Doctoral Dissertation Research: Documenting the Oral Tradition of Northern Paiute, a Uto-Aztecan language

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

The linguistic diversity of North America is well-established in terms of the numerous language families represented on this continent. However, the vitality of these languages is threatened, making the documentation and maintenance of surviving Native languages all the more pressing. The Native American Languages Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1990, enacted into policy the recognition of the unique status and importance of Native American languages. The opportunity to document the speech used in oral traditions and the verbal arts for Native American languages is urgent, especially when this occurs in communities where the language retains considerable vitality and is still used extensively by speakers. This project will document oral traditions, and cultural and ethnohistorical knowledge where the indigenous language usage and speakers' traditional knowledge are very strong. The documentation will form the core material analyzed in a doctoral dissertation produced by the CoPI. Broader impacts include a publicly available deposit of the recordings and transcriptions at the California Language Archive at the University of California, Berkeley, and the uses of this material by the tribe to support language revitalization and educational activities in culture, history and related areas. The Fort McDermitt Paiute-Shoshone Reservation is an isolated Native community situated across the Nevada-Oregon border, formed when the Atsakɨda kwa Nɨmɨ (the people of the Red Mountain), were joined by families from neighboring areas looking for a Paiute safe haven as Euro-American settlers expanded settlements westward. Northern Paiute, a member of the Uto-Aztecan language family, is used extensively in this community by about three hundred speakers. This project will record the Northern Paiute language in both casual and formal speech. It will also document Paiute perspectives on past events as well as more distant collective history for the community, examining how oral traditions are used, and performed, as well as how they contrast with the Euro-American historical discourse. Native American languages differ in their linguistic and information structure from Indo-European languages like English. As a result, documenting Native American cultures requires serious attention to not only the structure of these languages, but also to the performance of verbal arts and how grammatical structures interact to express historical and other knowledge. The CoPI, a doctoral student at Indiana University, will analyze the documentation to explore how oral traditions in Northern Paiute are performed. The analysis will include how meaning is expressed in both the physical body in performance and via the grammar through instrumental prefixes, morphemes referring to gestures or parts of the body. Elicitation strategies range from videorecording of an annual storytelling festival (started in 2016), the use of focus groups in which people come together and discuss specific topics of the history of the community, and interviews and field trips to places of relevance to the community's collective history. By transcribing, analyzing, and translating Northern Paiute texts, the project will expand the linguistic, cultural, and historic record for the community and for researchers in history, anthropology, and folklore, as well as other allied disciplines.