Monthly Archives: November 2011

In this blog post, Sky Hopinka tells about his experiences so far with the Chinuk Wawa group at Portland State University.

For the past eight weeks now, the Chinuk Wawa language group has been meeting two nights a week at the Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC) on the Portland State University campus here in Oregon.  The NASCC has been kind enough to donate space for us to have this class so many thanks to the NASCC Specialist Rachel Cushman (Chinook Nation) and everyone else at the Native Center for their support.

This language class isn’t run by any department, student group, or governing body, and for the time being we’d like to keep it that way.  BUT, we welcome and appreciate any and all support.  To have the driving force behind this group be students and community members who are self motivated and have a sincere desire to save languages and build communities is essential in keeping the language living at this location. Having the support from the NASCC and the Native community is amazing, and the support from Native American Studies is great in giving students the academic ability, through internship and independent study credits, to pursue this unconventional, and somewhat underground, approach to language revitalization.  And Where Are Your Keys? is providentially unconventional.

Getting this language class going has been quite the experience.  For the past three terms I’ve been able to get internship and independent study credits through Native American Studies (now Indigenous Nations Studies) to learn Chinuk Wawa to meet my Foreign Language requirement and intern with Evan and “Where Are Your Keys?”  Now this term we are trying to help other students do the same.

WAYK Interns, Jordan Mercier and Stevie Lemke

WAYK has three new interns this quarter, Stevie Lemke (Cherokee), Taija Revels (Tlingit), and Jordan Mercier (Grand Ronde) who are all seniors.  They have been learning the language and learning WAYK since we began in the beginning of October and have really been crucial in keeping the momentum of the CW class going strong thus far.  None of them are interning for credits this quarter, which is definitely a testament to their desire to support this class and the language.  Also, we are actively looking for freshman, sophomores, and juniors to take the reigns over for the next school year and take advantage of the opportunity to meet the B.A. foreign language requirement with an indigenous language.

Now to talk a bit about the class itself…it’s been both challenging and daunting while being exciting and invigorating.  I have not yet not looked forward to a class night and I can honestly say I don’t see that happening. We’ve had about 15-17 people come through the class with about 8 regulars for the Tuesday class and another 8 or so on the Friday class.  Seeing this many people who consistently attend is wonderful.  The main points that are challenging to me and the other interns is finding ways to organize and structure the night to account for the ever varying and fluctuating levels of fluency that the students are at.  Every class is different and we are always looking for ways to keep everyone engaged and progressing in the language and WAYK.  Listening to the WAYK podcasts with Dustin debriefing his language classes has definitely been helpful in figuring out how to navigate similar issues that have emerged.

We’ve begun using the Plus/Delta technique to close our class each night and recap what we’ve covered.  Giving the students that come a voice in this developing community is necessary and the feedback we’ve received has been indispensible in maintaining and helping this language group grow.

WAYK Intern Taija Revels (third from left) teaching the AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society) student group

I’d also like to add that it has been great to have fluent Chinuk speakers in the Portland area come to our class and support the new speakers with their presence and their knowledge of the language.  In addition to the Chinuk night at PSU, there is also a class at Portland Community College and the Grand Ronde Tribal Office so basically, there are at least four Chinuk gatherings going on somewhere in Portland and given week.

We will keep this gathering going throughout the school year, with the times changing to accommodate student’s schedules, and we’ll probably keep going through the winter break, too.  We also might have some reflections from the other interns in the group on this blog, so keep a look out for those.

Sky

WAYK was asked by UISHE, the United Indian Students in Higher Education, to come and present at the Native American Student and Community Center on the PSU campus in honor of Native American Heritage Month.  UISHE is one of two Native student groups at PSU and have been very supportive of the Chinuk Wawa class and our efforts in language revitalization.

We will start the day at noon and go until 4pm.  After that, those that wish to stay for the Chinuk class at 5 are more than welcome to do so.  This is a free event and open to everyone.

Hello friends and fellow WAYK players!

I am very excited to offer some details of our upcoming event:

Nov. 5th and 6th at the Native American Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto Ca.

Presented by the Stanford Languages Club

The cost for this event is donation based. We are unclear at this moment how the University rules will apply to this type of presentation as it is landing in a strange grey area. This is nothing new for us at Where Are Your Keys? We often find it is a challenge for administrations to categorize what we do. We are working with them to find a solution to this issue but in the meantime please be prepared to bring your own money for food, lodging, and transportation costs. To cover the costs of the presenters, feel free to make a donation of food, food money, or gas cards. Thank you for your understanding and willingness to help us navigate this issue. The last thing we wanted to do was postpone this event. Languages are more precious than lunch money.

The schedule for the event is loose as we are open to a variety of possible language opportunities depending on who shows up. The most effective, interactive method for teaching the techniques of Where Are Your Keys? is to actually learn a language while learning the techniques. We have chosen Mandarin as the vehicle for Saturday’s presentation. On Sunday we will use what we have learned on Saturday to “hunt” or “pull” a different language from a fluent speaker. We will experience how quickly the new language can spread throughout a community of Where Are Your Keys? players who are using specific techniques learned just yesterday.

This weekend will be full of techniques for building strong vibrant healthy language communities as well as specific techniques for learning and teaching languages.

For now the schedule is:

Friday night:

6:00pm – 8:00pm dinner and presentation by the Stanford native student recruiter.

(bring your students)

Saturday: Community Building and WAYK techniques of accelerated learning and teaching.

8:30am – 9:00am light breakfast

9:00am -12:00 Where Are Your Keys? Mandarin!

12:00 – 1:00 lunch

1:00pm – 3:00pm Where Are Your Keys? Mandarin

3:00pm – 4:00pm Debrief and plan for tomorrow

Sunday: Community Language Revitalization!

8:30am – 9:00am light breakfast

9:00am -12:00 Where Are Your Keys? Latin? French? Cherokee? Salish? Cree?

12:00 – 1:00 lunch

1:00pm – 3:00pm Where Are Your Keys?

3:00pm – 4:00pm Debrief and plan for the future

Here is a list of the Stanford area hotels.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/chs/general/hotel.html

This link is a shuttle schedule for the university to and from area locations.

This may help those of you coming from out of town without a car.

Marguerite shuttle routes:

http://transportation.stanford.edu/marguerite/