Advocates Newsletter (language)

This spring for the month of May, I taught a series of language and cultural classes at Happy Camp Elementary School. Much of my time, cultural and material resources went into teaching three classes over the course of the month. Two of the classes were held twice a week during after school sessions. One of these classes was open to boys and girls of all ages, the other was meant only for older kids to work on creating their ceremonial regalia. The materials for this program were paid for by the Karuk Community Development Center in order to provide a source of cultural healing and meditation for at risk community children.

The third class was a volunteer effort lead by myself, the special needs teacher, and the cultural coordinator for KCDC. In Happy Camp Elementary there is a class where all the children deemed "unteachable" are sent. This year the class had three to five boys at any given time, ranging from second grade to fifth. By pure coincidence all of the boys in the program were Karuk tribal members. Because of this, upon hearing about the after school program we were putting on, the special needs teacher in charge of these boys contacted me to see if it would be possible to come into her class during school and teach language, stories, and regalia making once a day for two weeks. I agreed to try it out and found myself surrounded by the sweetest, most sensitive, playful, and culturally appropriate little boys I've ever had the pleasure of working with.

Over the allotted time, one traditional ceremonial dress was hung and is ready for adornment, and a matching full set of regalia necklaces were made to completion during the big kids series of afterschool sessions. The smaller children completed eleven everyday necklaces, five mother's day gift necklaces, three sets of earrings, and one set of traditional beaded hair ties. All of the regalia work was done with situational Karuk immersion at its core. As a result several of the children know the Karuk names of local natural resources, as well as their colors.

The bulk of the language was taught in the special needs class, partially because they had an immense interest and matching ability, but also because the classes were held more often which allowed for more repetition and faster Karuk language acquisition. Also, all of the boys had previous exposure to language, and at least one of them used Karuk words in his family every day In the regularly held "culture class" we were able to complete three top quality regalia necklaces, seven traditional every day necklaces, four miniature eel baskets, and we also worked repeatedly on learning colors, color construction vocabulary, and color related sentence construction. We also did a series of immersion sets that taught the boys how to use their already existing vocabularies in simple sentences and related commands. These courses were popular with the children, as well as local community adults. I've been titled "Culture Teacher" by several of the local community children, and every time I walk through Happy Camp I am followed by at least one little girl singing her traditional gathering song. This more than anything, lets me know that the spring session was a success.

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