Saving Salish tradition

By Jennifer McBride / Leader Staff

Stephen Small Salmon, a full-blood Pend d'Oreille actor, storyteller and teacher, jokes that he came out of his mother's womb speaking fluent Salish.

"I was born speaking Indian," he said, laughing. Small Salmon is a member of the Salish/Pend d'Oreille culture committee and one of the elders of the tribes.

Not all the children born in Small Salmon's generation had the benefit of his education. Small Salmon said there were only about 25 "real" fluent Salish speakers left in his generation. He is one of roughly ten Salish teachers gathered at the annual Salish/Pend d'Oreille culture camp held in St. Ignatius last week. Another 12 to 15 elders also came to help out.

Director Tony Incashola said the camp has been offering younger people a chance to learn about Salish and Pend d'Oreille language and culture since 1975.

"We get some pretty fluent speakers out of it," he said.

Young people aren't the only ones trying to learn the language, though Incashola said they encourage the children to try and pick up Salish while they're young. Incashola said the culture camp's 80 participants ranged in age from three years old to their 50s.

Chaney Bell, 31, is one of the adult students. He works on curriculum at Nkwusm, the Salish Language Revitalization Institute in Arlee, where he hopes to become one of the next generation of Salish teachers. Bell explained that he's been studying the language for the past eight years.

"I always knew who I was, but I didn't know how to speak," he said. "Nobody in my immediate family speaks it."

Though the language isn't spoken much, even among tribal members, Bell said he strongly believes passing on Salish to young people is the key to preserving their culture.

"As far as our culture goes, our language is a foundation," he said. "I kind of came to realize that the language, that's where everything else comes from."

When Salish children were sent to boarding schools in the 1900s, their teachers tried to stop them using Salish, according to the new textbooks released by the Salish/Pend d'Oreille history project. When the students spoke with each other in their native tongue, they would be punished, often with violence.

"When I grew up, you didn't speak Salish," said former Vietnam veteran and activist Roger Shourds. Shourds met with President Richard Nixon to fight for more Indian housing.

"No matter what you say about Nixon, he did more for Indian rights than anybody," the activist said.

Currently, Shourds is studying Native American studies at the Salish Kootenai College. He's also been learning Salish for the past three years.

"I told my teacher, by the time I'm in the nursing home, I'll be fluent," he joked.

Language isn't the only thing being passed on at the culture camp. While the students learn Salish in the morning, in the afternoon, they participate in various traditional games and crafts. Raylynn Charlo learned how to make yaya dolls — dolls made from scraps of material — from her mother, who taught groups of kids in the past.

"I just kind of picked it up," she said. "It's a big hit with the kids."

The kids create the dolls entirely out of leftovers. Extra bits of cloth and leather are stuffed under buckskin. Children drape extra pieces of fabric around for a dress and a headscarf. Charlo said the frugality is not an accident.

"Traditionally, they wanted to use everything," she explained. She gathered her scraps of leather from other tables at the camp, where other people worked on leather pouches or beadwork. Children could decorate their dolls with yarn hair and bead necklaces. One figurine definitely didn't reflect tradition with its bright orange hair.

Head cook Cecile McClure of St. Ignatius said that tradition also affected what the caterers cooked in the kitchen, where they had to make four buffalo roasts to feed the crowd. McClure said they make a mix of modern and older foods.

"The elder love eating anything traditional," she said. "We always try to plan the menu with them in mind."

Some people enjoy some traditions more than others.

"The men always hate first, because they're the providers," Shourds said with a grin. He patted his stomach. "I like that rule, but I don't really need to eat more."