Just the bullets: New Chinuk Wawa word discovered: “pooty”.*. (As usual this only means we’ve just now noticed it). *Rendered in a Huckleberry Finn spelling to help you guess what it means. Got… 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 →