Klamath Tribes Language Director holds classes at Oregon Tech

If you traveled the world, you could hear 100 different languages. That’s because language is one of the key elements of a culture. But for generations, the Klamath, Yahooskin-Paiute, and Modoc tribes were denied the freedom to speak their language, and the Klamath Tribes are working to fix that.

GeorGene Nelson, Director of the Klamath Tribes language department, led that effort in a November program she hosted for students and faculty at the Oregon Institute of Technology.

The group met three times this fall to hear a presentation about the Native languages of the Klamath Basin area. Students were taught various subjects, such as days of the week and months of the year, with a focus on vocabulary and using the language in conversation.

Nelson said one of the best parts of her job is teaching Natives who have never been able to introduce themselves in their native tongue to say their names. She noted that generations of natives were abused in boarding schools that were treated more like military units as far away as Florida for speaking their language. She said that the abuse was so effective that when they returned to their homes, they were incapable of conversing with their grandparents.

Nelson recounted one story she heard from her grandfather. When he was a boy, her grandfather was forced to watch a student who used his native name, “run the line. “Running the Line meant going through a line of children who each had a paddle to be beaten.

The process of removing children from tribal families continued until the 1970s, resulting in a total eradication of fluent native speakers. Nelson explained that there are currently no fluent native speakers of the Klamath language alive; however, this presents certain opportunities as they work to restore the language.

“One of my friends brought me an animal with big eyes from Australia and asked me how to say it in Klamath,” she said, speaking in the OIT class. “I asked her what it ate, and they told me candy.” She said the challenge of deriving new words for modern things like cell phones keeps the language alive and makes learning fun.

The students who attended each drew a number of lessons from the day. One student, Merrick Tambil, said, “Everything I learned today was new. I had never gone to a language preservation workshop before.

Nelson said saving the language is hard work but well worth doing. “I think that events like these are important so that we can share about our language, our culture, who we are as people, and they’re here visiting in our homelands,” she said, “and so they know a little bit more about the people who’ve been here since time immemorial.”

How the Creator Fed the Klamath People

The creator was watching over his people on Klamath Lake from his spot above Barkley Springs. At the time, a big black snake was swimming up all the rivers winding down through the basin and killing the people. The people asked the creator to stop the snake, and the creator agreed and went to battle the snake.

The creator warred with the snake and threw him down three times, each time creating an island in Klamath Lake at the site where the snake landed. Finally, after the long battle, the snake was killed.