Reviving The Native Language Elder Finds Tribal Culture Best Depicted In Own Words

An ancient language is dying.

Words such as “u-ne,” “ta” and “ta pi stem” used to be spoken here in the Inland Northwest, the home of thousands of Plateau Indians.

But the words - along with tradition - became lost to the people. They were replaced by their English counterparts: “yes,” “no,” “never.”

Today, only about 50 of the 2,000 enrolled Spokane Indians speak this dialect of Salish.

Few teach it to their children. Those outside the reservation hardly hear it at all.

“It makes me sad and it scares me,” said Pauline Flett, a Spokane tribal elder. “Indians know a word here and there but few speak it fluently.”

To keep Salish alive - especially at a time when English-only laws are gaining popularity in the Northwest - Flett teaches the language to both Indians and non-Indians.

For the past 20 years, the 70-year-old woman has spent at least six hours a day writing down Salish words and legends - oral traditions passed down from her ancestors. She then takes this knowledge to her students at Eastern Washington University and Cheney Cowles Museum.

The author of three Salish instructional books, Flett belongs to the last generation of Native Americans who were taught Salish before English.

For many years, Indians weren’t allowed to speak their own languages, she said.

Her own parents were ordered to stand in the corner for speaking Salish in the classroom. At Indian boarding schools, teachers sometimes hit students for not speaking English. Others were sent to bed hungry.

“Many Indians didn’t want their children punished so they learned the white man’s ways,” she said.

Since Flett started teaching seven years ago, about 150 people have taken the Salish language class. More than half are non-Indians interested in learning more about Native American traditions.

“The language and culture are one and the same,” said Francis Carroll of Spokane. “Learning it takes patience and understanding. Besides language, you learn a different way of looking at life.”

Carroll, 74, started studying Salish four years ago. The retired high school chemistry teacher and his wife, Louise, wanted to learn about Northwest history, but soon found that the language brought them closer to Native American philosophy and customs, they said.

Every Tuesday, the couple shows up at the Cheney Cowles Museum with notebooks and a tape recorder. Along with a dozen other students, they listen to Flett’s soft, soothing voice as she speaks the language of her ancestors.

“A s-lax-t,” she said, greeting a student with her smiling, moon-shaped face. Translation: “Hello, friend.”

For two hours, Flett tells jokes and recounts legends about her people and the land. She speaks slowly and pauses often. Her words, at times, become a chant - a song from an ancient, foreign world.

Although Flett spent 20 years collecting and writing down Salish words and phrases, she never expected to be teaching it to others. When EWU officials asked her to teach at the university, she was “flabbergasted.”

“I didn’t even have a college degree,” she said.

Today, her work is valued by scholars and anthropologists nationwide, said Raymond Brinkman, a graduate student of anthropology at the University of Chicago.

“She’s a cultural treasure,” said Brinkman, who also teaches the Coeur d’Alene language at Lewis-Clark State College.

Flett, who’s wary of computers, handwrites the thousands of words and stories in notebooks and spare pieces of paper. When she started her work in the ‘70s, she used to tape-record the stories told by tribal elders. Now, she recalls her own experiences, going back to the words and expressions she learned as a child.

Learning Salish isn’t like studying French or Spanish, many non-Indians say.

The Spokane dialect - one of 23 in the Salish language family - has more letters than the English alphabet. The words also don’t sound the way they look on paper.

The language sounds guttural at first with its abrupt stops, hard “k” sounds and squishy turns of the tongue. But there’s also a lot of lip motion - a complete mouth exercise for non-Salish speakers.

Like other students, the Carrolls have learned it slowly - picking up words and phrases here and there, absorbing the mood and culture during class time.

“I like the sound,” said Louise Carroll, 71. “It’s so soothing.”

To learn Salish, students have to see pictures in their heads, Flett said.

“Musm,” for example, means “to feel” or “to paw.” But the word is actually made up of smaller words that draw an image of four fingers. So the verb, Flett explained, literally means using the four fingers.

“English is flat,” said Francis Carroll. “Salish to me is like Walt Disney. It’s three-dimensional and in color.” , DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo