An amazing woman has gone to sleep and her language with her

June 16, 2024 4:49 PM

A linguist shares the story of his study with the last remaining speaker of South Tsimshian As shared to r/linguistics in 2013: “Today, Violet Neasloss, aka Nanny Violet, passed away. she was the oldest resident of Klemtu BC, 99 years old, and also one of the happiest, quickest, and most caring. With her death, the South Tsimshian, or SgüüXs language is now sleeping, but because of her, and the hundreds of hours of exhausting mental work she committed to over those months, at some point in the future, members of her community will have the option to wake it up again, and some have already started.

here is a video link of us recording - she upbraids me for my lack of knowledge about the kitchen, and finishes by showing the care she took over what knowledge she shared with the recordings, always careful that never a bad word was said about anybody, though she wasn't so careful when talking about things she felt were hurting her community”

posted by bq (7 comments total)

I just got back from a family trip to Alaska - during our visit to the heritage center in Anchorage (which I'd heartily recommend to anyone planning to be up there any time soon, one of the tour guides mentioned that the last surviving native speaker of one of the local languages passed away recently. I hope they were referring to this (otherwise some other native language has passed from the world as well). I'm glad so much of what she knew was recorded for posterity, and that posterity apparently appreciates and intends to use it.
posted by AdamCSnider at 5:28 PM on June 16

Notice that the reddit post which starts this thread is over 10 years old.
posted by blob at 5:33 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]

20 years ago, shortly after I moved to Southeast Alaska, I wound up helping someone move a boat from Ketchikan down to Anacortes, WA. We stocked up on groceries and ice leaving Ketchikan but the boat we were moving had a top speed of 8 knots and no radar (i.e. we couldn't run at night) so we had been underway several days before stopping in Klemtu to refuel. We expected to also restock some of the groceries that we had consumed but that was not to be.

For me, who was new to the region, it was a lesson I've never forgotten about the self-sufficiency required to live in small outlying bush communities, as there is a tribal store there but not of the sort you'd expect if you were accustomed to groceries elsewhere - you couldn't expect to live off the extremely limited selections available in the store and I presume most people there live a subsistence lifestyle supplemented with goods shipments brought in on the BC ferries.

It's a very isolated community in a beautiful place.

Preservation efforts for first nations languages and other cultural heritage (art forms and handicrafts, dance, histories, stories, and much more) are being actively pursued by tribes throughout the region, on both sides of the US/Canada border, and while I know little about the details of what steps are being taken among the Kitasoo, for the tribes near me (about whose efforts I am only marginally more knowledgeable) I know it's a huge struggle and in almost all cases a race against time to save irreplaceable knowledge. Throughout the region there are many individuals who are really going to heroic lengths to try to do what they can.

I'm sorry to hear about the loss of Ms. Neasloss and I hope that the work she did to preserve what she could of her heritage will bear fruit. Condolences, also, to the people of Klemtu, for whom the loss of a senior elder is surely a major event.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:23 PM on June 16 [5 favorites]

Yes, I should have noted the date. Can mods add?
posted by bq at 7:21 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

I really enjoyed the collection of essays in "Tsimshian: Images of the Past, Views for the Present", if anyone is looking for a recent-ish book.
Tsimshian is a very interesting language family. This site may also provide some useful information.
posted by Skerples at 8:15 PM on June 16 [2 favorites]

The woman whose story forms the basis for the write-up was a speaker of Southern Tsimshian. There is another branch of the Tshimshian language family, Sm'algyax̣ or Coast Tsimshian. It is a bit less endangered than Sgüüx̣s / Southern Tsimshian, but still critically endangered. The last figure I saw for it was fewer than 70 speakers, although I was not clear on whether that figure was total for Sm'algyax̣ speakers or was only for the Alaskan Tsimshian population.

(The historic lands of the Tsimshian-speaking peoples are centered around the lower Skeena River Valley and the Tsimpsean Peninsula in British Columbia but there is also a community of Tsimshians in southern Southeast Alaska, mostly in the community of Metlakatla on Annette Island, as the result of a breakaway group that left BC to follow missionary priest Father William Duncan and establish a new community across the border.)

If you're interested in Sm'algyax̣ / Coast Tsimshian, the Sealaska Heritage Institute's language department is working to preserve it, producing language curriculum and audio dictionaries. Their work is worth supporting.

Not that it's very relevant, but by coincidence, as I type this I have been looking out my window, watching the Alaska state ferry M/V Lituya heading for Metlakatla.. I can't quite see Metlakatla from here, as it's around the corner and blocked by another island, but I can see the eastern part of Annette Island.
posted by Nerd of the North at 9:02 PM on June 16 [8 favorites]

Mod note: I added the year of the reddit post
posted by taz (staff) at 10:13 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]