We Are Our Language: An Ethnography of Language Revitalization in a Northern Athabaskan Community

Notes

Notes Preface 1. The four prominent spelling conventions for this language family are: Athabaskan, Athapaskan, Athapascan, and Athabascan. For consistency in this ethnography, “Athabaskan” is used. Another term used to refer to people and language is “Kaska,” which is most frequently used to refer to the language, and sometimes to people who identify as “Kaska.” I also use the Kaska term “Dene” to refer to people who identify as Kaska. 2. Some speakers of Mountain Slavey and Tahltan also live in the Yukon, but these languages are not necessarily considered indigenous to the area (see Harnum 1998). 3. Krauss and Golla (1981) lump Sekani, Tahltan, and Kaska together as one language and claim that only a few hundred speakers of each remain (see also Cook 1998:131). Interestingly, the reported overall Kaska population is only 1,526 (Statistics Canada 1996). Given a few hundred remaining speakers, it is feasible that one-third of the population are fluent Kaska speakers. This suggests that Kaska may not be “moribund” (where “moribund” means that no children are learning the language), because some acquisition is still occurring. 4. None of the categories in the census correspond with any of the aboriginal languages indigenous to the Yukon. I assume that the 705 responses correspond with the Yukon languages. 5. Interestingly, the Department of Indian and Northern Affairs (DIAND) (1995) shows an increase in “Amerindian language as mother tongue” acquisition for all subcategories (Registered Indian On Reserve, Registered Indian Off Reserve, Inuit, and Métis), yet a decrease overall. Thus, the 16.9 percent reported must reflect responses from aboriginal individuals who are not registered. 6. DIAND (1995) reports that 0 percent of the non-aboriginal population first learned an Amerindian language. Adjusted numbers are the following: Carmacks 20.0, Mayo 15.0, Pelly Crossing 19.0, Old Crow 42.8, Carcross 16.7, Carcross Indian Settlement 14.3, Burwash Landing 37.5, Upper Liard 36.4, 170 NOTES Two Mile 45.0, Two and One-Half Mile 0.0 (25.0), Ross River 50.9, Lower Post 0.0, Good Hope Lake 13.3. 7. Based on data from the 1996 census, fifteen elders, aged 55 years old and up, resided in the Upper Liard–Two Mile–Two and One-Half Mile area; 125 individuals were between the ages of 25 and 54; thirty individuals were between the ages of 15 and 24; seventy-five individuals were between the ages of 0 and 14 (Statistics Canada 1996). 8. I recorded approximately eighty-nine hours of interaction, ranging from children’s playtime at AHS and language games to grammatical elicitation in one-on-one interviews with elders and Kaska House of Language workshops. I had approval to work with and record nineteen children, twelve boys and seven girls, ranging in age from four months to twelve years old, with most between the ages of two and six years old. I interviewed three grandparentparent -child triads, filling out a modified MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory for each one, and conducted semistructured interviews with fifteen adults focusing on their own language practices, attitudes, and sociolinguistic biographies. 9. This research was conducted with the support of the Kaska Tribal Council and was guided by prevailing standards of informed consent. However, in the intervening years, many Yukon First Nations, as with bands and tribes across North America, have adopted more stringent protocols for ethnographic and linguistic research in their communities. Now subsumed under the larger categories of Traditional Knowledge (TK) and Heritage Resources, the Kaska language and knowledge about it are considered material regulatable by KTC according to its internal policies and supporting legislation by the Yukon Territorial Government. These policies more clearly articulate the appropriateness of recording as well as specify who controls the data collected. 10. To disentangle referents, I will use “Kaska” to refer to the aboriginal language and “Dene” to refer to First Nations people who speak or are ancestrally affiliated with the Kaska language. 11. Similar to Eisenlohr’s discussion of the linking of time and nationhood through language, and an ancestral language in particular (Eisenlohr 2004a), aboriginal languages in the Yukon Territory serve a similar purpose. Briefly, bureaucratic and public discourses about language and territory, a crucial dimension of land claims negotiations, focus on historical time (“empty, homogenous” [Eisenlohr 2004a:82]), while other First Nations narratives reflect a temporal simultaneity, recognizing the continued presence of ancestors and ancestral practices. For First Nations peoples in the Yukon, as with Hindu Mauritians, such disjunctures are negotiated semiotically...