Digitization,Transcription, and Publication of Sauk Narratives

Sac And Fox Nation Of Oklahoma, Stroud OK

Investigators

Abstract

Data from languages spoken by smaller communities worldwide have been shown to have important implications for theories of language change and for discovering the limits and possible diversity of linguistic structure. For this reason, the Documenting Endangered Languages program supports projects that make available high-quality data from the approximately 40% of the world's languages that may have no remaining speakers in the next fifty years. There is utmost urgency in documenting Sauk, a highly complex Native American language of the Algonquian family, with only a few remaining fluent speakers, all over the age of 80. Jacob Manatowa-Bailey of the Sac and Fox Nation of Oklahoma will increase documentation of Sauk language and culture through curation of rare recordings by some of the last speakers who were raised in monolingual Sauk households, Guy Wakolee, Carl Butler, Dewey Butler, and Grace Masquas. The recordings include personal stories of growing up in traditional Sauk homes during the 1920's and 1930's, a story of the Sauk migration to Oklahoma, descriptions of traditional practices such as procedures for building houses, and other remembrances of the knowledge, values, and customs of the speakers' parents and grandparents. Manatowa-Bailey will digitize, transcribe, and disseminate this extraordinary collection which will be of immediate use to linguists working on the reconstruction of Algonquian and to those interested in linguistic typology. The digital audio and video files, fully transcribed, will also be valuable tools in the continuation of Sauk language revitalization efforts, used in the development of fluency development, language instruction, and embedded readings. Results of this project will be archived at the Sam Noble Museum and the Sam Noble Museum and the Sac and Fox Nation Cultural Archives.