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Pâripakûru’ with Zach Rice and Taylor Moore - Ep 89
460 Plays4 years ago
In this special four-part episode we are joined by Zach Rice and Taylor to talk about how they are working on the reawakening of the Pawnee language. Both Zach and Taylor are citizens of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and grew up in Pawnee, Oklahoma. We talk about growing up in Pawnee, where they went to school, what inspired them to pursue M.A.'s in Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Oklahoma. We dive into their M.A. Theses research, the relationships between Northern Caddoan Languages, working with the Pawnee Nation on the Pawnee Language Program, the challenges they face, and their goals for Pawnee language.
Links
- Pâripakûru’ Facebook Page
- AISRI Online Pawnee Dictionary
- Pawnee Nation College
- Pawnee Nation Website
Literature Recommendations
- "A Dictionary of Skiri Pawnee" by Douglas R. Parks & Lula Nora Pratt
- "We Still Live Here" a film by Anne Makepeace
- "Bringing Our Languages Home: Langauge Revitalization for Families" by Leanne Hinton
- "The languages of native North America" by Marianne Mithun
- Volume 13 of the Handbook of North American Indians: Plains by Smithsonian Press
- Volume 17 of the Handbook of North American Indians: Languages by Smithsonian Press
- "When Languages Die" by K. David Harrison
- "The Language Warrior's Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds" by Anton Treuer
Guest Contact
- Paari Pakuuru' email address: 4.pawnee.language@gmail.com
Contact
- Email: alifeinruinspodcast@gmail.com
- Instagram: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Facebook: @alifeinruinspodcast
- Twitter: @alifeinruinspod
- Website: www.alifeinruins.com
- Ruins on APN: https://www.archaeologypodcastnetwork.com/ruins
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ArchPodNet
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network.
00:00:14
Speaker
Welcome to episode 89 of A Life in Ruins podcast, where we investigate the careers of those living a life in ruins. I'm your host Carlton Gover. I am joined by my co-host David Howe. Connor's not with us today. He's on his way to the Sunshine State to, uh, I don't know. I have nothing when I didn't prepare for that, David. Is Arizona the Sunshine State or is it the gun state? I can't remember.
00:00:35
Speaker
Either or.
Special Episode with Pawnee Language Directors
00:00:37
Speaker
Well, anyways, today we are joined by two guests. We have Zach Rice and Taylor Moore for a special four segment episode. Zach and Taylor are the directors for the Pawnee language program back in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Very excited to have them on tonight. How are the two of you guys doing? Great. We're great. We're honored to be on your podcast. Yes.
00:01:01
Speaker
We're glad to have you guys. I think you're the first linguist we've talked to, which is something we really need to have on the show more.
00:01:11
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, I don't know of any, yeah, you guys referred to the first linguistic anthropologist. I mean, I've just don't know that many in general. Well, I know like a couple of guys from Indiana, but other than that, just not something archeologists are usually, usually around even in the same department. So really excited to have you guys on tonight. We're peeking in, we're peeking out here all down here after this podcast.
00:01:36
Speaker
Good stuff. So, um, I mean, just to start off with the episode, uh, just a little bit about background between you two start off with, uh,
Zach Rice's Pawnee Heritage
00:01:46
Speaker
was Zach. So Zach, you are Pawnee as well, as well as Taylor, which band of Pawnee are you and are you related or do you belong to any other tribal nations? Oh yeah, correct. So yeah, my name's Zach Rice and yeah, I'm Skeety Pawnee, but I have a lot of familial connections, you know, to a lot of the other bands as well. So.
00:02:06
Speaker
Can you let the audience know and maybe me what Skeetie is versus like the other bands of Pawnee? Oh yeah, for sure. So Pawnee is made up of four bands. We have Skeetie, like I said, what I am, what Carlton is. We have three other bands that the Skeetie is called the South bands. That's the Chawee, the Kitka Haki and the Pitta Haweetah. So we have these four bands that make up the Pawnee tribe. Awesome. Cool. I did not know that.
00:02:35
Speaker
You might have told me, Carlton, and I just maybe I just forgot, but that's cool. Absolutely. That's probably the case. And what about you? I just get stuttered on. I was like, wait a second. I was like staring at Taylor Moore right down there and just was not coming out.
Taylor Moore's Tribal Affiliations
00:02:55
Speaker
Well, when he was in school, is that going to always get called the other person's name? Close enough. So, but I am a kid cocky. So I'm outnumbered by the skinny today. So little intimidated. No, I come off of.
00:03:10
Speaker
Oh, I come off three of the bands. I come off the Skeetee and the Bitahawee, but not the Chawee. And then other tribal nations, I'm Oto, Alclan from them, and then I'm Denae. SaltClan? I better not say that. I know I'm SaltClan. SaltClan and many goats.
00:03:37
Speaker
And that's all I know. Gotcha. That's what I forgot. My other tribes. Yeah. So I'm also on my mom's side. Second Fox and O2 as well, like Taylor. Owl Clan 2, same as Taylor. Gotcha. That's awesome. So did both of you guys grow up in Oklahoma originally?
00:03:56
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We all do mine. Zach and I have grown up together. I may be a couple months older than Zach, but I was the grade above him. So I know I've grown up Pawnee my whole life. Pawnee. It's funny because whenever I'd like have to introduce myself at school, you know, those first couple of days and you're like at college and you're like, where are you from?
Growing Up in Pawnee, Oklahoma
00:04:20
Speaker
You know, some, some you're, um,
00:04:23
Speaker
about yourself. My name is Taylor Moore. I'm Pawnee from Pawnee. That's it. And moved on to the next person. So yes, whole life. Yeah. Same thing for me, my whole life. Born and raised in Pawnee. That's kind of my go-to intro to Pawnee from Pawnee. Gotcha. So kind of like growing up, you know, both of you guys growing up in Pawnee, Oklahoma on the old Pawnee Res, you know, what
00:04:48
Speaker
for a lot of the guests that we have on here, right? They kind of have some sort of like childhood connection to either like dinosaurs, like nature or history. Zach, with you, like, were you any of those kinds of like kids growing up? Like what a history buff, nature nerd. Oh man, I'll definitely say all of the above as I sit here with the Jurassic Park t-shirt on y'all's podcast. So man, yeah, like Jurassic Park. I loved, I loved dinosaurs as a kid, man.
00:05:17
Speaker
I would say Jurassic Park kind of left that lasting impression on me. And then it has nothing to do with what you just asked about dinosaurs. But Jaws was another big one for me when I was a kid. I used to want to be a marine biologist. But yeah, that didn't work out. So, man, nature, everything, man. I love fishing, love hunting. I was always outside. I was one of those, I'd say, a weird kid.
00:05:44
Speaker
collecting rocks, not like a legit rock collection, you know, like awesome looking, but man, you just see some kind of unique rock and I had to have it, you know, so I was one of those kids, man. I've always loved history too. Loved being around old people, hearing stories, whether that was, you know, my grandma or, or other old people. So yeah, man, just all the way above. Excellent. And what about you, Taylor?
00:06:08
Speaker
I would lean more towards nature. I was always outside fishing, like Zach was saying, and then the history, it was more our history. It was more like Pawnee history, our culture that I gravitated towards, not necessarily American history or world history, anything kind of like that. It was more, I wanted to know
00:06:32
Speaker
who I was, I guess, or, you know, where I come from, our people come from those kinds of things. And then like me, I've, I've grown up singing in our tribal doings, you know, like our ceremonies and stuff. So that's
Educational Background and Career Influence
00:06:45
Speaker
always been right there. I've always been connected to that. Gotcha. Is there good fishing around Pawnee, Oklahoma?
00:06:53
Speaker
Oh, in my spot. Yes. Yeah. A lot of pond hopping, man. So I gotcha. Understood. So, um, go ahead, David. Did you guys know Carlton like as younger or did you guys meet him through academic stuff currently or like through the tribe or.
00:07:18
Speaker
I'm trying to think. So Carlton, I think we met maybe by phone. Oh, I think he was at Wyoming at the time, I want to say. Yeah, that's right. He had reached out. And so that was the first time I had met Carlton, but I know his folks that go over. So that's one big thing about being Pawnee, who's your folks?
00:07:42
Speaker
So, whoever your relatives is, people always ask that in Pawnee, you know, well, who's your folks? Who's your relatives? Who's your grandma? Grandpa, so, through his family, I guess I knew Carlton. Okay. Yeah, I didn't spend much time in Pawnee growing up. I was always in Wind River or Crow Agency. It was kind of my, I was always hanging around like Shoshone's, Arapahoe's and Crow's, and I'd get back for homecoming like
00:08:04
Speaker
Every now and then I was just helping, helping out my Aunt Clam most of the time. So I didn't really know these guys when I was growing up. But yeah, I spoke to you guys. I think John Michael Knifechief got me in touch with you guys. I had a question about the Pawnee language and I had like a brief phone call with the two of you. I think you guys had just finished up your degrees. Maybe. I think so. Yeah, I think so. I do remember meeting you at the museum over there in Pawnee.
00:08:32
Speaker
Yeah, that's right. You walked in when I was there to collect some stories from some folks. That's a fun museum. Just to sit with Uncle Herb and Adrian and Matt and just kind of talk was a really interesting work environment. You can never go in there for a couple of minutes. You have to be committed for at least an hour with the loan.
00:08:53
Speaker
Absolutely. So did you guys go to the Pawnee Nation College after high school, or did you guys go directly to the four-year institution? I went to Bacon College for one semester, crawled across that finish line for that semester, and then went to the Pawnee College and then got all my grades up. So got my associates from there and then went on to a four-year.
00:09:21
Speaker
Yeah, so like Taylor, I started out, I actually started out at OU first, coming out of high school. And funny story, I told you, I loved rocks as a kid, I was actually a geology and paleontology major. But chemistry kicked my butt, man, and kind of ruined those hopes and dreams pretty quick. So yeah, after OU, man, I transferred, I went to Oklahoma State, actually, secondary ed,
00:09:49
Speaker
Carlton, that's probably another thing we have in common. You mentioned wanting to be a history teacher and a coach I've heard on one year. I was that same guy. I was that same, same young guy. Didn't know what I wanted to do. And then I ended up at our tribal college and that's kind of where I found myself and found, you know, what I wanted to do, I guess, what I love to do.
00:10:10
Speaker
Gotcha. So I mean, just continue on, Zach. How big were the classes at Pawnee Nation College and what did you learn there that kind of led you to go back to OU? Good question. Yeah. So the classes, I mean, they're small, man. I mean,
00:10:27
Speaker
Dotty, what do you think? Biggest class you ever had, maybe like 10 people tops? I think no. I had the college. I've had like seven. I've had one where we had about seven in there. And at the last month, it was just me and the teacher showing up. So I know I'm getting an A because I'm the only one showing up. Yeah, I would say, yeah, maybe I don't know, anywhere from four to like eight, 10 people for me. And
00:10:55
Speaker
kind of finding myself there. My uncle, one of my uncles, Tom Knife Chief, he used to teach the Pawnee language there. So he left a big impression on me with our language. And that's kind of where I won't say that that love for our language began, but that's where he kind of nurtured that love. Gotcha. And what
Linguistic Anthropology vs. Linguistics
00:11:13
Speaker
about you, Taylor? What did you experience at Pawnee Nation College? And did you guys go to PNC at the same time? No, I think I had I think I had finished
00:11:23
Speaker
right before Zach started. So mine, it was, I liked it. I mean, the classes were small. I was at home. Tuition was really cheap. Cause it was gone through Northern Oklahoma college. So like a full semester was a couple hundred dollars. And we got that pony chick for school. So I got like extra couple hundred cause the classes were really cheap, but I enjoyed it. I really enjoyed it. They, um,
00:11:52
Speaker
I took the Pawnee classes there as well, like Zach said. Yeah, and got my grades up. I don't think I ever... So from coming from Bay Cone where I had my best grade was like a C maybe, and going to the Pawnee College because it was so, it was right there. Got all A's, I don't think I ever got a B there, so it made my GPA look really good.
00:12:16
Speaker
gotcha. And so Taylor, like when, when did you decide to go to OU and originally when you transferred, were you intended to do linguistic anthropology or was there kind of like a moment where you switched majors? Well, I went from
00:12:31
Speaker
The Pawnee College and I went to Northeastern State University in Tahlequah. Zach had went to OU, but I hadn't went there yet. But I had went for American Indian Studies. That was 2011. Graduated in 2013. So I had a minor in
00:12:51
Speaker
Well, the first one was in linguistics. Second one was hospitality and tourism. It was great. Well, the plan was that the Pawnee Nation was supposed to get this giant casino up there by the Kansas border.
00:13:07
Speaker
And I remember that, they had the blueprints. I thought, Oh shoot, I'm going to have to get in on this. You know what I mean? That's smart. Our tribe being our tribe. That's all I'll say is they, they kind of.
00:13:24
Speaker
blew that chance. So then I was sitting there in hospitality and tourism and I was thinking like, well, I guess most people just work their way up to manager and I'm like, I'm gonna jump into something else. And then I always been interested in the language. Zach and I, when we were in high school, we took a Pawnee language in history, multiple years. So I got into linguistics then and then I got it as a minor and graduated in 2013. Awesome.
00:13:54
Speaker
Gotcha. I have a question. One, I guess there's two questions. Could we define for the audience what linguistics is versus like linguistic anthropology? And my other question was, I think Pawnee, if I remember correctly from Carlton, it's Cadoan, right? Yeah, correct. Cool. That was a deep hole in my head. You guys can go.
00:14:17
Speaker
I'll tell you, did you throw that one to me? That question. Yeah. Yeah. Then we talked about this before. So I would guess I would. This is my definition, I guess, of it. What I've seen, what have I, what have I, what have I have experience? Sorry. I guess linguistic anthropology is a little more the study of language, like within its culture, more holistic, I would say. Linguistic or just linguistics at OU anyway, it was in the modern literatures languages and linguistics department.
00:14:48
Speaker
And it was a little more just the study of the structure, I guess, of language from what I saw anyway, from my perspective. So that would be kind of my definition of it. Gotcha. Okay. I like, I like that first one because it's your, the study of it within one's culture. That makes sense. And that's why we do like signs and symbols and stuff. Okay. Yeah. Neat. What, I guess we kind of discussed that, like what made you guys want to do it, but like, do you, do you like it? Do you enjoy doing like linguistics?
00:15:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. I remember when I was at Northeastern State, they had this, I had this language revitalization class because it's over there at the Cherokee Nation, you know, the Cherokee Nation headquarters in Tahlequah. And they had, I had this teacher and he had put out all these, there's a PowerPoint and had all these tribal
00:15:42
Speaker
nations on it. And it said, after five years, this many are going to be done. And then I think we were at 10 years we were supposed to be gone. I don't know why that kind of just made me mad for this guy to be up there saying, in 10 years, your language is going to be extinct. You know, me being Pawnee, and hearing that, I was just bugging me, you know, and I was almost kind of lit a fire underneath me. And then, but it was funny, because at the same time, I had no idea
00:16:09
Speaker
Zach was in linguistics from OU. I had no idea because we kind of lost touch there for a while after I graduated from high school and Zach graduated. Doing our own things, that's kind of weird. But yeah, that's how I got my introduction to it, linguistics. Nice. I like that.
00:16:31
Speaker
That's, that's always been something I was curious about is that we had two linguists come up at the same time, similar in age, just so happened. One focused on Skeety and the other focused on South band, like kind of that combination. It always struck me as like, man, I wish I had like a South band archeologist that I could work with. Cause that would make things so much easier and like have, have that part of support that, that you two appear to have in each other and your guys's studies, you know, you guys are kind of like this package now with, uh,
00:17:00
Speaker
with the Pawnee. I don't hear Zach Rice without Taylor Moore being mentioned and vice versa. That's just where you guys have been. With that, I think we're going to go ahead and end this first segment. We'll be right back to talk about OU Linguistic Anth here in segment two of episode 89.
00:17:18
Speaker
Welcome back to episode, was it 89? The Life Reminds podcast, almost to a hundred guys. It was going to be cool. Yeah. So we're here with Taylor and Zach and we're talking about the Pawnee language, Pawnee culture and linguistics. And last segment, we talked about how you kind of got like a fire lit under you, you know, about revitalizing the language or someone telling you that it was going to be dead in a few years. Is that kind of what fuels you both to do your master's in it? And like, what exactly was your master's work?
00:17:46
Speaker
Okay, so like Zach and I, we both graduated with our bachelor's in 2013.
Breath of Life Language Conference
00:17:55
Speaker
Again, we had no, Zach and I had kind of lost contact there for a little bit after high school. But we grew up together, you know, but we just, life happens, you know, and Zach had called me like, let's see, I finished in May, I think Zach called me like February.
00:18:11
Speaker
Who is this? Who is this calling me? You know, but but I was just like, I answered, you know, and we talked on the phone for a while. He was asking me, hey, you still interested in language? And I was finishing up that minor in linguistics. Yeah, a matter of fact, I am almost dead. And then he was saying he was two. And then he asked me if I wanted to apply for the Breath of Life Language Conference 2013 in Washington, D.C.
00:18:38
Speaker
And yeah, I was like, well, worst they could do is say no. So we applied, and then if we didn't get in. So Zach, you want to talk about that? Yeah, yes. Yeah, so the other day was at NSU. I was at OU. And I guess I had some tabs on you, Dottie, because my auntie is with his brother.
00:19:02
Speaker
Amber, she told me he was interested in language. So that's how I knew. So yeah, I hit him up and asked him and yeah, like he said, dang, if we didn't get in, you know, breath to life.
00:19:13
Speaker
language conference there in Washington DC and I think for that conference my one of my mentors had mentioned that to me her name was Mary Lynn she was at OU at the time and uh she's actually at the Smithsonian now actually but yeah she she had mentioned that Zach I know you're doing language you should apply for this and so after she told me that's when I reach out to Taylor Taylor is all for it we apply we get in when we get in and we get accepted we see a name
00:19:40
Speaker
as a part of the Pawnee team that we didn't know. And Carlton, if you wouldn't know, it was Tom Evans. Tom Evans name was on our Pawnee language team.
00:19:51
Speaker
And me and Taylor were like, who's Tom Evans? Who's Tom Evans? Because we saw another name we didn't know, too. And that was our linguist. I think her name was Susan Kung. So I think both of us probably call back home to Pawnee, to our folks and say, hey, who's Tom Evans? Anyone know who Tom Evans is? And my dad said, yeah, I know him. And I think Tay, your folks, said that as well. And yeah, so Tom was a gentleman. He worked there at the Smithsonian for quite a while.
00:20:18
Speaker
amazing gentleman. I believe he was on our tribal council at one time in the maybe 80s or 90s or so as well. And that's when my dad knew him from.
00:20:28
Speaker
And anyway, he was there working at the Smithsonian and Tom's a resourceful man. So I'm sure he heard two Pawnee guys are applying for this language conference. And I guess he threw his name in the hat, too. And he got in. So here's the team of three at that point. It was funny because we got there and it was like this giant conference room. And was it the American Indian Museum or? Yeah, yeah. That means in the very top and Zach and I were
00:20:57
Speaker
I think we were eating some snacks at the back and then, I wonder who Tom Evans is? And we see this Indian man coming out with the beaded belt and I was like, I bet this is Tom. And he was like, yeah. And we introduced ourselves and Zach and I, we was going to sit in the very back. It's like we like to do. And he was like, I got some seats up here in the front. And we was right in the front, in front of everybody. We had to go in front of everybody.
00:21:21
Speaker
It was great. It was great to meet Tom. And that's kind of where we, it was a two week language conference. We got to research the language. We got to look through archives, look through artifacts, see bundles, see fans, see feathers, all the stuff that we've either heard of or seen pictures of, but never seen in person. So that was kind of, that was great for Zach and I.
00:21:45
Speaker
man, I only met Tom once he came when I gave a presentation at the museum about my research and he met up with me after and he wanted to sit down with me and just tell me everything he knew. And I was like, I'm leaving tomorrow morning. Like I'm, my cousin Phil's driving me like, but next time I'm in Pawnee, like I'll sit down with you Tom and let's do this. And he like passed away like the month right after that.
00:22:09
Speaker
So I never got that chance to sit down and meet with him. I think we'll get into it, but that's kind of one of our gripes with the tribe is they're waiting so long that we're having knowledgeable elders pass, you know, but Tom was great. He was great.
00:22:30
Speaker
Yeah. So after this conference, what happened next between you two? Okay, so Zach, while we were at the conference, he was saying, because we roomed together, Zach and I, and we stayed at the George Washington University dorm, and no TV.
Master's Theses on Language Revitalization
00:22:49
Speaker
It was just me and Zach talking and then
00:22:53
Speaker
he was like asking me about school and I was like, man, I was done after my associates, you know, and then I got a bachelor's degree and I was like, no, for real, I'm done. And then every night he kept asking me, what about, what do you think about a master's degree? And I was like, no. And he kind of, he said something that was like,
00:23:10
Speaker
We wouldn't have to go through parks. We wouldn't have to go through another linguist to learn about our language. We could do everything ourselves. We wouldn't have to go through other people. And that kind of resonated with me. And then by the end of it, I was like, yeah, let's go for it. Cool. Yeah. So I had to persuade him. I'd be pretty persuasive when I need to be. So I worked on him for two weeks.
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, we we both end up in that master's program. I think we applied what that that fall, maybe of 2014. And then I think I had just finished my bachelor's. We got accepted right in the spring. And then we started that following fall. Excellent. So both of you guys and it was the linguistic anthropology program, right? Or is it you guys have degrees in anthropology or is it a separate is linguistic and under separate college?
00:24:04
Speaker
So at Linguistic Anthro, it's under anthropology. At OU, they had a socio-cultural linguistic anthro. I think those are merged now. But at the time, I don't believe they were. And then I guess our particular program was called the MOLLA program. And that's Taylor, what is that, Master of Arts in Applied Linguistic Anthropology, I think. Yeah.
00:24:27
Speaker
Gotcha. And where are your masters? Were these theses based or were they like project based? Starting with you, Taylor. Yeah. Yeah. Theses. Both of us had to write our original one. So I was intimidated as soon as I stepped on campus. I've been to OU football games and I remember going to the football games and be like, I don't know where I'm going. I only went off
00:24:51
Speaker
the main roads and parked in someone's yard and paid $20 to go to a football game and I remember walking through campus and there ain't no way I'd survive here and then next thing I know I'm there but Zach and I had those first two semesters we had the same classes same program so I just followed Zach wherever he went because he knew where he was going.
00:25:12
Speaker
Yeah. What was your thesis about? Oh, yeah. My thesis, it was how we can use Pawnee music as language revitalization tools. So in my thesis, I focused on Pawnee hymns. The original idea was one of our ceremonies, the Kitka Haki ceremony. It has certain songs that we only sing with that ceremony, and the more I
00:25:37
Speaker
thought about it, the more I looked into it, I was like, nah, I don't think this should be out there. So then my uncle Herb, who's the cultural resource division director, he was asking me about recording some hymns that he knew. And so as we were recording him,
00:25:59
Speaker
After each one, he would tell me the backstory behind that hymn, what it means, who had wrote it. So it was a little gift idea. That's what it was. And then I brought it back to Norman, because Zach and I were on the floor with Norman at that time. And we started talking about it. I was like, I think this is what my thesis is going to be, how we can use songs. But in this case, it was hymns as language revitalization tools. So that's kind of what my focus was on.
00:26:29
Speaker
So, I'm not too familiar with it. I know, Carlton, you don't speak Pawnee too much at all that I know of. Growing up, did you guys, like, did your parents speak Pawnee? Did you hear it a lot as a kid or was it just kind of in stories and songs and things like that? Okay, yeah. My dad, he knows a little bit. I will say that. But I've been around the big drum.
00:26:57
Speaker
probably since I was 10. So singing at our ceremony, singing at our dances. So that's kind of where I've been hearing the language more. And then my dad, he's also runs meetings for the Native American church. So again, I'm a language is always in there. Zach and I were kind of when our last first language speakers passed, Zach and I were just kids, you know, I wish we would have
00:27:27
Speaker
been around them, but you know, we were outdoor kids. We were only like less than 10, probably around 10. So we didn't really care. We didn't know. We just wanted to go outside. So yeah. Yeah. And then for me, I guess.
00:27:46
Speaker
I just knew words and phrases here and there. So I wouldn't consider myself fluent or anything by any means, just words here and there that my dad knew from his dad. And I guess my grandpa, he was fluent. He passed away.
00:28:02
Speaker
long before I was born, you know, maybe five years or so. So I never even knew him. But but yeah, so I mean, I just a couple generations removed from fluent
Challenges in Pawnee Language Documentation
00:28:13
Speaker
speakers. But I mean, I remember hearing here and there in the community. But like Taylor said, you know,
00:28:19
Speaker
I was a kid and I was outside running around, get that energy out, kind of as a kid, you know? Yeah. And like the gravity of it doesn't really sink in that young as a kid too. Yeah. Cause I know like I have, you know, Christmas VHS is of me as a kid, opening a present. So do you guys have recordings or any kind of like, you know, old eighties, nineties camcorder stuff of your grandparents speaking Pawnee or other people in the tribe? We have, um,
00:28:47
Speaker
recordings. We have cassette tapes, old reel-to-reels. Yeah, so we do have them talk about what we don't really have is, I guess, conversing, normal conversation one-on-one. We have word lists or
00:29:07
Speaker
just a random phrase kind of in the background, but I guess at the time the practice wasn't to have normal conversations in the language and record them, it was more wordless, I guess. Zach, you want to add to that? Yeah, I guess I'll add on to that. Yeah, like Taylor said,
00:29:25
Speaker
like elicited forms, I guess, like how linguists do the, you know, scientific method for you, right? You want to control all the variables and conversations, messy. And so, yeah, it wasn't the norm back then to record that kind of stuff. So unfortunately, yeah, we don't have a lot of that. But I mean, we do we do have a ton of audio recordings like Taylor, Taylor mentioned.
00:29:48
Speaker
Is there? No, I'm sorry. Yeah. So growing up, my my up it. Well, a pit, a pit, it right. That's my grandfather. That's what you guys have taught me. Yeah. A deeper. Yeah. Because I because that's something you guys mentioned in class and everyone just says up it. And it's like, that's not necessarily correct. A teapot. He died when I was little. So I never I don't have many memories of him or remember his voice. But I remember driving back from Pawnee, that same trip. And my cousin Phil put in the Pawnee Blue Book CDs.
00:30:18
Speaker
Frisketi and then that first speaker is Phil Gover and that was the first time I heard my a tip its voice in over two decades So those things are are pretty I mean they have a lot of my understanding is they have some pretty old folks in there Back what those recorded back in the 80s like in the 70s. I think yeah, if I'm right, but there's a lot of first language speakers on that again, they're
00:30:47
Speaker
They're talking somewhat formal, I guess. So again, it's back to that. I wish we had a normal conversation. What can be dropped? What can't be dropped? You know, like I want to say slangpony, but you know how like in English, English, we don't have to say.
00:31:05
Speaker
We'll have to pronounce every word because we know the language. We could cut words off. We could, yeah, I wish we had that in Pawnee, but we have very few items like that. So are there ways in which, cause this is just so fascinating to me cause
00:31:21
Speaker
When I was, it's like sad that these languages are going away, but like we are able to reconstruct them with some ways. So like, do you guys have root words that you know, like mean X, Y, and Z that you can then try and like go through one of those old recordings and understand it? Or is it a little more difficult without the conversation? Go for it, Zach. Yeah, it's kind of related to a lot of the research I did for my master's work. So.
00:31:48
Speaker
Um, just like what we're talking about here, like, uh, when you have a sleeping language, you're only as good as, uh, the documentation, I guess you could put it like that. Um, whether that's audio, whether that's written video, you know, but
00:32:02
Speaker
I don't know what that video would look like for Pawnee. We have quite a bit of documentation, a lot of good documentation. Dr. Douglas Park, he was a really good linguist. Dr. Jean Weltfish going all the way back to the early 1900s. She was a really good linguist and we heard a lot of good things actually.
00:32:25
Speaker
about her through Tom Evans and through his folks. They remembered her. And what Tom relayed to us was that, you know, she was a really, really good speaker for a Chaudakstaka woman. They said, you know, for a nonpani, a white woman, you know, she knew what she was saying and she could understand well. So that kind of gets to my research. We have a related language in Pani. It's a
00:32:51
Speaker
known as a ricker all they're up there in the north dakota area and so uh as a kid right kind of going back to history me me being a history nerd and uh loving to hear stories i used to always ask my dad about different things hey what did your dad used to tell you
00:33:07
Speaker
And so some of the stories he would relate to me would be about the the Pawnee's and their Rickeralls. So I always knew we had this related tribe to us that was no longer around us. And then kind of more recent around this, maybe last 10 years or so, people started using related languages to reconstruct
00:33:29
Speaker
languages that had no more speakers. And in those people's instances, their languages hadn't been spoken for hundreds of years. Here's ours that only hasn't been spoken for maybe a decade or so. And so I knew it could work. And that got me into my research and basically using the comparative method, which is a historical linguistics type of thing that linguists use to
00:33:56
Speaker
generally or traditionally I guess I could say either to make genetic relationships between languages or to make like reconstructed proto forms between these related languages. So what I wanted to do was not to establish a relationship that we already knew existed, but to use that method and use it for more practical purposes. So basically, um,
00:34:25
Speaker
words that we don't have in Pawnee, Taylor and I are not first language speakers. And I really don't like making words up, I guess, you know, because is that my authority to even do that? I'm not a first language speaker, but we have this method, we have this comparative method that we could kind of flip around for
00:34:47
Speaker
practical purposes, and we could take words from a rickerall that were documented in a rickerall that we don't have in either dialect of Pawnee and we can reconstruct a form, a really accurate form, that would be for Skeetee and the South Bend Pawnee dialects. And so that's kind of what I did with my research and the most proud, I guess I'll say, of my own work, of my own
00:35:16
Speaker
word that i proposed.
00:35:18
Speaker
was based off an Arikara word for moose. And it makes a lot of sense that ponies don't have a word for moose because they just weren't in our geographic area. We weren't far enough, you know, north or east. And so the Arikara had this word. And what I did was I could I could see the Arikara word right in the documentation. And there's some hints there, some clues left behind.
00:35:48
Speaker
And Pawnee's this polysynthetic language is a polysynthetic language that, you know, meaning that words are made up of multiple parts, I guess, multiple meaningful parts. And there's these hints left behind in a rickeraw. And I could break that word down and
00:36:08
Speaker
basically reconstruct a word for Pawnee. And so now, do you remember how they said that in a ricker off or moose? I'll try. We'll see if my ricker is great. I had wrote it down. Wait, what do you ask? Yeah, wait, something like that. And so based on that ricker word, now this, this has found nothing like a ricker, even though it's a really closely related language.
00:36:36
Speaker
But our Pawnee word for that is bachu seru, bachu seru. And so what we had to do to even propose that word, we had to establish sound correspondences.
00:36:47
Speaker
between the languages. And then we had to do like a morpho-phonological analysis of these languages. So these meaningful parts and kind of where sounds meet, I guess, where sounds change. After doing that type of analysis, that's how we go from Wai Sadu to Pachu Sadu. And both of those words are made up of the meaningful parts. It'd be pa and
00:37:16
Speaker
and a pony for elk, um, juice is your nose and pony. And then, uh, I do mean soft. So literally that work or that rickerell word meant a soft nose elk. Huh. And so that is really cool. That's awesome. Like this is to do there. I love etymology and I've, I've been really excited with the past couple of language classes you guys had were really breaking down the words and it's just been absolutely fantastic.
00:37:43
Speaker
Before we end, can I ask how related are Arikara and Pawnee? Is it like Spanish and Italian or is it like kind of more distant than that? That's a really good question. So from my understanding, also Pawnee and Arikara are the most related
00:37:59
Speaker
closely related languages between our language. I'm going to throw another term out there for you. Northern Kanoan languages. Okay. So the Northern Kanoan languages are Pawnee. They're rikura. They're Kichi or Kichai. I've heard it pronounced both ways. Um, and then, uh, Wichita. So rikura and Pawnee are the most closely related at one time. It had to have been the same language we've seen in documentation that, uh,
00:38:26
Speaker
I guess, I don't know if they'd be traders or who, like fur traders, which is kind of odd though, because a lot of times they weren't literate. So maybe they're missionaries, that would make more sense. You see records of like the Arikara people speaking two dialects of Arikara and one of those dialects of Arikara is more closely related to Pawnee. And so I think I've seen in Dr. Parks's work that he's mentioned that
00:38:54
Speaker
Now they're mutually unintelligible languages and that's because a rickroll has quite a few more sound changes going on than Pawnee, but under underlying Lee underneath if you could look at the grammar and kind of not get too focused on what your your eyes and your ears are telling you.
00:39:13
Speaker
Then you could actually see that it's, it's practically the same language and every girl just has different sounds. Basically. That is so cool. Wow. We should probably end the segment there, but that's so cool, man. Yeah. And we'll be, we'll be right back for a segment three of episode 89. Stay tuned and welcome back to segment three. Remember this is a special episode. So we'll have four segments. So this isn't the last one. How would it take you guys to get your masters in linguistic anthropology, starting with a Taylor?
Master's Degree Journey in Linguistic Anthropology
00:39:42
Speaker
Let's see, we had 2014 is that when we started that? Yeah, fall. And then we graduated in the summer of 2016. Yeah, so two years in a semester. Gotcha. And then so, Zach, what was the game plan? You get your master's in linguistic anthe and what were your plans after getting that degree?
00:40:08
Speaker
So that kind of takes us back almost to what, 2013 or something? We had mentioned before to our tribe that Taylor and I were going to do this. We're going to go to the Spread the Life Conference. We were thinking about going to get our masters. That would give the tribe about three years to start planning, getting something together.
00:40:32
Speaker
getting some something ready as in a language program. And so that was the plan. We end up graduating and there was no language program. I mean, to put it bluntly, I guess there was no language program. There was a lot of turnover on the council. And so those plans kind of fell through. We graduated. I think, Taylor, you were still working at OTO if I'm not mistaken, right? Yeah, yeah. I was working near contract work. So yeah.
00:41:02
Speaker
Yeah. And then so right after, I can't remember if it's right after graduation or a little bit after, actually started working for our relatives, the Wichita tribe, to help them with kind of an archive project. And so that's kind of what we did is I had these skills now that weren't being put to use for my language. And so we have this, the Pawnees have this relationship with the Wichita and
00:41:26
Speaker
Hey, I had the skills to help them out. So that's what I did. And then Taylor was over there working for the OTOs. And then I think we ended up writing a grant or something, right, Dottie? Yeah, like a mini grant. A small grant. It wasn't very big, maybe $40,000, maybe 35, somewhere around there. We got this grant and we started up having language classes, community classes with this grant. And that was, do you remember, Tay?
00:41:54
Speaker
That was the fall of 2016. Okay. Yeah, because we finished in the summer, we had gotten that grant, we were able to create curriculum, just like in any native language, you can't just go to the store and buy Pawnee language book, one, two, three, whatever. You have to create that. To create that, we don't have no fluent speakers. We don't have no language one speakers. So,
00:42:22
Speaker
There's a lot of research that can I had to do. And then we were able to begin classes, community classes that fall.
Community Support for Language Classes
00:42:31
Speaker
So we like to follow like, I don't want to say like a like a school year. So we have like those semesters, we have like, we start in the fall, in before Christmas, take a little break, start back up in January, go until May, have the summer off. Gotcha. How many
00:42:50
Speaker
What was the reception? You know, when you guys come back with these degrees, like what was the reception by the, the Pawnee populace and that could, you know, what did council say? And like, what did, what did the regular regular Pawnees have to say about it? Well, I will say that.
00:43:06
Speaker
For the most part, it was positive. For the council, it just seems like they still see Zach and I, even today, as children, as kids, because most of them have seen Zach and I grow up, not realizing we're in our 30s now, but they're like, oh, those boys. The feeling I got was like,
00:43:27
Speaker
just cute these two guys are trying to these two boys are trying to save our language rather than like see us as um people with master's degrees so but from the from the from the public everybody seemed um to be excited for us to be excited that we were going to be teaching the language but i will put it put it this way well right now we're not a language program we're not a um it's just
00:43:56
Speaker
always been me and Zach, just two guys working for other tribes, but in our free time working on Nepali language. So Zach, you want to add to that? Yeah, I guess the other thing, yeah, is...
00:44:07
Speaker
Yeah, the general populace were excited. And I think we saw that excitement, that interest level in our language. In our very first class, I think Taylor and I, you know, we might have been expecting, I think we said maybe 20 TOPS study will come, you know, probably 20 TOPS based on this off of previous, previous language attempts, maybe 20 will print off 25 will print off 25, just in case.
00:44:37
Speaker
just in case our numbers aren't right and we have a few extra people. What we were really expecting is probably maybe, you know, 10 to 15 people show up. Our very first class man, like 75 to 80 people show up. We're at our our museum there in Pawnee. Unprepared because I mean, we we we we
00:44:59
Speaker
We did not prepare for that many people to come. I don't even think we had that many seats, right, too. Yeah, we had to go up to their top floor and grab chairs and bring them back down. Although these people, he must be here for something else. Must be some kind of free food to be here or something.
00:45:20
Speaker
But yeah, we had about 75, and then that postman dropped off a little bit after which is natural, but we still had about 45 that first year probably, which is a really good number, way more than what Zach and I was expecting. And that's the kind of, what we was talking about Zach and I, the interest there from our community was great. They supported us, they ate anything we wanted, they let us know, hey,
00:45:47
Speaker
anything we could do. So we asked for if you guys have any cassette tapes, old recordings of your family. We will digitize it for free, give it back to you, keep the originals, however you want to do it. So we got a lot of people donating a lot of stuff. Gotcha. And so did you guys end up working for the Pawnee Nation College at all, like teaching language? Or is this strictly just kind of this volunteer basis stuff that you guys are doing on your own?
00:46:16
Speaker
Yeah, I know what year that was. They had a language teacher there, and then I don't know what happened. They weren't teaching Pawnee for a few semesters. My sister-in-law was working there at the time, and she asked if I was interested. At the time, I think I had put my
00:46:39
Speaker
I'd quit the hotel job because we had a lot of stuff coming up, Zach and I. So I was like, yeah, we have time to do this now. So Zach and I would be, I don't want to say the peak of our language learning, but we got really good at it. But we had, we had like five or six classes. We had the community class.
00:46:59
Speaker
We had the elder class, which was terrifying. We had the, uh, the college class. I think we had like a, eventually had like a Pawnee two class. So that's how we got started with the Pawnee college. And it felt good to, to give back cause Zach and I had both graduated from there. Yeah. Oh, and all the time, uh, where was we living? I think I was living in Norman at the time.
00:47:22
Speaker
I think we both were, yeah. Because we only worked Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. It was great. But then tax time hit, and it was horrible. Yeah. So Norman's about what, hour and a half, two hour drive to Pawnee, I think. Yeah, for about a two hour. Yeah.
00:47:40
Speaker
So you guys did that six times over the course of the week driving from Norman to Pawnee and back. Oh, we would stay in Pawnee for like Tuesday and Wednesday and go hunt or, you know, do that outside stuff. Zach and I throughout those days and then we would go back home.
00:48:01
Speaker
Some that I've always been curious about, when it comes to you guys' studies, are you guys more focused on learning the grammar and the structure of sentences or are there parts of the language that you're gravitated towards? I got a text from my cousin Dave the other day asking about star knowledge and the words related to star knowledge. Do you guys have any of those interests?
Pawnee Astronomical Language Exploration
00:48:25
Speaker
specific subsets of our language that belong to a particular part of our culture, or he has more primary concern with just getting the structure, grammar, and anemology down. I guess more of a personal interest. Yeah, I'm interested in the astronomical stuff as well. Actually, all of it. I'm a big old nerd, man. So anything he got through it at me, like astronomical stuff. So Pawnee's were known for that type of knowledge. So I love looking into that.
00:48:54
Speaker
I love looking to our month names, you know, it has to do with a lot of just environmental type stuff would have been back in Nebraska, whether that's like migratory birds that we named, you know, months after or when we would plant our food or our crops back then. So that stuff's always interesting to me. The etymology of words, of course, is always interesting to me. On my own personal time, I love I love looking at
00:49:23
Speaker
I love comparing our Pawnee language to Rickeraw to Wichita as well. I mentioned I worked there, too. So when I worked on Wichita, I loved it because, you know, you could tell they're related with a lot of their sounds. But again, going back to that grammar underneath, you could tell the way our people thought was very similar. And you see that reflected in the grammar, I guess you could say. And what about you, Taylor?
00:49:53
Speaker
Yeah, just like Zach said, there's not one thing I look at more than the other. There's a lot of settings, a lot of topics to research, I guess. So we can't just focus on one and leave out the other one. So we had like a whole
00:50:16
Speaker
We hadn't done STARS for a while, and then someone had mentioned that when we were still doing it, this was pre-pandemic when we were doing in-person classes, and someone had mentioned it, so Zach and I really got to study that STAR map, STAR, our STAR chart, and then we had a whole lesson ready. I think we just got to introduce it, and then
00:50:36
Speaker
we took a break and then we never got to come back for because of the pandemic. But at the time Zach was working for the museum here in the city. So it kind of related to his work at the time. So yeah, so any of it. Gotcha. Has there been like any like rewarding situations that like are memorable situations that have come out of this that you remember or you know like trying to teach this stuff or learn this stuff?
00:51:04
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. For me, personally, man, yeah, it's great, especially as a teacher, I never wanted to be a teacher. That makes sense. But when I started doing these classes, and I enjoy it now, I really enjoy it. And there's a moment where
00:51:24
Speaker
your Pawnee students or whatever, it clicks in their mind. You can kind of see that and they start kind of putting things together. What Zach and I like to do, we don't like to teach grammar. We don't like to sit there and we don't like to do all that. We like to naturally
00:51:44
Speaker
trying to show them patterns and then they kind of figure out themselves, usually ask us questions. But then what the elder class, that was, that was great too, because although it was terrifying at the very first one, because they, they were quick to jump on me and Zach for little words, you know, the word common word for salt or pepper or something, they were ready. As soon as we said they're ready, no, I didn't hear it that way. You know, and this is just a variant of,
00:52:12
Speaker
the same word but then the more we went on the more we could see it unlock stuff in their head so when we first started they had no idea what we're talking about towards the end they were like I remember my grandma
00:52:26
Speaker
would say that, or it would remind it, it would almost unlock things. I don't even seen that with my own grandma. Before she passed out, I would go down there. We go down to the, I always call her, I can't, I can't get that, say that Adika, the my grandma. So she's always going to be like, anyways, I'd always go down there and see her. And I would,
00:52:47
Speaker
used to just speak English and I started slowly like trying to converge with her in Pawnee and it almost seemed to click with her as well as stuff that was becoming unlocking in her mind. So that's what's been rewarding for me and just to hear people, especially the Zoom class, the Zoom class to meet a lot of Pawnees that don't live around Pawnee and to hear them
00:53:11
Speaker
using the language to ask questions about the language. The interest level there is kind of what is rewarding to me. So yeah, I'll jump on that too. Yeah. I'd say the same thing that interest level, you know, it's, it's, uh, been extraordinary. Uh, when we were having these classes in person, you know, what, what really made me feel good was that man, we had people coming all the way from Apache, Oklahoma.
00:53:38
Speaker
all the way up to Pawnee, Oklahoma. And that's a, I don't even know how far drive that is, you know, over three hours, probably. We're all the way from Tahlequah, Oklahoma to, to, to Pawnee just to learn from two, two dudes. I mean, we're just, we're just two guys, but yeah. So yeah, there's, there's a lot of rewarding moments like that. That's so cool guys. And like, yeah, you're reviving
00:54:03
Speaker
like an almost extinct language, but like doing it over zoom too. It's like kind of a weird thing, but neat, you know?
00:54:09
Speaker
Yeah. Well, yeah. Congrats. That's like really cool stuff. Like I, yeah, just growing up, I guess here out East where I'm from, like we didn't really learn. There's Iroquoian languages. You got words for different towns and stuff like that, but you never hear like an indigenous language, like spoken. So it was just cool to talk with people like that. Yeah. Yeah. It's all, it's all, it's all rewarding to Zach and I like, uh, be able to, to study our language, to kind of get into the thought of,
00:54:38
Speaker
old Pawnees, I guess. But to say it out loud sounds funny. I will mention that when we started our master's program at OU, we was in our first class. And again, it was intimidating to me. I don't know if Zach, you felt the same way or you were used to it. But I remember in that first social cultural theory class, they had to win around the room. You got to introduce yourself.
00:55:03
Speaker
what you're studying. And so we were in there with all kinds of, not just our cohort, like other people, and they were doing groundbreaking research. I remember Justin, I don't know if he listens to this, maybe he does, but he was doing like microbiome research. They were doing like, I don't know, just
00:55:26
Speaker
really type of that kind of research, groundbreaking research. And then it got to me and Zach at the end of the table and it was like, all right, your turn. My name's Taylor, I'm Pawnee and I'm studying the Pawnee language. So Zach said the same thing right after me. So it was, yeah, but we enjoyed it.
00:55:47
Speaker
And then I remember our people in class afterwards like, no, that's interesting. And I was like, no, it's not. It's interesting to like me and Zach, but it's not interesting like you guys are doing groundbreaking research. So yeah.
00:55:59
Speaker
But I think it's probably one of the most necessary kinds of research, the waking up of indigenous languages. I don't know if you guys agree with that, but we're seeing a lot of it across the board. A lot of young indigenous folks like ourselves are getting in the language of awakening. We're seeing that whole
00:56:23
Speaker
in 2020, like a bunch of people starting to do this work. Because I know, like some of my chats with Matt Reed, I know they try to do like language work back in the 80s, but there's just so much arguing. Like you guys were talking about, like some of the old folks talking about, that's not how I heard salt being used, but back in the 80s, there was a lot more first language speakers and there was a lot of more argument over who had the right Pawnee than that, so.
00:56:52
Speaker
I don't know. I really appreciate your work. I love the classes when I go to them. You guys make them. I've always hated learning languages, Spanish, Russian, German hated it, but this stuff that you guys do with the zoom meetings has been fantastic. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. That's, we were nervous about it. We never done that kind of zoom and we didn't know how it would work. So we're in our first semester of it.
00:57:16
Speaker
But the people that I've talked to seem to like it. I always ask them, do I need to be more serious? Because me and Zach joke around a lot with everybody. But they said they like it, so we'll continue to.
00:57:30
Speaker
Especially at the beginning when you were just trying to show the language and having like different words that were similar and talk about giving people Indian names like meat wolf. I just can't get meat wolf out of my head. It was funny because the stuff that you, you can Google and I just typed in what meat wolf is and it was something that four year olds are drawing. So our friend Russell who helps us now that's, that's his Indian name.
00:57:57
Speaker
He does. He doesn't play that one. And he does his podcast and in the US called when you invite us to the to the meat meat wolf lounge.
00:58:09
Speaker
Absolutely. With that, we'll be right back with episode 89. We got a fourth segment coming up right for you, so stay tuned. And welcome back with episode 89. We still got Taylor Moore and Zach Rice with us talking about the Pawnee language reawakening episode here. So kind of something that I've been curious about personally is what sort of
00:58:30
Speaker
pushback, if any, have you seen either from the Pawnee community or even just scholastically? Because you guys did go from, or at least you did, Zach, from Indigenous Studies to anthropology. So have you guys seen any of that? And I guess we'll start that off with Zach.
Transition Challenges in Academic Focus
00:58:48
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Thanks, Carlton. Yeah, for sure. So I'll say that moving from NAS to, I'll just say anthropology in general, you know, that was
00:58:58
Speaker
It was different and not to put anybody on blast or anything like that, because I know when I first wanted to go to anthropology, right, for Ling anthro to acquire these skills for my community, I know a lot of my advisors, my mentors, and not to say this is pushback, but they kind of like warned me, I guess you could say, like,
00:59:21
Speaker
I mean, you know that Indian people and anthropologists have not had a good relationship historically, and in a lot of cases, that goes up to today. Whether that's linguists coming into the community, making a name off of, you know, your community doing all this language work, and never giving back to the community, or that's, you know,
00:59:44
Speaker
in other cases where they do things a lot worse than that. So there was that warning for me, I would say, moving from NAS to Anthro. And I appreciate it, honestly. They were trying to look out for my best interest. And they did that another time while I was at OU, and I didn't listen that time.
01:00:04
Speaker
And it was a history class. And I could say that was the worst class I've ever taken by far. But in this instance, they ended up working out for me. So they warned me about it. And I think the discussion I had with them at the time was that, you know, well, our Indian people, you know, the law, the law hasn't treated us very well.
01:00:22
Speaker
historically and even presently but we have all these Indian lawyers that went on to become lawyers and so I just told my mentor you know that's that's the way I see it is that uh you know I'm thankful for all these lawyers for securing our rights and our indigenous rights but I think our our cultures and our languages have been neglected in many instances and
01:00:47
Speaker
That's my goal is to go into linguistic anthropology to do that, to acquire those skills and that particular set of knowledge to help my community out.
01:00:59
Speaker
I've used that same thing. People ask me all the time, like, why'd you go into Anthro? Anthro has done such bad things for indigenous communities. And I'm like, dude, so is the law. Same thing, but we have indigenous lawyers. You can use the master's tools for your own benefit, like kind of that saying. So I mean, I know being an anthropologist all the way through, I know exactly the kind of harm that's been done.
01:01:25
Speaker
Through anthropology, since NAGPRA, we've seen this rise of indigenous archeology where it's being decolonized and used for the benefit of indigenous peoples for, by, and with indigenous peoples. And that's kind of like what I'm in. And which is way more, like indigenous archeology is way more prevalent in the Southwest with like the Dine and the Pueblos. Like that's where we see most of it. And it hasn't really come out to the plains yet or even the Southeast. So it doesn't surprise me that a lot of
01:01:51
Speaker
the people that I hear that from are usually Oklahoma natives or natives that are relocated Oklahoma. So they're just not around it. But no, I get that. I get that. Yeah. Yeah. So that was my argument that and I mean, the educations did a lot of harm to Indian people, but we all got educated. Like you said, get the master's tools and beat them at their own game. So that was, that was my plan.
01:02:15
Speaker
That's like the one thing my family has, either educators or lawyers. I never saw myself as being either, and then I start teaching anthropology courses, and I just go on rants about indigenous knowledge and like flipping the syllabi. Like, no, we're going to talk about this, that, and the other thing. What about you, Taylor? What sort of pushback have you seen from pursuing this kind of education?
01:02:44
Speaker
I haven't, me really haven't had nothing like Zach can. I was coming from Northeastern state. So like Zach was from going from OU undergrad to OU graduate student. I was coming from a completely different one. So I don't really have no
01:03:02
Speaker
only one was talking me out of it was me in the mirror. I don't do it. It's gonna be tough. But no, other than that, I was always at a, people from the community were really supportive, kind of what Zach and I were doing, but going to school anyways. So yeah. Gotcha. And what about just beyond the education? What about within
01:03:24
Speaker
your communities. Have you seen any pushback going off with you, Taylor? Yeah. Yeah. I will say that there are those that, that, um,
01:03:33
Speaker
we have come across. They'll, they'll quick to jump at us, you know, like, you're not saying that right, or they'll kind of talk bad about us behind our back, talk bad, talk kind of talk down to our students, saying that, oh, that's just book learning, Pawnee, that ain't real Pawnee, you know, and it's, it's sad that those attitudes are out there, and that
01:04:01
Speaker
It's almost funny because we have people that you're not saying that right, yet we have recordings and stuff to back us up. Sometimes it's their own relatives. Sometimes it's their own grandparents, you know, their mom, their dad, their aunts, whatever, saying the word we're, we're teaching. Yet they're, people are like, oh, that's wrong. But yeah, that's your family. You're calling your own, your own family wrong. So those kinds of, those kinds of instances that
01:04:32
Speaker
We don't come back at them with that, but as soon as they leave, me and Zach are talking about it.
Community Skepticism about Language Work
01:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, so those are the kind of the pushbacks that I have seen, you know, and it's, I wish they didn't have to learn from us. I wish they didn't have to learn at the time we were 20, you know, in our twenties. I wish they didn't have to. I wish me and Zach could have learned from first language speakers, you know, and that generation that was kind of bad mouthing us or our students.
01:05:01
Speaker
They had that chance. You know, when they were our age, they had first language speakers, but they but they didn't do it. So I don't know. I don't know. They get mad at us for wanting to pick it up when we just don't want it to go extinct, I guess. Is that going to add to that? Yeah, yeah, I'll add on to that. So yeah, with the recording thing, that's always funny. You know, that's I think one time I think someone told us
01:05:30
Speaker
I've never heard that. I've never heard that. And they were related to this particular person on the recording. And I played it for him, let him hear it for themselves. And then they were kind of taken aback. And I wasn't doing it to be mean, but after as an individual, after so much, you could only take so much, I guess. And so I just I just let him listen to it. And they kind of took him aback a little bit and they they chilled out, you know, they they had an emotional reaction to it.
01:05:59
Speaker
Which in my thinking, stepping back from the situation, you know, trying to step back from that individual level is, hey, man, we're dealing with the effects of settler colonialism here. And it is an emotional thing. So what Taylor Taylor was saying, you know, like a lot of a lot of people on an individual level are saying these things, but that isn't coming from just nowhere. You know, there's a reason why why people
01:06:28
Speaker
why we're teaching the language right as 20 and 30 year olds and why we're teaching older people are elders so I always try to remember that you know so on the on the individual level I guess yeah yeah it's frustrating but step back and reevaluate and that's that's the way some people meant it to be
01:06:51
Speaker
So we're just always fighting against that, I guess. I guess that's what I add to it. Gotcha. And so.
01:07:00
Speaker
ending this segment on a more positive note, not that what you guys said was negative at all. Well, actually, even before that, I mean, something that personally bothers me is that do you guys work practically for free, reawakening our language and doing all this work on your own, but then other nations employ you guys like full time to work on their language?
01:07:26
Speaker
So do you guys feel overwhelmed at times doing so much not only working for other nations who are paying you, but then also doing a lot of this other work for the Pawnee on the side? Yeah, I'll go first on that one. You know, I'm the language director over there at the Otoh, Missouri tribe. I've been there. I've been the director since 2018, but I've been working for them since 2013.
01:07:50
Speaker
And then I think around like 2016 to 2018, I had quit just to work on Pawnee stuff. But I do sometimes feel overwhelmed. But on the OTO side, I got a great staff. I have a staff of five full-time, seven altogether with my contract workers. And so they kind of make it easy on me, but still, yeah, I have to...
01:08:15
Speaker
I'm working on their language. I love working on their language. I hate doing the paperwork, the administrative side, and that's all I've been doing for these past two months, trying to get budgets and grants. Anyway, that's a whole other thing.
01:08:32
Speaker
then having to come back and make sure we have our lesson ready, make sure Zach and I know what we're talking about in our Zoom lessons, our Pawnee classes. And then in the spring, we'll be offering, I don't know if Zach's gonna make it, but I will be offering another Pawnee class at the college. So my next year is gonna look real busy, it's gonna be,
01:08:57
Speaker
Monday the college Pawnee class, Tuesday our Pawnee community class, Wednesdays our Oto community class, and then Thursdays back to the college to finish up that week. So we'll see. We'll see how that gets handled, but I love it. I don't see myself
01:09:18
Speaker
doing any other kind of work rather than the language and I can't and even even we get frustrated about the tribe and I always tell that I said I can't become a 60 year old man looking in the mirror and be like you didn't even try he didn't even try with your language you know you just gave up because it was other people so that's kind of my motor motivation so go ahead. Yeah yeah so
01:09:47
Speaker
I guess, yeah. I mean, yeah, at times, like Taylor said, it's a lot to do. Working on our language, Pawnee, that is. Working on a contractual basis, right, to teach these classes. So, I've had different jobs, you know, over the past however many years. So, before
01:10:09
Speaker
Before working for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes language program, I was working for the First Americans Museum to help with some of their efforts to get language involved in their museum. But now, yeah, as an employee of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, while sometimes it is a lot, the other part of me, you know, I enjoy it because I get to see, you know, what they're doing over here and
01:10:37
Speaker
what we could be doing for our people back home. So I get to, I'm thankful, I guess, for the opportunity to always be learning and to be in that type of environment that challenges me because I'm not a speaker of Cheyenne or Arapaho. You know, their grammar works a lot different, you know. So
01:10:58
Speaker
I'm thankful, though, on an individual level and a professional level, I guess, to be challenged in that way so I could always be learning something new. So hopefully when the time comes in Pawnee for us to have that full-time language program,
01:11:14
Speaker
I'll be bringing a little more to the table, hopefully at that time. Excellent. You get teased a lot by Cheyenne and Rappahoes from the other... Oh man, all the time, all the time. So for y'all listeners out there, the Pawnees and the Cheyennes and their Rappahoes are historic enemy tribes. And so the reason I'm working over here, I actually live over here in Cheyenne and Rappahoe country, but my partner, she's Cheyenne and a Rappahoe. So I live over here.
01:11:41
Speaker
with her people. And I just started working for her people maybe a couple months ago, helping out with their language program. But yeah, it's all in good fun. You know, I get my jabs in there, too. Well, whenever Zach and I, I used to live with Zach and Brianna, his partner there, and we used to team up on her. We would tease her because she was outnumbered by the Pawnees. Yeah, yeah, that's funny. Because I think the first time I met one of Brianna's
01:12:11
Speaker
She said, hey, grandma, this is my partner here, and his name's Zach, and so-and-so. And, oh, what tribe is he? She said, well, he's Pawnee. And she got real quiet there for a second. And it seemed like forever, you know, first time meeting this lady. And she said, well, you know Pawnee's and Cheyenne's don't get along, right? And that's all she said. And I just started laughing. I just started laughing. But she really likes me now, so.
01:12:38
Speaker
I had an internship for IHS and my supervisors were Ogallala in Northern Arapaho and they would just give it to me all the time. But excellent. So now to end this on a positive note, starting with you again, Taylor, what do you imagine or hope for for the future of the Pawnee language? Like Zach said, we have a lot of ideas. We have a lot of experience now.
01:13:03
Speaker
the first one would be getting a language program, a full-time language program. Our overall goal is to be able to work our way out of a job, if that makes sense, so that we do such a great job that we can hear our language and everyday use again, that we don't have to teach anymore, we don't have to do this, and we can retire or whatever, go to the counseling.
01:13:28
Speaker
embezzle.
Vision for Pawnee Language Fluency
01:13:30
Speaker
That's what I see is be able to be here, hear my kids and grandkids, whatever, speak in our language and in here in our community, you know, not just even now, even our classes, but we're able to create
01:13:48
Speaker
some more phrases, some more phrases that had kind of been lost or kind of dwindling. We're hearing them back again. And I don't want to say that's thanks to me and Zach, but that's more of a thanks to our our class, our students taking it upon themselves to speak the language when they can. And we try to tell them, you know, even if you have to, well, what is that called, code switching, like, you know, going back and forth between Pawnee and English, that's fine. Just try to use it. And it's
01:14:18
Speaker
We're getting there. We're getting there. And I hope that, uh, we get there. We don't have to work anymore. I think what you guys are doing is really cool stuff. Like I, like Carlton said, he was a nerd for etymology to it. Like I find that stuff interesting and then just going through and like revitalizing a dying and dead language in a lot of ways is like, I dunno, it's admirable, really cool. So great work. Good luck. You know,
01:14:46
Speaker
And what about you, Zach? Uh-huh, for me, um, yeah, like Taylor said, I think the goal is to work ourselves out of a job. And man, I'd love to just fish, honestly. I love to just be out in the woods, around upon fishing. But yeah, no, I think, I mean, like I said, I work over here to Shinarapo tribes and let Taylor Oto, you have a staff of seven or so. I mean, here, man, I get to work with these awesome people all the time and
01:15:15
Speaker
I think we're like a staff of like 22 or something, you know, and with their language languages, I should say Cheyenne and Arapaho, two separate languages, two separate cultures, one distinct political body, I guess you could say, one nation. So I get to see the wonderful things they're doing and all the work they're putting in. I know I'd love to bring that type of men or apprentice program to Pawnee, you know, to help us get to where Taylor was talking about where
01:15:43
Speaker
You know, our, our, our folks are, are talking Pawnee and we're not needed anymore. Good stuff. Well, if you guys ever want to do some fly fishing out in the Colorado Rockies, you always have a place to stay and I'll take you to some spots out here.
01:15:59
Speaker
It's funny, I will say this, I have a Dene family and they came out and they're like, when are you going to learn? First they said, are you the linguist? And I said, yeah, when are you going to learn Navajo? And I was like, well, let me work on Pawnee and Oto, because combined we have five major speakers, whereas Dene has 100,000. So maybe that will be my goal after we do Pawnee, is to learn Navajo. So we'll see.
01:16:27
Speaker
Well, good stuff, fellas. Well, so before we end the show, Zach and Taylor, what are a couple of sources? These could be books, articles, videos or whatever that you would recommend for anyone interested in not only the Pawnee language, but in Indigenous language reawakening.
01:16:42
Speaker
Let me go first. Okay. Um, well, there's a couple and Zach and I had put a list together, but we didn't combine our list. So, so whatever I'm leaving out is that you, the first one, the one that when we went to that conference in 2013, they showed this documentary.
01:17:02
Speaker
called We Still Live Here. And it's a Jesse Little Doe. And she, what is that, Wampanoag? Wampanoag, I think. Yeah, she, it's just a great documentary. It's an inspiring one.
01:17:15
Speaker
I recommend that one if you don't want to read and you want to watch something, go for that one. But going back to reading, there's one by Leigh Ann Hinton. So it's funny how Zach and I, we would be reading about these people and to actually see them and meet them. Those were our rock stars, I guess, in our field. But Leigh Ann Hinton is definitely one. She has one called
01:17:38
Speaker
bringing our languages home. Language revitalization for families. And she also has the Green Book of Language Revitalization in Practice. And then Zach has quite a bit more, I think. Yeah, I got a few more. If anyone listening is some language nerds like me.
01:17:58
Speaker
So first one, I think it's called The Languages of Native North America by Marianne Mattoon. It's kind of basically just an introduction to all the languages of Native North America. Couple more here. Volume 17, Handbook of North American Indians, edited by Ives Goddard. So a lot of good info about Native languages in general again. Volume 13, parts one and two of a Handbook of North American Indians.
01:18:28
Speaker
edited by Raymond Damali and Douglas Parks. So it's kind of more about the plains, not just language, but culture, history, archaeology, a little bit of everything. That's a good one.
Learning Cadoan Languages and Suggested Books
01:18:41
Speaker
In there, you can start learning a little bit more about Cadoan languages if you want to. I guess for anyone that's more interested kind of in just scientific knowledge, for scientific knowledge's sake, a good one is when languages die.
01:18:57
Speaker
by K. David Harrison when languages die. And then finally, I guess the last one I'd mention is maybe any of our relatives out there doing language revitalization work. I'd say the Language Warriors Manifesto by Anton Troyer. I think he's Ojibwe. That's a must read, I would say. I know it gave me that little recharge that I needed, man, especially after all this pandemic mess going on.
01:19:27
Speaker
Well,
Finding More Information on Social Media
01:19:28
Speaker
good stuff. And we will have those in the show notes and the episode description wherever you are listening to this podcast. Where could our listeners either find you guys on social media or find more about your, you know, your classes or whatnot?
01:19:43
Speaker
and Zach are pretty well. We don't have, all of that, you have Instagram? I don't have any. I don't have Twitter. We are on Facebook. So if you go on, you can find me and Zach or our classes is Bari Pakudu. It's just, that's how we say the Pawnee language in our
01:20:04
Speaker
language, but that's our page. There's two of them. There's one of the page. We'll just leave that one. The other one's for our class only, but that's either way to reach out to me. Zach, I don't know if you had to add anything to that. Just Facebook, man. That's all I got. Y'all want to hit me up on MySpace. My Yahoo chat name is
01:20:31
Speaker
Yeah, but Facebook and then body Pukudu is spelled a p a r i and that's p a k u r u right? Yeah, so that's how you'd spell that. Cool.
01:20:46
Speaker
Well, Connor's not here to ask this question, so I will try to ask it more succinctly than he does. If you, oh, no, I see why he does it. I see why this is up.
Passion for Linguistics
01:20:56
Speaker
Thank you for joining us today, Zach and Taylor. If given the chance again, would you still choose to live a life in, I guess, linguistics?
01:21:05
Speaker
Yes, I will. Definitely. I don't see myself doing anything else than language work. Yeah, for sure, man. Same way. I don't see myself doing anything else. I love what I do. I respect that. And you guys are clearly passionate about it, too. So that's awesome. Excellent. Yeah, I think that's it, Carlton. Yeah. So we just interviewed Zach Rice and Taylor Moore. You can find them on Facebook at Pari Pakuru. Yeah. So all that, all their contact info will be in the episode description itself.
01:21:35
Speaker
If you guys could please rate and review the podcast, especially on iTunes. If you could go on the Apple, whatever the podcast thing is and just give it, you could just say this was the worst podcast I ever
Encouraging Podcast Feedback
01:21:44
Speaker
heard. We've gotten that one before. You can just say that it still helps our algorithm. So like, please do that. Thank you.
01:21:57
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archaeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. What do you call Santa's little helpers? What? Subordinate clauses.
Humorous Closing Exchange
01:22:21
Speaker
I like it. I like it.
01:22:31
Speaker
What was the vibe in the bar when the past the present and the future walked in? And with that we are out
01:22:59
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, Dig Tech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archpodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.