Chris Loether
Preserving culture through language

Chris Loether knows how easily a language can die away. This Idaho State University linguistics professor has seen it happen time and again as a generation of native Americans has turned its back on the oral traditions of its fathers. Where once whole nations spoke a particular tongue, now only a handful remember the language. Sadly, this loss of language often parallels a corresponding loss of cultural identity.

“In the United States there are about 150 Native American languages still alive today,” Loether said, “although probably more than half have fewer than a dozen speakers.”

Thanks in part to Loether’s work at ISU, one Native American language, that spoken by the Shoshone Bannock tribe, is realizing a comeback — both on and off the reservation. Unlike some tribes, many of the West’s 10,000-12,000 Shoshone still speak the language. Unfortunately, the majority of them are more than 50 years of age; among the children, only about 5 percent still speak the traditional language.

“Many of those who speak the Shoshone language live in isolated or rural areas, so they haven’t been inundated by people moving into their area,” Loether said. “And the Fort Hall people tend to be very traditional, so that has helped preserve the language as well.”

In 1989, Loether was asked by ISU to work with the local tribes. In 1993, he and his associate Drusilla Gould began teaching Shoshone language classes, focusing more on conversation than on grammar. Today, about half the seats in his class, which meets a general education requirement for the school, are filled by non-Indians interested in both the language and the culture. The young Shoshones who make up the rest of the class are fueling a wildfire of renewed interest throughout Shoshone country.

“We’re currently helping the Shoshone community in Wind River, Wyoming and the Ely Shoshone tribe in Nevada set up programs,” Loether said. “It’s satisfying to see how it’s taken off once we got the ball rolling.” In addition to the language classes, Loether and Gould teach classes on Shoshone culture. The hope is that a better understanding of the culture will lead to greater cooperation between white and Native American people. Loether pointed to local school districts as one good example.
In the Shoshone culture, children are raised not only by the mother, but also by any of their mother’s sisters. Their language does not distinguish between mother and aunt, leading to confusion at school when a child is picked up by more than one “mother” on different days. Cultural sensitivity training has helped alleviate this and other problems between schools (and other agencies) and Shoshone families.

Loether became interested in languages when, as a 12-year-old child, he moved with his family to Britain for nine months. He was surprised by the fact that many European children could already speak two or three languages, so when he returned to his native Southern California he began studying many of the languages that were spoken on the streets in that area.

Today Loether speaks five languages well and has studied about 25 others. Ten of those are Native American languages, including that of the Shoshone Bannock tribe.

There are many reasons the language has died back in the last several years, Loether said, one being the boarding schools where children were sent by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to learn to get along in the white world. While many of the teachers were well meaning, the speaking of native languages was seen as detrimental to assimilation. So whole generations turned away from their native tongue.

Secondly, many elders inadvertently discouraged young people from speaking the language. The Shoshone culture values respect of its elders, and many of those elders demanded perfection. Since the younger generation had little schooling in the Shoshone language and therefore didn’t speak it perfectly, they were encouraged (albeit indirectly) to not speak it at all.

One of Loether’s and Gould’s biggest challenges, then, has been encouraging Shoshone youths to take back their language. “We’re encouraging young people to take possession of it and become more active in helping preserve it,” Loether said. “We encourage them to say that it’s their language too, and they will be the elders one day.”

Young people are also encouraged to coin new words for modern inventions, such as computer or high tech entertainment components. Many Shoshone people would simply substitute the English word when a Shoshone one did not exist. The result was whole paragraphs peppered with English phrases. By introducing new Shoshone words, the language can better be preserved.
So why even bother? From a linguistic point of view, language preservation helps preserve a culture’s unique way of looking at the world. Different languages handle thoughts in different ways, giving scientists a glimpse of how the brain functions.

“Many times a single world (in another language) captures what we need a whole sentence to say,” Loether pointed out. For instance, the word “Deniwape” which has no English equivalent, relates to a way of living that explains how people should live and their natural connection to the land.

“It’s a really charged word,” Loether said. “I can’t explain the emotional effect it has on people, their whole religion and history. It’s equivalent to the Bible or the Constitution. Many different words like that explain feelings and traditional ceremonies that are very hard to translate.”

Loether knew that his efforts were beginning to bear fruit when a young woman who was elected Shoshone Princess gave her acceptance speech in Shoshone.

“It really changed [the people],” he said. “They saw that they can learn the language even if they were not taught it at home. They’ve become more open to using Shoshone in public on the reservation — before, it was uncool.”

Loether is currently working in Palm Springs, Calif., with the Serrano tribe. The last fluent speaker died a couple of years ago and he is helping revive the language through various methods, including a dual emergent preschool set to open in September 2004. The language is closely related to Shoshone.