Chinook Jargon Gathering 2025 (Fort Langley), last thoughts

The 7th Chinook Jargon gathering in 27 years was a grand old time 🤩 Naika wawa masi kopa kanawei-tilihum tlaska chako! 

(“I thank everyone who came there!”) — from several countries.

Image credit: Fort Langley National Historic Site, Parks Canada, on Facebook

Special recognition to Sandra Borger of Fort Langley National Historical Site of Canada for hearing out out idea of meeting up there.

The Ft Langley volunteers and staff also outdid themselves: Nette, Gord, and…I should have been writing names down…!

You have to give an acknowledgment to Paisley, Sadie, Per Lio, “Iht Alex”, “Mokst Alex” (I’m not sure who has rights to the Iht lol), Maxwell, Tiyaha, Natasha, Nico, Simone, and a good number of folks beyond that for putting us at critical mass for a rich couple of days. What a generous donation of your time!

Tiyaha, thanks for your hard work, sometimes very hard, in writing every visitor’s name in Chinuk Pipa on their souvenir name tags.

Stubs, thanks for letting us use your art on those!

Alik, your presentations of so many Jargon songs kept things really lively and made some converts. And the Kaltash Wawa never fails to entertain…

Paisley, without you we wouldn’t have had any cool swag 🙂

Natasha, I’m looking forward to practicing Chinuk Wawa MadLibs!

Maxwell, I was astonished at the possibilities of flashcard software for Chinook 😮 The world needs to pick up on this.

Darrin, people were properly amazed and impressed by the BCLC pamphlets. They were a major collector’s item for this crowd.

Agostino, your research project is immensely interesting. Hope I can be of help!

It’s a certainty that I’m forgetting more than one person here. Please accept my blanket gratitude!

And let’s do this again next year. There’s already some rumbling that it could happen at a certain Indigenous community in 2026. Stay tuned!