(22 Nov 2017) LEADIN
The Massachusetts tribe whose ancestors shared a Thanksgiving meal with the Pilgrims nearly 400 years ago is reclaiming its long-lost language.
Almost 20 children from Wampanoag households are being taught exclusively in Wopanaotooaok, a language that had not been spoken for at least a century
STORYLINE
Sitting in a circle these toddlers sing nursery rhymes which sound familiar - although the language probably doesn't.
They're all students at The Mukayuhsak Weekuw, or "Children's House", an immersion school launched by the Cape Cod-based Mashpee Wampanoag tribe, whose ancestors hosted a harvest celebration with the Pilgrims in 1621 which helped form the basis for the country's Thanksgiving tradition.
The 19 children here are all from Wampanoag households and are being taught exclusively in Wopanaotooaok, a language that had not been spoken for at least a century until the tribe started an effort to reclaim it more than two decades ago. The immersion school is now in its second year.
"I do see progress. We have some children that are pre-verbal here and for their first words to actually be Wampanoag words is amazing," says Wampanoag Language Preschool teacher, Tia Pocknett.
"Even though, like, you know, we have a classroom of 19 children, even though that's 19 it's gonna trickle because those children have family members and they're gonna start using that and as we keep going with process of the school and working with younger and younger kids, the more language is gonna come back to our communities."
At the public high school, seven students are enrolled in the district's first Wampanoag language class, which is funded and staffed by the tribe.
Further up the road, volunteers host free language learning sessions for families each Friday at the Mashpee Wampanoag Indian Museum.
And within the tribe's government building, one floor up from the immersion school, tribal elders gather twice a week for an hourlong lesson before lunch.
Last week the Massachusetts Statehouse hosted a ceremony to mark the first Thanksgiving with Pilgrims. The event began with a traditional song and prayer.
The movement to revitalise native American languages started gaining traction in the 1990s and today, most of country's 550 plus tribes are engaged in some form of language preservation work.
But the Mashpee Wampanoag stand out because they're one of the few tribes to have brought back their language despite not having any surviving adult speakers.
Jessie Baird (or "Little Doe" as she's known) was in her 20s, had no college degree and zero training in linguistics when a dream inspired her to start learning Wampanoag in the early 1990s.
Working with linguistic experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other tribal members, Baird developed a dictionary of Wampanoag and a grammar guide.
She and others drew on historical documents written in Wampanoag, including personal diaries of tribal members, Colonial-era land claims and a version of the King James Bible printed in 1663 that is considered one of the oldest ever printed in the Western hemisphere.
"Wampanoag was the first language … first American-Indian language to use an alphabet to write in the language. And the first King James version of the Bible was printed in Wampanoag in 1663 on a printing press in Cambridge at what is now Harvard University," she explains.
To fill in the gaps, they turned to words, pronunciations and other auditory cues from related Algonquian languages still spoken today.
On the importance of reclaiming the ancient Wampanoag language Baird says:
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