Breathing life back into the Samish language: xws7ámeshqen
Story by TAYLOR NICHOLS
Photos by MATHEW ROLAND
Hearing someone speak their native language is intimate. You can feel a way of life behind the words. When a language dies, a way of being dies with it.
Until the late 1800s, the Coast Salish people native to Anacortes, Deception Pass and the San Juan Islands areas spoke various Northern Straits Salish dialects. When white settlers laid claim to March’s Point in Anacortes in the second half of the 19th century, they brought the English language with them.
More than 150 years later, Kelly Hall sits in a Moka Joe’s on March’s Point Road to talk about the indigenous Samish language.
Kelly is a 25-year-old language specialist for her tribe, the Samish Indian Nation. She’s also the first person to earn college credit for studying Samish as a foreign language.
The language can be intimidating because of the unfamiliar characters, such as the number “7” in “Qweng7qwengíla7,” the Samish name for Guemes Island, Kelly says. The “7” stands for a glottal stop, a sort of pause in your vocal chords. She emphasizes the pauses in the word over the country music playing full-volume through the coffee shop.
Although it may look daunting, the glottal pause is not the most difficult part of learning the language.
“The hardest part is getting people to believe in themselves,” Kelly says.
Hall is one of the few people working to preserve the Samish language, which, like most indigenous languages, was never originally written down. She works closely with the language program manager for the tribe, George Adams. George is one of only three people in the world who speak Samish fluently.
“I’m still learning, I really want to emphasize that,” Kelly said. She is on track to become the next fluent speaker.
COMING HOME
The Samish Indian Nation does not have a reservation and tribal members are spread out all over the country, Kelly says. Growing up in Puyallup, she didn’t have a strong connection to her Samish roots but she spent summers on Guemes Island.
“I had always felt that place was significant somehow,” Kelly says, but she could never put her finger on why.
Kelly remembers the moment she discovered the last Samish longhouse was located on the beach where she spent summers on the island.
“It all made sense,” she says. This place was significant to her ancestors, too.
Each person is pulled in by something different in tribal culture, something that makes them feel connected, Kelly says. For her, it was the canoe journey.
Every summer, Coast Salish tribes from British Columbia, Washington and Oregon embark on a canoe journey to celebrate and share tribal traditions. Different tribes host the canoe families each night as they move along the coast. Their numbers grow as they move towards their destination, gaining more canoe families at each stop. On the last trip, more than 100 canoes were registered.
The tribes share traditional songs, food and language. They live the culture of their ancestors, which white colonizers fought to eradicate throughout American history. Kelly says they use their time on the water to teach Samish phrases useful for the journey.
“Canoe culture really brought me home,” Kelly says.
Growing up, Kelly never felt like she fit in and had a hard time connecting with others. As she learned more about her Coast Salish ancestors, she felt the connection with her tribe grow.
Even the name Samish, “to stand up and give,” made Kelly feel like she was home. She says she never identified with the Western ideal of taking as much as you can.
“Finding others who knew what it meant to honor each other, with the idea that to be wealthy is to give more, connected me to the culture,” she says. “I found the answers I was looking for.”
ERADICATING LANGUAGE
Those working to preserve indigenous languages face a unique challenge. Many indigenous languages have few fluent speakers left, as is the case with the Samish language, says anthropologist Allan Richardson. Allan co-authored a book with Brent Galloway, a linguist known for his work with languages in the Coast Salish region of British Columbia and Washington. Their book “Nooksack Place Names: Geography, Culture and Language” details traditional Nooksack tribe culture through place names like Kulshan, or Kwelshán, an area on Mount Baker. The pair worked with George, who heads the Samish language program. George is a Nooksack tribal member who specializes in Coast Salish dialects and has worked with language for most of his life. They also worked with Nooksack elders to pair traditional names with their cultural meanings.
Indigenous languages are dying out because they were suppressed for so long, Allan says. White settlers laid claim to Washington state much later than they did on the East Coast and began putting indigenous children in boarding schools around the 1880s, Allan says.
The U.S. and Canadian governments systematically oppressed indigenous culture, banning traditional ceremonies and potlatches. Indigenous people were punished for speaking their native languages, Allan says. The elders Allan worked with on the book recalled their traditional language, but they also were forced to attend boarding schools where language was tightly controlled.
“There’s been a long, long absence of honoring who we are,” George says. “Taking over peoples to eliminate their culture, language, heritage and of course our heritage as also a euphemism for land.”
Indigenous languages experienced some revival as people like Brent Galloway started preservation efforts, Allan says. Now tribes like the Lummi Nation and Samish Indian Nation have language programs, but getting funding for it can be difficult, George says.
LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
The Samish language is an expression of the culture, and understanding one can help people learn the other.
“The key to cultural revitalization is language,” Kelly says.
The language reflects the area in which it was created and it’s hard to grasp the meaning of the words without being there, Kelly says. The original name of Guemes Island,
“Qweng7qwengíla7,” can be loosely translated to “Lots of Dogs Island,” Kelly says. The island was home to many Salish wool dogs whose fur was used to make ceremonial blankets.
“The name of the island means nothing unless you understand why it was called that, what the significance of the dogs were and what they were used for,” Kelly says.
The Samish language is built with careful attention to detail and meaning. The words communicate what needs to be known about the resources. The cedar tree was one of the most important resources for Coast Salish people. It was used to make longhouses, canoes, paddles, baskets and even clothing. It was critical to be able to recognize the tree. “Xpáy7,” the word for cedar tree, refers to the stripey red bark that distinguishes it.
The language is the backbone of Samish culture, but traditional beliefs and values create a framework for the language, too. The Samish belief in interconnectedness is present in the word structures and their meanings.
The words for people (elhtálngexw), trees (sq’elálngexw) and medicine (st’álngexw) all have the same root, which comes from the word for life force. It communicates the idea that people, trees and medicine are all connected by the same life force.
Speaking the Samish language makes Kelly feel connected to her roots. “It really gives you the ability to see things the way our ancestors would,” she says.
TEACHING LANGUAGE NOW
Reviving indigenous languages isn’t something that can be done arbitrarily, George says. “The purpose is to bring back who we are, our identity and our beliefs,” he says. A connecting factor in this is storytelling, a traditional way of passing down language and culture going back for generations. The stories explain identity and purpose, which is vital to promoting the tribe’s teachings and language among the Samish people, George says.
Part of keeping the Samish language alive is creating new words for contemporary places and things, like airports and phones. If they don’t adapt the language, it will die out when it’s no longer relevant, Kelly says. George is tasked with building new words in the same mindset the rest of the language was created in.
To do so, George consults elders and neighboring tribes to see if there is an existing word. If not, he reverts to asking two questions: What does it do and what does it look like?
George’s famous example is the word for glasses, xwtele7óles. It translates to “money eyes,” for the way round, shiny lenses look like coins.
When all else fails, George relies on transliteration, swapping out letters or sounds that don’t appear in the language, like the “g”s in “Google,” for a sound that does, like a “ch” noise.
Kelly is currently working on creating an online curriculum for those who want to learn the language but don’t live in the area or aren’t able to attend lessons. She also runs a Samish language Facebook page in her free time, posting vocabulary videos and other educational tools as a learning resource.
In order to teach, Kelly is constantly learning and building her Samish vocabulary and knowledge of the language.
“It’s difficult because the resources we have are the ones I’m helping make,” she says.
Language and culture cannot be untangled, a concept not lost on white settlers when they set out to conquer the New World.
Preserving the language honors indigenous cultures and traditions. But to keep the culture truly alive, tribes must breathe new life into the language.