Documentation Workshop (language)

Karuk Language Program Workshop

November 7 & 8, 2009

By Laura Grant

Ruth Rouvier, Language Program Coordinator for the Karuk Language Department, presented a workshop in Yreka, California, at the gracious Yreka Tribal Housing Authority council chamber on Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and 8. Karuk master speakers and their apprentices learned how to edit and archive digital video recordings that feature the Karuk language. Apprentices have been busy recording their master speakers since January 2009 when they received cameras and their initial training on videotaping. The recordings featured a fine variety of topics from traditional fishing practices to storytelling to descriptions of the weather.

Funding from the Administration for Native Americans (ANA) allowed the Karuk Tribe to launch this three-year project that focuses on training Karuk language apprentices in best practices for video documentation, transcription, and analysis techniques for the preservation of their language. By the end of the project, apprentices will have new technical skills to offer the community. The Karuk Language Department in collaboration with the tribe, will create an archive all the recordings.

It is a great opportunity for the elder speakers and eager language learners to spend time together. Master speakers attending were Vina Smith, Charlie Thom, Lucille Albers, Sonny Davis, and Bud Johnson. Apprentices were Crispen McAllister, Crystal Richardson, Florrine Super, Tamara Alexander, and Roy Arwood. Susan Gehr, former apprentice and the language program’s Tribal Linguist, also attended. The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival sent the trainers, Laura Grant of Tehachapi, and Kate Hedges of Redding. The Advocates are assisting the Karuk Tribe in achieving the training goals in their ANA project.

The Yreka Tribal Housing Authority council chamber is directly connected through a serving counter to a fully-equipped kitchen. On Saturday morning, our cooks for the weekend, Kathy and Donna, passed a big breakfast of fried eggs, hash browns, toast, and fresh fruit through that window and continued to feed us abundantly for the next two days. Then Ruth asked Charlie Thom to open the workshop. After a minor misunderstanding about a request for a kiss, Charlie started our morning with a powerful prayer and song.

We all introduced ourselves and then the master-apprentice teams talked a little about what they had been doing and what type of training they needed most. After that, Laura presented how to log and capture video segments from a miniDV tape using FinalCut Express, and how to label video files. All the teams had different levels of proficiency in capturing and editing

so Laura and Kate worked with each apprentice individually so that each could take their own next step in video editing. Later in the afternoon, Eric Cutright, the Karuk Tribe’s IT director, reviewed the procedure for backing up the teams’ work on external hard drives. This is the first step in getting the recordings into the tribal archives. Ultimately, it was decided to use Super Duper to create cloned back ups for archive purposes, rather than the incremental back up generated by the Time Machine software.

Everyone was busy all day including the master speakers who sat together often speaking in Karuk. It was impressive to see many of the young people easily join in the conversation. The great progress the Karuk Tribe has made in language revitalization was there for all to hear. During meal times family members joined us so they too enjoyed the language circles.

On Sunday morning Laura, Ruth, and Susan led the group in a review of the naming conventions for files to be stored in the tribal archives and with which Susan will add language recordings to the online Karuk dictionary. We changed some conventions upon recommendations from the apprentices.

Kate talked to us about making recordings at the highest quality and then compressing copies of the original files for presentations on iPods or the internet. Originally she was to give a presentation about how to create a podcast but Eric Cutright had notified us that the Karuk web site was not yet ready to receive them. Many wanted to share their recordings so instead we talked about how to use iDVD to make DVDs that could played on home media centers. Cris McAllister had already done a project like this so he led us through the process for creating DVDs. Laura shared an iDVD project she had made with several chapters about Kawaiisu traditional use of plants for medicine.

Everyone continued to work on their individual projects through the morning and into Sunday afternoon. Many had questions about finding and organizing files in iTunes and iPhoto. Kate gave invaluable one-on-one instruction there and chaos on the apprentices’ laptops was greatly reduced. There were many conversations about the best way to archive media files. Itunes and iPhoto are good catalogers of media files. Each file can be saved in high-resolution format and then exported at a lower resolution or compressed file as needed. Within each program, the apprentices can organize their materials into selected subsets (playlists (iTunes) and albums (iPhoto)) for easy access.

For the storage of media in general we discussed copying it to removable hard drives. This is handy if you are going to access source files to create multiple projects. External drives are machines so, in time, they will fail. It was also recommended to copy media to dual-layer DVDs. (Taiyo Yuden brand is high quality and our favorite.) These will hold over eight gigabytes (GB) of data. The software Toast, Version 10, will split larger files onto multiple discs that can later be reassembled into a single file.

Though there was a wide spread in the apprentices’ proficiency in video editing and the use of a Macintosh computer, everyone left the workshop with skills a few notches higher than when they arrived. In a planning session at the close of the workshop, we agreed to meet again in Yreka for technical assistance on individual projects on February 20th. Crystal also would like to see more emphasis on training in immersion-style language learning to improve the apprentices’ ability to speak and to make the best use of the master speakers’ time during the three year ANA project. With a final helping of pumpkin pie and chocolate cake from Kathy and Donna, we said our farewells. 


Interested in having trainings for your language program or organization, contact the Advocates atmarina@communityfuturescollective.org