51吃瓜

Reviving this听indigenous language can teach people about an alternative worldview that can certainly help us today.

I work with reviving an indigenous language in the two dialects known as Wendat and Wyandot.听It is related to the six languages of the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca and Tuscarora) and Cherokee.听They are descendants of the peoples that the French first named the Huron and Petun early in the 17th century.听Their homeland was in southern Ontario, close to Georgian Bay in Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes on the Canada-US border.听

The people were driven out of this homeland in the mid-17th century.听The Wendat went east to the edges of the city of Quebec, which is where they live now.听The people called Wyandot were forced to make several major moves.听They went to live in the Detroit area in the early 18th century, later to Ohio, then Kansas and to Oklahoma in 1867.听There are Wyandot communities still in Michigan, Kansas and Oklahoma.听I am the tribal linguist for the people who call themselves the Wyandotte of Oklahoma.

My main reason for working with the language is so people can reconnect with the language and traditional culture of their ancestors.听But over the last few years, I have discovered another important reason.听The language can also teach people about an alternative view of life at a time when such a view can certainly help the world today.

A good part of this alternative view can be termed, 鈥渓essening or altering of hierarchy.鈥�听When the French came to Wendat country in the 17^th century, they had many terms of hierarchy that could not easily or readily be translated into the language of the people:

Political hierarchy: lord, master, commander, baron, duke, prince or king

Religious hierarchy: bishop, archbishop, cardinal or pope

During the 17th听century, the first bishop that the Wendat encountered was Fran莽ois de Montmorency Laval, the first bishop of New France.听He was adopted into the Bear Clan and given the respected name Harihwawayi,听meaning: 鈥淗e holds a matter, an affair.鈥�听The pope came to be called Harihwawayiywannen, meaning: 鈥淗e is the large, great one who holds a matter, affair.鈥�

When I was translating the last recorded traditional stories of the Wyandot, I came across a character named Kurakuwah.听He was an influential man who in one story was constantly being tricked by a Wyandot trickster.听I did not at first recognize the name as being a Wyandot one.听Then, while researching something else, I discovered that people speaking a related language, Mohawk, used to refer to the governor of Massachusetts as Kora.听Then I saw that the name for the king of England was Korakowah.听The听kowah is the Mohawk equivalent of the Wyandot ywannen, so the name means 鈥渂ig Kora.鈥�听Wyandot has a 鈥渦鈥� where Mohawk has an 鈥渙.鈥�听So, the person constantly being fooled by the Wyandot trickster was the namesake of the king of England.

Not only were strict positions of hierarchy absent from the language, but there were no terms in the language for 鈥渃ommand,鈥� 鈥渙rder鈥� or 鈥渙bey.鈥�听You can 鈥減ut your word鈥� or 鈥渂e with someone鈥檚 word.鈥�听The verb meaning 鈥渢o tell鈥� refers to telling a story or informing someone, not telling that person what to do.

There are no ways of saying “best” or “worst.”听When I discovered this, I quite quickly became aware of how often English speakers use these terms, especially “best,” and how often they are misleading or inaccurate ways of seeing things. Think, for example, of misleading questions such as:听鈥淲ho was the best writer in the English language?鈥� or the very Canadian argued-in-a-bar question, 鈥淲ho was the best hockey player?鈥�听The answer I favor for these questions is a simple: 鈥淣o one, but the following were or are very good.鈥� You will notice that I avoided saying 鈥渢he best.鈥�听If you are on Facebook, think of how often you read the inaccurate statement, 鈥渢he best X ever.鈥�

Now we tend to think of the opposites 鈥渞ich鈥� and 鈥減oor鈥� as a hierarchy of material goods.听It doesn鈥檛 work that way with Wendat and Wyandot.听The term that would come to be used for the material rich referred primarily to the spiritually rich.听Hondaki means, 鈥渢hey are spirits or are linked with spirits.鈥�听Add the ywannen referred to above and you have hondakiywannen,听which means, 鈥渢hey are or have large spirits.鈥� This is the term that came to be used by the Jesuit missionaries as meaning, 鈥渢hey are rich.鈥� 听

Just in case you think that the ywannen was always a positive attribution, there was the term yandetaraywannen听that听referred to someone who was pompous or arrogant.听The literal meaning is, 鈥溾�榯o be a big or large pumpkin.鈥�

For 鈥減oor鈥� there is a verb root esa that for years I translated as, 鈥渢o be in a poor state鈥� or 鈥渢o be poor.鈥�听It took my translating traditional stories to realize that a significant use of this verb was having it mean “to be family poor” because of meanings such as the following:

Huwesandih: He is in a family poor state.听He is a widower.

Uwesandih: She is family poor, a widow.

Hotiesandi: They are in a family poor state, are orphans.

In terms of hierarchy and in a number of other key terms in speaking of human life, Wendat and Wyandot present an alternative way of thinking and speaking that should be preserved and served as a teacher.

The views expressed in this article are the author鈥檚 own and do not necessarily reflect 51吃瓜鈥檚 editorial policy.

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