ON SM'ALGYAX (COAST TSIMSHIAN) (COAST ON SM'ALGYAX RESEARCH DIRECTED COMMUNITY Fighting Language Endangerment TONYA STEBBINS LA TROBE EBUREAU La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC 3086, Australia https://library.latrobe.edu.au/ebureau/ First published in 2003 by ELPR Publications Second edition published in Australia by La Trobe University © La Trobe University 2020 Second edition published 2020 Copyright Information Copyright in this work is vested in La Trobe University. Unless otherwise stated, material within this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-Non Derivatives License. CC BY-NC-ND http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Fighting Language Endangerment: Community Directed Research on Sm'algyax (Coast Tsimshian) Tonya Stebbins ISBN: 978-0-6484681-3-4 DOI: https://doi.org/10.26826/1011 Other Information Designed by La Trobe eBureau Enquiries: [email protected] This ebook has been peer reviewed Cover photo and imprints: Adapted from 'Thuja plicata Vancouver' by abdallahh from Wikimedia Commons used under CC BY 2.0. ii Preface to the second edition This book explores a range of issues associated with working in a community directed project to prepare a dictionary for community use. In conjunction with my studies as a MA and then a PhD student in Linguistics at the University of Melbourne between 1995 and 1999, I approached the Tsimshian community proposing to work with them on preparing an updated and expanded dictionary for the community. My involvement with the Tsimshian community was supported by my PhD supervisor, Dr Jean Mulder, who had also completed her PhD working on Sm'algyax, the language of the community. Before I made my decision to work on the language, I was fortunate to be able to meet and discuss my plans with Doreen Robinson, who with her husband, Bill Robinson, were respected elders in the community. Other people who were important to the work are mentioned in the acknowledgments to the first edition. The book identifies a range of practical, theoretical and personal challenges associated with working closely with language activists in a First Nations community who are seeking to address language loss. Looking back on my experiences since this formative time, I am struck by how persistent these challenges are – both in my own work, described above, and in the work of others (see for example, Hinton et al 2018 and a range of papers in the journal Language Documentation and Conservation, among other publications). While researchers have become increasingly engaged in seeking to address these problems, they reflect problems that cannot be solved with linguistic methods alone, representing as they do tensions between academic and community driven agendas, and indexing patterns of authorisation and agency that sometimes actively work against the goals of language revitalisation. There are several different ways this book can be read. It is an account of my time doing research in partnership with the Tsimshian community, working with people to compile a dictionary for their language Sm'algyax. As such it addresses the lexicographical decisions that had to be made. It provides a practical model for compiling a dictionary in a community context. The book is also one account of the linguistic history of the Tsimshian community and their language, Sm'algyax. It provides an overview of the fortunes of the community since contact, provides a general introduction to the language and points the reader to other resources on the language. Sm'algyax is a beautiful language and it was a privilege to spend time learning to see the world through its lens. The book also describes the tensions that circulate behind lexicographic decisions – questions of representation and of authority in decision making. These questions are made troubling by the legacies of colonisation, that both mask and at the same time reveal questions of power and authorisation – Who gets to decide what is right? Whose interests are prioritised? Which speakers or speech communities are represented? How? (See also dis- cussion in Easton and Stebbins 2015, Eira and Stebbins 2008, Stebbins 2014, Stebbins and Planigale 2010.) It was a real honour to be trusted to hold the space in which the community navigated these decisions, and espe- cially to do so knowing how little I really understood. The people I worked with were extraordinarily generous and patient with repeated examples of my clumsiness and incomprehension. I feel enormous gratitude towards all the people I worked with for supporting me through these struggles. The lessons I learned from this work have taken many years to settle and guide my professional practice still. Finally, and unusually for the time when it was written, particularly given the genre of the dissertation, this book is a personal reflection on my own experiences and role in the process of developing the dictionary. Fieldwork requires significant emotional resources. It is lonely, confronting and challenging on every level. This is true both in situations where the researcher is an outsider, as I was, but as others have noted, equally FIGHTING LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT TONYA STEBBINS iii true for people doing research within their own communities. Participant observation, which was in effect the primary method used in this project, places the researcher in an anomalous position – (notional) insider and (real) outsider, experiencer and observer, participant and documenter. In the context of a community reeling under the pressures of colonisation, none of these positions are without their difficulties (see also Stebbins, Eira and Couzens 2018). I have written elsewhere about how erroneous the Indiana Jones trope is with regards to my experiences of fieldwork (Stebbins 2012). I am no swashbuckler. This confused perception is perhaps understandable when it is expressed by people with little understanding of what might be involved. Surprisingly to me at the time, I also felt deeply misunderstood at my home institution, by my peers. At one stage, some of my fellow students had jokingly allocated themselves different types of cookies/biscuits/crackers as indexes of their identity. I was not part of this playful conversation, but I was allocated the hardest and driest of crackers, apparently a reflec- tion of how tough I was. I found this interpretation shocking since at the time I could hardly bear to go onto campus and spent hours sleeping each afternoon in an attempt to recover my equilibrium after a long stint in the field. I felt as raw and shaky as an invalid. Looking back now, I am more ready to acknowledge that I was indeed resilient – I recovered from the various dents in my psyche that I collected in the field and have found ways to turn this territory into fertile ground moving forward. This book, I hope, offers solace to others navigating the dark shadows of fieldwork. The anxieties and dilemmas usually only aired during tea breaks at conferences are laid bare here. The book is clear about the linguistic aspects of these hidden troubles as well as more personal difficulties. Becoming vulnerable in a community where many people are vulnerable was perhaps inevitable. It is heart-breaking to watch people weather one bereavement after another; to know that the lives of the people I was growing to love were daily circumscribed by the effects of systemic racism; to hear accounts of child removal into institutions; to see the long lasting resonances these experiences leave behind; and to understand both the sheer scope of people's ambitions for a better life for future generations as well as the hurdles that render such a vision audacious. Twenty years on from this work, my gratitude towards the people I worked with in the Tsimshian community has only continued to grow. I found my heart through this work. Through writing the thesis that became this book, I also found the courage to keep my heart open to all of the possibilities and consequences of engaging in language projects in minority and oppressed language communities. The work of partnering with minority communities in the context of colonisation does not become easier because the root causes require massive change at the national, regional and local level. Having a clearer understanding of what is happening and why it is so difficult has helped. This book was originally published by the Endangered Languages of the Pacific Rim project, led by Professor Osahito Miyaoka and funded by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science, Sports, Culture, and Technol- ogy. The project was based at Osaka Gakuin University in Japan and provided significant support for nearly 200 researchers across the years 1999 to 2003. The project published a broad range of material, often with a descriptive focus, including grammars, and dictionaries, but also supported the development of databases and the publication of textbooks. I was fortunate during my fieldwork in the Pacific Northwest to get to know Fumiko Sasama, who was a member of the project team and a fellow researcher in the Tsimshian community and very kindly provided an introduction to the first edition of this book. Because the project was completed in 2003, and the publications from the project were not available for sale, it has been some time since copies of the book were available to new readers. This new edition ensures that the book will be available in digital format in the long term. FIGHTING LANGUAGE ENDANGERMENT TONYA STEBBINS IV Foreword Sm'algyax, or called Coast Tsimshian, is the language of the Tsimshian people who live on the northwest coast of British Columbia, Canada. Today it is spoken by only a few hundred people. Although most speakers are now over sixty years of age and speaker numbers have dwindled over the past few decades, there has been growing concern about the preservation of Sm'algyax within the Tsimshian community.