Documenting Language Revitalization & Storybook

The Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians have been stewards to the area now known as Coos Bay, Oregon and adjacent lands since time immemorial. Post- European contact saw forceful removal of Tribal people via a trail of tears, and 1.6 million acres of their land was ceded without any monetary compensation. Despite treaties made, the Indigenous people were not given back their land or seen as a sovereign nation until the Tribe saw restoration on October 17, 1984. Decades later in 2018, the Western Oregon Tribal Fairness Act was passed and signed into law that 7 parcels totaling 14,742 acres be given back to the Tribe, held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. They were forced to give up their culture, heritage, and language and assimilate to Western ideology. Since the Tribe’s reclamation, copious efforts to reconnect Tribal people to their culture have been in effect and have seen positive results. However, Tribal members do not speak their native language. Many songs sung today do not include words– they utilize “hey-ya” rather than their language.

Luckily, two Tribal linguists— Patty Whereat Phillips and Enna Helms— are paving the beginnings of language revitalization for three languages: miluk, hanis and sha’yuushtɬ’a uɬ quuiich. Together they lead four language classes taught to both Tribal members and college students on Zoom. Both women are active participants in Tribal committees, and Mrs. Helms is a Councilwoman on the Tribal Council. The Tribe needs are to build capacity in order to expand access to the language. We plan to supplement revitalization efforts with our proposed project of documentation, archival, and storytelling, capturing success and challenge stories.

This project effectively meets the Alumni TIES seminar theme shared ways of sharing underrepresented stories. By documenting experiences and creating a book, the Tribe’s history is preserved. It can help spread awareness about the Tribe’s history, values, and mythology and propel other stakeholders to join in on the cause. A book on traditional storytelling provides communities with diversity and representation, a desperately needed element for children’s books.

Language students currently learn through reading traditional stories from the old recordings. We want to learn how the stories have aided in their learning journey and transform the stories into a kid-friendly format to effectively spread awareness and immersion. Children are a key aspect to the project as they absorb language quicker than adults. We hope the next generation will gain some sort of fluency and have the language built from there.

We will also produce a storybook containing a traditional story and myth in all three of the Tribal languages provided either by Language Committee or the tribal linguists. We will first recruit Tribal members to participate in the creation of the storybook as artists, storytellers, graphic designers, consultants, and writers. We will next recruit Indigenous peoples at large before recruiting non-Indigenous creators. We plan to distribute the storybook to Tribal families to ignite the usage of language in the home, particularly with Tribal youth. We hope that providing a tangible book to Tribal members will spark curiosity and motivation for them to learn more about their ancestral language. This could lead to a higher enrollment rate for language classes or having the language spoken more in the home. The more people speaking the language, the more it will be used, retained, and expanded. Our goal is to have most Tribal members speaking the language, where hopefully the next generations will gain fluency. We look to PWN tribes and Navajo Nation as an example of implementing successful language revitalization through dual-language immersion in schools and broadcasting the news in Navajo.

We will enlist the help of alumni who have experience in publishing, archiving, documenting, storytelling, and education to direct us to the proper resources, thereby fully carrying out the project. For example, we will seek advice on the best publisher for indigenous representation or on how to self-publish our work. We hope their expertise will accelerate the process for completing our goals.

Beneficiaries include Tribal members, Tribal youth, language programs, and Tribes striving to revitalize their traditional languages in the future.

We hope to increase language enrollment rates and get more Tribal members to speak the language to one another. Language is hard to learn without full immersion, where people can speak the language with others.

We hope that by recording this historical endeavor, we will have documentation as a blueprint for future language revitalization programs. We will have on file what has and has not worked and apply praxis to improve upon educational tactics. Hopefully, other Tribes wanting to begin revitalizing their languages can reference our process. If current efforts run out of steam, we will at least have documentation for somebody to pick up from where efforts were left.

Sharing traditional stories comes with inherent risks. We plan to submit a research proposal and run by the Language Committee, Cultural Committee, and Tribal Council to ensure that the project has the Tribe’s approval. We will seek approval of the story chosen to be published, its language, artwork, pacing, and representation. The project will not publish any story or detail considered sacred to the Tribe or certain families. We plan to copy write the book. 

Our project will document and archive current early stages of language revitalization efforts for miluk, hanis and sha’yuushtɬ’a uɬ quuiich. Anyone involved in the language— whether they are enrolled Tribal members or students— will be eligible to interview. Interview questions will include how reconnecting to traditional language has spurred emotions, changed their perspectives, and made connections to their ancestors. Participants will be asked to provide written entries on their day-to-day experience practicing and developing their language skills, whether they’re notes, journal entries, or audio recordings describing their experience. We will then enhance the learning process by creating a storybook of a traditional tale. This project will benefit the 1000+ enrolled tribal people directly, especially the youth. It will also benefit the citizens of Oregon to learn about local tribes and their culture, a direct connection to the TIES theme of sharing underrepresented stories.

We hope that by recording this historical endeavor, we will have documentation as a blueprint for future language revitalization programs. We will have on file what has and has not worked and apply praxis to improve upon educational tactics. Hopefully, other Tribes wanting to begin revitalizing their languages can reference our process. If current efforts run out of steam, we will at least have documentation for somebody to pick up from where efforts were left. 

The project aims to assist with the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, & Siuslaw Indians’ efforts on language revitalization. The project aims (1) to document current language students by conducting interviews about their experiences learning a language that is in constant development itself. A core component of the language class uses traditional stories to teach the language. The second part of the project (2) strives to recreate a traditional story into a children’s book for all tribal families to learn from. We will document how stories have aided in their learning journey then transform the stories into a kid-friendly format to effectively spread awareness and immersion. Children are a key aspect to the project as they absorb language quicker than adults. We hope the next generation will build from our language efforts today, extending beyond the proficiency today to fluency.

Using historical and contemporary recordings with over 1,000 words and dozens of stories, two Tribal Linguists are spearheading language revitalization efforts. Together, they teach three Tribal language classes on Zoom for Tribal member households and Tribal higher education students. Language is a key component of culture; project aiming to increase language learning and retention is necessary to aid in the overall sovereignty of the Tribe.

By documenting experiences and creating a book, the Tribe’s history is preserved and shared. It can help spread awareness about the Tribe’s history, values, and mythology and propel other stakeholders to join in on the cause. A book on traditional storytelling provides communities with diversity and representation, a desperately needed element for children’s books.

Language students currently learn through reading traditional stories from the old recordings. We want to learn how stories have aided in their learning journey and transform the stories into a kid-friendly format to effectively spread awareness and immersion. Children are a key aspect to the project as they absorb language quicker than adults. We hope the next generation will build from our language efforts today, extending beyond the proficiency today to fluency. The intended accomplishment for the project is to increase language retention, usage, and class enrollment numbers. The community will directly benefit now from the project by having a tangible book they can read to the youth, exposing both the parent and child to their traditional language, heritage, and stories. 

Jade is an enrolled Tribal member of the Tribe and was a miluk language student in 2021. She has experience with creative writing for blog posts for the Gilman Program, Reach the World, and Dreamfora. She filmed and edited interviews of the workers and owners of local bookstores in Berkeley, CA for a journalism class. In 2022, she filmed and edited a 10-min promotional video for the Gilman Program. She worked at MediaHub as an Assistant Media Planner for Nerdwallet and the California Avocado Commission. Her experience will be a great asset for conducting interviews with language students, outreach efforts, and partnering with other organizations and creative talent.

With a passion for reclaiming and reconnecting with culture and a Culture and Vice Chair of the Language Committee, Jade is determined to complete the project and directly benefit and strengthen the Tribe’s identity as a sovereign nation. She is prepared to travel to Coos Bay, Oregon and conduct interviews, collaborate with the Tribal linguists, and partner with indigenous illustrators and creatives, with an emphasis on recruiting first Tribal members then Indigenous peoples at large. 

Jade will seek approval from the Tribe and make sure the story, development, and execution gets proper approval. She will directly communicate with the two Tribal linguists to ensure the correct language is used in the books and to coordinate interviews with language students. She will seek input and approval for the storybook from tribal committees. She will spearhead outreach efforts to Tribal members via the Tribal newsletter, emails, Facebook, and pamphlets, inviting any tribal citizen to be involved in the project. She will also conduct interviews with language learners using questions approved by the Language Committee.

We seek to revolutionize children's storybooks, language learning, and language revitalization by making it fun and accessible. We hope to spearhead such initiatives, including incorporating culture and language in the virtual space (we have a metaverse). Indigenous voices and representation is lacking, especially in the literature space. Our research found that many indigenous books are authored by non-indigenous folk. We want to take ownership and control of our stories, culture, and heritage. That is, we want to create material made by indigenous folk. Our people have many great ideas, however, we lack the funding and labor to explore those ideas. We hope that the program can help overcome the financial, legal, cultural, and market barrier that we face as a small tribe by providing support, expertise, and public exposure. For example, we hope to receive legal advice for copyrighting and publishing. We need exposure of our book to generate revenue to fund more storybooks. 

Our ultimate goal is to have complete ownership- down to owning our own publishing house and creating language tools such as an app, games, comics, and cartoons.

Jade Fong is a tribal citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, & Siuslaw Indians. She is Miluk Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Coquille. She is members of several tribal committees and is the Vice Chair of the Language Committee.

Everyone involved in this project is indigenous. Most people involved are citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, & Siuslaw Indians. We are working closely with the tribe every step of the process with frequent check-ins. We understand how important it is for the community to be involved in this groundbreaking work that will become the stepping stone for more language and culture projects.

We plan on applying to more grants and utilizing Oregon's SB-30 grant to use the material made as educational materials for the Oregon school curriculum. We also plan to use the video highlighting the interviews on language revitalization to seek donations from the general public and nonprofits. Profits from the storybook will be used to fund more book and language projects for tribal members to take leadership in. In the future, we hope to have complete ownership by launching our own publishing house and provide funding for tribal members to lead their own language and culture projects, which include creating card games, board games, computer games, comics, and a language app.

We have received a small grant from the Alumni Thematic International Exchange Seminars program. We are also looking into receiving funding from Oregon's SB-30 grant.