Language and Love in Wonder Valley
Language and Love in Wonder Valley
By Terria Smith
Hours of roads – big freeways, small highways, and tiny back streets – directed myself as well as lots of attendees through cities, mountains and farmlands to this year’s Language is Life Conference at the Wonder Valley Ranch in Sanger, Calif.
The theme for this year was “Language is Love.” And indeed, love was all around.
It was my first time to this conference, which is hosted by the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival, but I did not go alone. My reluctant 13-year-old daughter Emma rode with me in what we call our tiny little wind up car.
Lots of other families traveled to the valley as well. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, mothers, fathers, teenagers, children and babies came from across the state to learn how to be heroes for our precious Native languages.
Mojave poet, Natalie Diaz, opened with a moving keynote presentation about the importance of the meaning behind our languages. She illuminated the tenderness that is within our natural Native words and how much we need to be able to speak to one another in those words.
The reminders of the urgency for language revitalization did not negate the fact that there are lots of fun ways to learn to keep it. Kumeyaay language instructor, Stan Rodriguez, lead a group of youth in building traditional tule reed boats. After those little boats were built, they had a race in a pond on the ranch with onlookers cheering from the shore. Lyn Risling put together panels for kids to paint into a full mural. Raffle prize drawings seemed endless (and my Emma was a three-time winner)! There was even a nail-biting silent auction where I won an awesome basket filled with seaweed, salmon, eel, acorn soup and other goodies.
Our partners at StoryCorps came to the ranch and spent the weekend recording interviews with conference attendees (and no appointment time was left empty).
Former News editor, Lindsie Bear, was also there by my side to introduce me to new wonderful community members and help me to work at our very popular booth. We actually sold out of copies that were on-hand of our newly published children’s book A is for Acorn.
Little Emma spent her time helping a little with painting the language mural and taking pictures of all the activity. But mostly she obsessed over where the best Internet connection was on the grounds for her iPad – in typical teen fashion.
I am proud to say that I took away a lot with me from the conference. But the heart of what I learned came from a keynote address with Zalmai Zahir, an instructor of the Lushootseed language. He talked about journaling words and phrases each day, reclaiming domains for languages, designating spaces called “language nests” and playing games for regular usage.
I took away so much love and optimism from the conference. There is a lot we all can do to preserve our languages. And in knowing this, I immediately started taking steps for my little family. The day after I returned home, I started building language nest in my very own kitchen.
Terria Smith is the Editor of News from Native California. She is Cahuilla, from the Torres Martinez Reservation.
