What do saying a Catholic mass & a near-death experience have in common? I’m sorry to say there is a sad answer to that, for many who went through the residential-school experience, but… Continue reading
Or, the Alki Point 🙂 In the interest of sharing knowledge of good Chinuk Wawa, I want to share how to use the words that you’re usually told mean “future”, “present”, and “past”… Continue reading
There’s a rule of thumb we use when documenting a language: get the speaker to talk about a near-death experience. The reason for doing this is that you get the least filtered, most natural… Continue reading
A whole lotta shaking goin’ on! Hands, bodies, souls.
The other day in this blog I mentioned the epidemic of alcoholism in Indian country that we get a number of close glimpses into via the Kamloops Wawa newspaper. Under the influence of… Continue reading
The 1890s were a transitional time in the southern BC interior. Many Aboriginal people had been married in the old traditional way. Missionary priests were promoting Catholic marriage. Sometimes, a person would postpone… Continue reading
The sequel to my post yesterday continues Father Le Jeune’s rant against White cynicism. Again, look closely. The differences between what Le Jeune writes in English (pretty civilly) and his Chinook Jargon (translated… Continue reading
A racist Catch-22. Paraphrased: The only good Indian is one who you turn into a White person. The only easy way to acculturate the Indians is to use Chinook Jargon. Chinook Jargon is… Continue reading
I’m not intentionally connecting alcoholism with the introduction of literacy to people who had never known it, but you’ll often find the two subjects cheek-by-jowl in the letters of the Oblate missionary priests. One… Continue reading
Short post: “Nawitika” there is a “hymn” pronunciation of Chinuk Wawa. It amounts to throwing extra vowels in. This breaks up some of the consonant clusters that are harder (for European missionaries) to… Continue reading
