By Jane Valencia
David Turnipseed is a language instructor with the Puyallup Tribal Language Program. In Part 1, David shared how Lushootseed, the language of the indigenous peoples of the Puget Sound region, had gone from nearly zero language speakers in 2014 to an estimated 500+ who speak it an hour or more a day. Enjoy Part 2 of this series.
From a beginning learner in 2018, David has contributed to the language’s revitalization. “I’ve gotten to transcribe and translate some of those recordings, like those of my great Grandma Hattie Cross. We’ve done storytelling nights where we share our traditional narratives, all kinds of projects.”
This revitalization has spread beyond the tribal communities, and even to Vashon.
David’s children attend the Vashon Wilderness Program every week. Occasionally, he visits the program and shares basic phrases and aspects of the language with the kids and teachers. With any group new to the language, David likes to share words that are onomatopoeias – words that sound like the thing that they are.
“We have this phrase, ti txʷəlšucid gʷəɫ ti swatxʷixʷtxʷəd, ‘The Twulshootseed language comes from the land.’ So I play a fun guessing game to get things started, I’ll say a word like x̌ʷəlč.”
x̌ʷəlč is the sound you hear as the waves wash onto the shores. It means saltwater or Puget Sound.
“Then I have the group try to guess what that word is in English. Both kids and adults love that, and they get super into it and enthusiastic trying to figure it out. So I did that with the Vashon Wilderness Program group, and I taught them some basic phrases and explained to them that anything that they can do to make our language visible, normal, and welcome is a great benefit to the people of the Puyallup tribe, and our efforts to speak our language. No First Language speakers are left, so all of us are learning our language as a second language.
David explains further. “We’re all learning it right? There are some tribal members who, for a wide variety of reasons, haven’t learned their language yet. They know how to say, ‘Hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ some basic phrases, but either they haven’t been able to attend our classes, or they haven’t been able to use our website resources yet.
“But when everybody’s speaking it, and when it’s normal and comfortable and expected, and not this weird or strange or a unique thing, it makes it that much easier for anyone in the Puyallup tribe who’s wanting to learn their language. If they’re a new speaker of the language, it’s making it that much more comfortable for them to have an opportunity to practice and use their language to communicate.”
David then went on to answer some of my questions and others he is often asked.
How might someone on Vashon learn Lushootseed?
The Puyallup Tribal Language website at PuyallupTribalLanguage.org is definitely the best place to start. On the site are videos, resources, audio. The Puyallup Tribal Language Program YouTube channel also offers learning resources, and shares songs and storytelling in the language, giving viewers a rich opportunity to hear the language and glimpse the cultural context.
I’m non-native. I’m is it okay for me to be learning and speaking the Lushootseed language? The answer is, yes. We want everyone and anyone to be learning and speaking our language, because that’s how we make it normal and visible, and that much easier to use our language to communicate and to revitalize our language.
What about sacred topics in your language? Anything that’s on our website is very purposefully and thoughtfully put there. So, if some sort of content is on our website, it’s meant to be used by anyone and everyone. If there is sacred content that we don’t want just anyone and everyone having access to, we don’t put it on our website. We’re very careful about that.
Should I teach the language? Probably not. Your best bet is to take the time and effort to build relationships with speakers of the language who are from the community. It could be us folks at the Puyallup Tribal Language Program or someone from any of the Lushootseed-speaking communities who is a speaker of the language.
How can people on Vashon be helpful and supportive of language revitalization and the Puyallup tribal people? Sometimes non-natives are very excited to share with me, as a Puyallup tribal member, all the things that they know about my tribe and about the tribes in this area. I think they’re coming from a really good place, and are trying to show me that they’re not ignorant or racist, and that they’ve put in the effort, and have learned some things about my people and my history.
What happens sometimes is, in their enthusiasm, they will either interrupt me when I’m trying to explain something to them, or not take the time to listen to something that I’m saying that might contradict some either outdated information that they have, or is just a different version of our history and what’s going on. And what I have to tell people sometimes is, Hey, you have a wonderful opportunity right now to speak directly with a living, breathing member of this tribe that you’ve been reading about in books or on websites or seen in videos. So, let’s be right here in this moment and build this connection and relationship, because I might have information that you can’t get anywhere else.
We are an oral history society. A lot of things are not written down anywhere.
Another thing that comes up sometimes is people will learn a little bit about our language and our culture and our history and then they’ll present themselves as experts on the topic. And I’m not an expert on the topic. All of my elders and all of the people who I consider very, very knowledgeable,would say very humbly, No way, I’m not an expert on this topic either. A lot of the true history of our people has simply been lost to the sands of time, because 90% of our population was wiped out by disease upon First Contact, way back in the 1700s.
And so what we know today is a very, very small amount of our rich history from all of our people and all of our ancestors. So I would just caution anyone who feels very confident talking about the indigenous peoples of these areas to take a step back, humble yourself and realize that we only know a small amount of the true history and true culture of our people.
That’s not to say that our culture is not alive and well. It very much is. didiʔɫ čəɫ ʔa. We are still here, the Puyallup tribe and our culture and our language and our people. We are very much thriving. Like I mentioned earlier, we went from almost 0 people speaking the language to 500 plus, and the number keeps growing. So I don’t want anybody to get the wrong idea that we’re lost and gone completely. We’re still here.
Are the First People of this Island, the sx̌ʷəbabš, the Swift Water People, part of the Puyallup tribe?
The Swift Water people were both Puyallup and sx̌ʷəbabš, Swift Water people. They were a subsection of the wider Puyallup community and people. Our traditional lands extend way, way out from where our current reservation is. Our home was all the way down to Gig Harbor, and across the water, and all of Vashon Island, and then following the Puyallup River all the way up to the mountain.
And it wasn’t hard-defined with borders and boundaries, because all of our relatives nearby were cousins and friends and family. We were all intermarried between different tribes. I don’t know how accurate this analogy is, but the same way that I’m both a resident of Pierce County and Tacoma, and I live in this particular neighborhood of Tacoma. It’s kind of like that. You have the wider Puyallup territory, and the sx̌ʷəbabš; the Swift Water people were a particular subset of that.
I want to move beyond land acknowledgement. Besides learning some of the language myself, is there a concrete action I can take to support the Puyallup tribe and language revitalization?
We have a donate button on our website. Any money that you send to the Puyallup Tribal language Program goes directly to become physical tangible learning materials for people in our community, such as books, and into signs such as you have throughout Vashon. [The Swift Water Sign Project]
Anything else you’d like to share?
We also have a tab on our website under native American History month, with a lot of really helpful resources for talking and learning about the Puyallup tribe regarding our history – things like boarding schools, and why is language revitalization even needed in the first place. That specific section of the website was designed with teachers in public schools as the main audience, but anybody can benefit from the resources there.
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As I thank David for his generosity of time, information, and reflection, he closes with:
“We have a particular set of values that guide us here at the Language Program, and it’s ‘be kind, be helpful, be sharing.’ I’m just trying to live up to those values.”
To David and the Puyallup Tribal Language Program, hawadubš čələp. Thank you folks!
For more information, and to begin learning Twulshootseed, please visit: https://www.puyalluptriballanguage.org
Video – David teaches how to say Swift Water People in Twulshootseed: On youtube, go to the Puyallup Tribal Language channel, find the playlist, Lushootseed Names/Place Names, and find the video there. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwof31-4YxA
