Language Keepers, Episode 1: Colonizing California

Emergence Magazine Podcast

Emergence Magazine

Natural Sciences, Religion & Spirituality, Science, Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.7 • 627 Ratings

🗓️ 1 September 2020

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Adapted from our award-winning multimedia story, “Language Keepers,” this six-part podcast series explores the struggle for Indigenous language survival in California. Two centuries ago, as many as ninety languages and three hundred dialects were spoken in California; today, only half of these languages remain. In this series, we delve into the current state of four Indigenous languages which are among the most vulnerable in the world: Tolowa Dee-ni’, Karuk, Wukchumni, and Kawaiisu. Along this journey, we meet and learn from dedicated families and communities across the state who are working to revitalize their Native languages and cultures in order to pass them on to the next generation. In Episode One, we are introduced to the language revitalization efforts of these four Indigenous communities. Through their experiences, we examine the colonizing histories that brought Indigenous languages to the brink of disappearance and the struggle for Indigenous cultural survival in America today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It never dreamed that I would finally be, unfortunately, at this particular state and time,
0:10.0	to be the last fluent speaker, was never a goal of mine.
0:16.0	There was a mess of us that all started learning language. There was a bunch of us that were
0:20.0	getting underneath of this and learning culture and dance again.
0:23.6	And I truly believed that there was going to be about, in my generation, about 15 of us
0:27.6	that were really going to just take this, you know, from different families, just not just my family, but different families.
0:33.6	And at some point I turned around and looked back and I realized I was alone.
0:49.6	And then as that other generation, the people born around 1900, 1910, 1915, when they started passing away, I really felt it then. Welcome to Language Keepers,
0:57.4	Emergence Magazine's six-part journey into the struggle for indigenous language survival in California.
1:03.8	I'm Emmanuel Vaughn Lee, executive editor of Emergence Magazine,
1:08.8	located on the unseated ancestral lands of the Coast Miwok people of present-day
1:14.1	Marin County.
1:15.6	I, I see that, oh, he's hot-neat-tech. Oh, he's hot-neathe, oh, she-too-shelaw.
1:22.6	La Mesa, school, I know.
1:26.6	School, in a. This podcast series,
1:27.8	this is a good one of the other.
1:30.4	This podcast series is a continuation of language keepers.
1:46.1	Emergence Magazine's award-winning multimedia story, where we explored the current state
1:50.7	of four different indigenous California languages and how dedicated families and communities
1:56.3	are facing the challenges of revitalizing some of the most vulnerable languages in the world.
2:01.6	In 2019, our filmmaking team, led by director Adam Lofton, crisscrossed California,
2:09.6	witnessing the language revitalization efforts of Talawa-Daini, Kuduk, Wuk-Chimni, and Kauai-Su communities.
	...

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