indigenous understandings in ways that Indigenous people can recognize aspects of themselves in the work (Rorick, 2016; Rosborough, 2012). Narrative inquiry allows for the explicit identification of how the researcher’s identity and positioning affects the research. Our researcher narratives focus on the meanings and insights that we draw from our experiences while concurrently maintaining a lengthy Indigenous history of reciprocity and accountability by teaching through story (Archibald, 2008; Rosborough, 2012). For Cajete (1994), “Story, expressed through experience, myth, parables, and various forms of metaphor, is an essential vehicle of Indigenous learning” (p. 30). Wilson (2008) identifies the reality of lived Indigenous experience as the foundation of his Indigenous research and emphasizes that Indigenous research must be grounded in “the lives of real persons as individuals and social beings, not on the world of ideas” (p. 60). In the tradition of teaching through story, relationships and reciprocity are central, and within Indigenous narrative research practice, we draw on the research practice of Indigenous scholars in the context of where we stand in continual relationship to our Indigenous communities.

čuucqa

Learning from Indigenous scholars and educators strengthened my foundation of knowledge around language revitalization within Indigenous communities in a way that I could not have predicted. I trace my pursuit of this Indigenous language revitalization knowledge to that singular incident with crab on the beach, and I know in my heart that these studies connected directly to the path my ancestors have laid out for me. To inform my graduate research, I was encouraged to look to my Indigenous roots and to tap into my commitment to revitalizing ḥiḥiškʷiiʔatḥa. The solidarity I felt with our professors and fellow cohorts along with my 3 years of language immersion study in ḥiḥiškʷiiʔatḥa were my inspirational drivers through that Master’s program. Being part of this cohort fostered a strengthening of my own ancestral connections, which has been an unbroken part of our lives as ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ people until recently. Learning our Indigenous languages, finding ways to effectively teach our languages, and now academic research require a willingness to enter into the unknown. The same is required to receive ancestral teachings and to trust one’s intuition.

Indigenous languages and reconciliation

Language shapes our epistemology: the way we think, perceive, and organize the world in culturally meaningful ways, and our First Nations languages provide irreplaceable ways of organizing the social, natural, and metaphysical world, based on our ontology, which is the ancient, cumulative human experience and associated assumptions of First Peoples. Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, denied and rejected for so long, hidden from the education systems in this country, need contemporary people to carry the teachings forward. We have come to believe that it is important to share with the world the ways in which we can live right here, on this land, even though we face barriers within colonial assimilationist systems, barriers with the social-emotional issues that have arisen from residential schools, and barriers like the fact that we have limited time left to learn directly from our fluent first language speakers.

In our opinion, the greatest barrier may be that many of us have been so shamed and so convinced of the invalidity of Indigenous voices that we react adversely when we hear our own people speaking our language and speaking about our teachings. We so rarely experience our own pedagogies outside of ceremonial arenas that it can seem out of the ordinary, or out of place, stirring up shameful feelings or fear of retribution for oppressed people. We have come to believe that we need to look past colonial views of talent and success, grab our ancestral ways, and bring them into conciliation with Canada. The Canadian federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments have been called to redress these issues and the lingering effects from residential schools. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action (2015) prescribes corrective actions for 94 targeted areas that would ameliorate the post-residential school relationship between Indigenous peoples and settlers, ranging from child welfare, to education, to language and culture, among many other socio-political domains.

The same colonial history which silenced Indigenous languages in Canada has altered and quieted many Indigenous ancestral teachings; those teachings need to be restored along with our languages. We ask people to consider the ways in which learnings up to the present intersect with Indigenous ancestral ways. Conciliation starts with making efforts toward equalizing the knowledge systems within ourselves and influencing outer systemic change by integrating Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies into research and teaching methodologies.

Spiritual and metaphysical as learning strategies

Supernatural encounters can have long-lasting effects on the attitudes and beliefs of both experiencers and those who hear their narratives, and they can consist of emotional reaction that is also a characteristic of dreaming. Contributing to this are memories of experiences characteristic of one form of consciousness that can transfer to and shape perceptions in other states of awareness. (Lohmann, 2003). Atleo’s (2004) nuučaan̓uł centered theory of tsawalk, “one,” views the nature of existence from the view that everything is one, connected, inclusive of the spiritual and metaphysical realms, and he proposes that nuučaan̓uł foundational principles drawn from origin stories can complement Western principles to expand our collective understanding of the universe. Academic research is enriched when we can draw on a number of learning strategies for gathering knowledge.

Spirituality, inclusive of supernatural communication, is one of four major [nuučaan̓uł] learning strategies (Atleo, 2010). As Indigenous language revitalization scholars who facilitate community-based language efforts, we must connect Indigenous ways of knowing to the literature on our research topics. We can make these connections in a way that preserves Indigenous worldview by recognizing the interrelationship between the physical and metaphysical realms that help to shape our lives in waking, dreaming, learning, and teaching.

To live in continuity with our ancestors as nuučaan̓uł scholar Atleo (2004) urges, we must strive to maintain the dignity with which ancestral ways have been and continue to be passed from one generation to the next:

If we are to live in continuity as ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ people, then we must carry on the ways of our ancestors and we must continue to create stories on our land that continuously strengthen our relationship to that land. Those experiences and those stories reinforce our stewardship values, our knowledge bases and our spirituality which ties us firmly to that land. (Rorick, 2016, p. 2)

The goal of čuucqa’s research was to create an opportunity for ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ people to interact and learn through our language and culture, our spirituality, our lands and waters in the same way that ḥiškʷiiʔatḥ have since the beginning of time.

Conclusion

Indigenous language revitalization research in the academy calls us to bridge these linguistic, metaphysical, and ecological knowledge systems and requires that we train our critical minds both in the academy and in our own languages. In the academy, equity starts with making efforts toward equalizing the knowledge systems within ourselves and influencing outer systemic change by integrating Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies into research and teaching methodologies. To do this, we should begin from our Indigenous worldviews and our ways of knowing to inform the direction of our research (Absolon, 2011; Wilson, 2008).

As Indigenous research strengthens and asserts Indigenous knowledge and values, it contributes directly to Indigenous communities; relationships and reciprocity shape Indigenous reality, and wholistic scholarly engagement speaks to the academic audience while giving back to Indigenous communities, furthering Indigenous research design that connects back to the ways of our ancestors.