Dudlow
Apr 4 2008, 11:02 AM
CBC's radio weekly evening programme, 'As It Happens', aired an interesting bit last night (around 7:pm Toronto time at FM 99.1). They interviewed Dr. Edward Vajda (pronounced Vie-da) of Western Washington University, Bellingham, about his recent discovery that links the Siberian language, Ket, with North American Athabaskan languages. This is an important first in terms of old/new paleo world linkages.
According to Dr. Vajda, back in 1923 and again in 1998, scholars suggested there may be linguistic links between the languages of Siberia (or Mongolia or China, etc.), and the languages spoken by Native American populations, but none had been found until now.
Dr. Vajda described how some verb morphologies, words for colours, textures and some objects trace directly back to Ket, which is still spoken in some areas of modern Siberia. This, apparently, is a first in Native linguistic research and
the first direct linkage of new to old world languages in the Americas.
Variants of the modern Athabaskan languages are spoken across the Arctic regions and especially down the North American West Coast, from Alaska to Washington. There are lesser pockets of the same linguistic derivations elsewhere in North America as well, most likely as the result of more recent migrations.
As for when the Ket language was introduced, Dr. Vajda feels it arrived in North America at least 4500 years ago and could possibly have arrived as long ago as 10,000 years, although that long ago, he points out, would suggest a linguistic linkage of such age as has never been proven before.
For those who have digital radio (Sirius), the archived programme is apparently available for listening. I am not personally familiar with that technology, but one should be able to find it through CBC's on-line index (maybe at aih.cbc.ca).
Dr. Vajda's personal CV is available at:
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/cv.htm - Or you might wish to Google the Modern Languages Department of Western Washington University; which I also did, but could find no direct announcement of his findings there at the present time. Probably he will publish his findings in the near future. Really neat stuff!
Dudlow
jon a. larsen
Jul 11 2008, 04:03 PM
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Re: Don Mose article
From: Ana (dara@sltrib.com)
Sent: Thu 7/10/08 2:36 PM
To: Patra Kelly (patra-a@hotmail.com)
Hi Ms. Kelly,
Here are your stories.
Ana Daraban
Tribune Archives
Publication: The Salt Lake Tribune
Published: 04/22/96
Page: A1
Jump Page A4: The Salt Lake Tribune Graphic: The Asia-Navajo Connection
Navajos See Themselves In Tribe From Siberia
Tribes See Themselves In Each Other
Byline: BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Copyright 1996, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
MONUMENT VALLEY -- For Navajos Don Mose and Bill Todachennie, the song had a familiar ring to it.
``Beauty above me,'' the elderly man seated in the middle of a circle of people chanted as he motioned skyward. ``Beauty below me, beauty all around me.''
The words sounded like the verses of a sacred Navajo song, one that embodies the American-Indian tribe's spirituality. But Mose and Todachennie were in Asia, half a world away from their Utah homeland. They had found a little bit of Navajo heritage in the ancient song of the Khanty, a tribe of native Russians in a far-flung Siberian village 12 time zones from Monument Valley.
``I was amazed,'' says Mose, one of 11 San Juan County educators who visited the village of Kazym in January. ``Even though we didn't speak the language, we immediately connected, like a magnet. We had a sense we were actually with our own relatives.''
Adds Todachennie, vice president of the San Juan School Board: ``We just fit right in. You'd see them and think they were Navajos.''
So when Khanty natives arrived at this Utah community of the Navajo Nation on Friday, it was nothing less than a family reunion.
``Ya 'at' eeh,'' Mose greeted Rimma Potpot in Navajo as he hugged the Khanty cultural specialist, one of eight Russians from Siberia and Moscow who attended the Southeastern Utah Bilingual Conference Friday and Saturday at Monument Valley High School.
``We hope there will be a day when our students and their students can communicate directly, by computer,'' says Clayton Long, American-Indian education director for San Juan School District.
``The best thing about this exchange is that these people are right down to earth,'' says Long, a Navajo who was part of the Utah delegation to Siberia in January. ``We really feel close to them.''
Utah Navajos say the similarities between the two cultures are striking:
-- Navajos tell young people the tales of Coyote, who frequently embodies the moral of a story. Khanty tell similar stories, but the symbolic character is a wolf.
-- Navajos and Khanty both have clan traditions, where a child belonging to one parent's familial clan should not marry someone of his or her own or the other parent's clan.
-- Physical appearances are similar -- strong cheekbones, wide noses and rare male facial hair.
``Even personality-wise, I feel surrounded by my own people,'' says Navajo Jim Dandy, who taught Khanty children the traditional Navajo Shoe Game while in Russia.
Part of the Athabascan language family, Navajos are linguistically related to tribes inhabiting the Canadian Northwest and Alaska. Several Anglo scholars have speculated that Athabascan tribes once roamed freely between North America and Asia, via a land bridge that now is the floor of the Bering Sea, between Alaska and Russia.
Some Navajos disagree, and there are several variations on the theory that may explain the seeming kinship between the nomads of Siberia and the American Southwest. Mose says one possible explanation for the link may be a seldom-told Navajo tale, which is not well-understood. The legend talks of a red star that was taken from the land of the Navajo and brought to the Bie'e' lichi'i' -- the Navajo term for Russians, which means ``Red Clothing.''
``The red star is sacred like a crystal to the Navajo People,'' says Mose. ``Some [Siberian tribes] say that there was a red star that fell from the sky in their country, though no one actually knows the reasoning behind the legend.''
To symbolically mark the reunion of the ancestral cultures, medicine man David Yanito of Bluff performed a sacred ceremony in Navajo that joined the two nations together ``as brother and sister.''
Like the Navajo people, many Russians fear the cultures of their indigenous tribes are slowly eroding, being lost to Western ways and tongues. Educators from the native Siberian tribes of Khanty and Mansi (pronounced Hon-tee and Mon-say) came here to learn how Navajos have attempted to integrate traditional culture into the education curriculum.
``The most important thing right now in Russia, not just for aboriginal people but for everyone, is education,'' says Yuri Gromyko, president of the National Teachers Preparation University in Moscow. ``Khanty and Navajo share so many connections and we want to develop an exchange of ideas for education.''
Adds Yuri Krupnov, a publisher of school textbooks in Russia: ``It's a new type of statement, where we don't want to destroy other cultures but learn to try to live together and share cultures.''
It's a concept that has not come easily in San Juan County, where more than half the residents are American Indians. It has taken 20 years of litigation -- including a still-pending suit against the school district brought by the Navajo Nation -- to bring changes such as classes in Navajo culture, bilingual education and hiring of American-Indian teachers.
Mose, the bilingual curriculum development specialist at Monument Valley High, hopes that Utah's experiences will help the tribes of Siberia avoid the sometimes acrimonious fight over multicultural education.
``Their young people are leaving the villages and going to live in Moscow, forgetting their languages and culture,'' says Mose. ``It's the same thing we are struggling with, losing our culture. But when we showed them the things we're doing with computers, for instance, to record and preserve our teachings, they were excited.''
The Russian delegation met Wednesday with Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt in the hopes of laying the foundation for future exchanges, both in person and via computer.
``The main idea is that maybe in two or three years, we can connect Beloyarski, Siberia and Moscow, Russia, with the San Juan School District in such a network to share cultures and thought processes,'' says Russian educator Krupnov. ``For our needs, Utah is a very unique state in the United States, and your governor, he seems to appreciate such possibilities of establishing a telecommunications connection.''
It would be a modern link between two cultures that seem to share a common heritage.
``Watching the rites of the [Navajo] medicine man, the Khanty were astonished that it was possible to understand some of the speech elements, some of their ancient words,'' says Gromyko. ``All around us is a spiritual history, a reflection of what happened before.''
LONG-LOST RELATIVES? SUSPECTIN ... 11/29/97
Salt Lake Tribune
Published: 11/29/97
Page: E1
Photos by Scott Warren
During floods each spring it's possible to canoe; Navajo Alvylena ``Abbie'' Benally plays traditional games with Khanty women at a living museum in Kazym. An exchange brought Benally to Russia.; Khanty Yakov Tarlin slams a giant mallet into a Siberian pine tree to drop sticky cones with nuts, similar to Pinyon pine nuts found in the American Southwest. Above: Navajos Jim Dandy and Lorraine Begay butcher a sheep for Khanty students. The barbecue was the first time the students had eaten mutton.
Jump E3; Don Mose; Marina Moldanova of Kazym, Siberia, left, watches Bonnie Atene prepare Navajo frybread.; Yakov Tarlin, a Khanty, pets his dog before hunting. Some Khanty hold modern jobs yet maintain the traditional lifestyle.; Ursula Tom, 17, senior at Monument Valley High, teaches English to students in Siberia.through the forests of northwestern Siberia.
Long-Lost Relatives? Suspecting Ocean Once Separated Them, Navajos, Khantys Look For...Connections; Exchange Allows Tribes to Deeply Explore Possible Similarities
Byline: BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH AND SCOTT S. WARREN
Copyright 1997, THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Editor's Note: In an exchange that may have shadowed their ancestors' nomadic migration between Asia and North America, Navajo students from Utah's Monument Valley and Khanty Tribal students from Siberia, Russia, lived together during the past two months. Photojournalist Scott Warren accompanied the Utah group to Siberia; Tribune reporter Christopher Smith met with the visitors from Russia during their stay in Utah.
Yakov Tarlin slammed a heavy mallet into a tall pine deep in a Siberian forest and ducked to avoid the shower of cones that tumbled down. Shucking one of the sticky funnels, the young Khanty man held out a hand full of nuts and announced with some satisfaction, ``Shishka.''
Pine nuts -- similar to Pinyon pine nuts grown naturally in the Four Corners region of Utah, Arizona, Colorado and New Mexico half-a-globe away -- offered the first suggestion of a relationship between the Navajo and the Khanty (pronounced ``han-tee'') tribe in the isolated village of Kazym in the Khanty-Mansiisk Okrug region of northwest Siberia.
``They tasted a lot like the pine nuts we have,'' says Ursula Tom, a 17-year-old senior class president of Monument Valley High School, one of eight young Navajos who journeyed to Kazym as part of an unusual exchange. ``We felt right at home.''
The pine nuts were illustrative of a family tree that draws these two vastly flung indigenous cultures together. Scholars have long speculated that prehistoric tribes may once have roamed between North America and Asia, via a ``land bridge'' that now is the floor of the Bering Sea.
Today, instead of land bridge, a 20-hour plane ride tied together two groups of students: Eight Navajos from Utah's San Juan, Monument Valley and White Horse high schools; seven Khanty tribal youth, three ethnic Russians and two Nentsi tribal members, all from northwestern Siberia.
Each group spent more than a month living with the other, comparing everything from stories of creation told around a campfire to pop music played on compact disc.
``By comparing cultures these students can then answer the question, `Who am I?' '' says Olga Kravchenko, principal of Kazym's school.
While some scholars say direct ancestral links between the two tribes may be weak, the youths say they felt a family kinship during the Monument Valley-Kazym exchange, a first for both schools sponsored by the American Council of Teachers of Russian and local contributions.
``I don't see any difference at all between us,'' 15-year-old Dima Rotcher of Kazym says in tentative English during the group's exchange visit to Utah this month. ``Except for American football,'' he adds, after having witnessed the Monument Valley-Blanding rivalry game. ``We do not have anything like that.''
Ursula Tom says she was surprised how much exposure to American culture the Siberian students have.
``You see a lot of kids with Chicago Bulls clothes on but the colors are turquoise and green, not the black and red of the Bulls,'' says Tom. ``They have American products like Pepsi, Coke, Snickers and Twix. It wasn't as different as I thought it would be.''
Adds 18-year-old Alison Cly of Monument Valley: ``They like rap music, and so do some of us. But their rap is in Russian.''
Similarities between chilly Kazym and Utah's share of the arid Navajo Nation might seem like a stretch. Surrounded by taiga forests, marshes, lakes and meandering rivers, the Siberian village of stout log homes inhabited by 1,500 people is so soggy that hip waders are standard decor in every foyer, and so cold in the winter that firewood is stacked hat high in every yard.
``We like this [climate] very much more,'' Marina Moldanova of Kazym says of Utah.
But life in Kazym -- as it is in Navajo communities of the Four Corners region -- is enriched by traditions passed down from generation to generation.
The Khanty have lived in a remote corner of Asiatic Russia for thousands of years, supporting themselves by hunting, fishing and herding reindeer. Many families still maintain some vestige of their early existence while holding jobs in a modern society.
Blending old traditions with new ways is the focal point of a Navajo cultural program within the San Juan School District, where students use computers to develop the time-honored geometric patterns that adorn traditional rugs and basketry. To prevent native traditions and language from vanishing among young people, Khanty educators want to adapt portions of the so-called ``Ndahoo'aah,'' or ``re-learning'' program used in Monument Valley.
But the quest across the globe goes deeper, with Navajo students journeying to Kazym to investigate a possible link to the past. During previous visits to Siberia, Navajo educators from the San Juan School District noted some similarities between the Navajo and Khanty languages. For Don Mose, a Navajo who works as the cultural counselor at Monument Valley High School, the comparisons were striking.
``I was amazed,'' says Mose. ``We immediately connected, like a magnet.''
Evelyn Odell, director of the Title IX Indian Education program for the Alpine School District, says she was stunned when the group of Khanty students piled off a bus at Mountain View High School for a dancing demonstration.
``Right away I noticed the mannerisms, how they use their hands while talking the same way a Navajo does,'' says Odell, a Navajo. ``The skin, the hair, the eyes; it's very striking.''
Discovering one's own relatives on the far side of the planet thousands of years after the Bering Strait land bridge disappeared may be inspiring, although some say such a link could be happenstance. As members of the Finno-Ugric language family, the Khanty are more closely related linguistically to Hungarians than they are to an Athabascan-speaking people in the New World.
``People tend to recognize similar sounds,'' says Andrew Wiget, a folklorist at New Mexico State University and an expert on the Khanty. ``A few arbitrarily identified similarities in sounds do not establish a historical relationship in languages.''
Clayton Long, director of Bilingual Education for the San Juan School District and the chaperon for the Kazym trip, says he did not hear similarities in language.
Yet, like the students, Long feels a kinship for the Khanty (and nearby Nentsi tribe) because of similar cultural traditions -- most importantly, a deep respect for nature.
``The feeling they have for the land is the same that we have,'' Long says. ``That knowledge is so evident you can see it in their eyes and their manners. The way they talk about it is exactly the same as us.''
In his heart, Mose believes there is a distinct connection. During his month in Siberia, he was taken by helicopter -- the only means of transportation available -- out of Kazym into a remote eastern section of the province. He went to villages he still cannot find on any map, ``places that transcend the meaning of remote.''
On one flight, the helicopter hovered over a marsh, and the Russian pilot told Mose to jump out because he couldn't land in the swamp. Mose obeyed, landing knee deep in freezing water, then watched the helicopter loft away over the deep forest, wondering what he had gotten himself into.
Soon he was greeted by a native Siberian ``shaman'' -- much like a Navajo medicine man -- named Alexei, who kissed Mose on both cheeks and exclaimed: ``I am your brother, and I know that it was your heart that brought you here.''
Mose spent over two weeks living with Alexei, dining on reindeer, fish and herbal tea. The men spent hours relating their respective tribes' traditions, cultures and stories.
One of the ``most astonishing'' Khanty stories, says Mose, was of the Khanty ``Ancestral Trail,'' the path Alexei says was taken by his Asiatic ancestors over the Bering Strait, traveling between Asia and America.
``This is the same theory the Navajo hold regarding the Hak'az Dine'e or People of the Cold, who separated from us long ago and went north,'' says Mose. ``This and other stories of the shaman convinced me of the ties between these people of the near Artic region and my own Navajo tribe. They are what my people call the Naa' Dine -- the other people.''
Early Navajo boarding schools taught only English, and students who spoke Navajo were punished. The first Khanty boarding schools also insisted that students speak Russian. Now, however, students in Monument Valley and in Kazym are urged to speak their native tongues.
Only a handful of the Khanty students know their native language, primarily because they live in remote areas away from the village where native traditions still thrive.
One of those students, Igor Zorin, said he immediately recognized many Navajo words.
``He says if they speak slowly, he can understand,'' says Nora Rakhimkubra, the Kazym English teacher and translator for the group.
A few Navajo words sound similar to Khanty words and have similar meaning. For instance, the Navajo words for mud, water and sky sound like the Khanty words for sand, lake and stars.
``Some of their language was sort of like ours, especially from the Nentsi [another regional tribe],'' says Olivia Holiday, a Monument Valley High senior.
Mose, who traveled to Kazym twice to arrange for the exchange, taught English and Navajo to the Russian students in preparation for their trip to Utah.
``Once, as I had just come out of the dormitory at the school, a group of students approached me with huge smiles and said in unison, `Ya'at'eeh,' Mr. Mose,' proud of the Navajo greeting they had learned from their English teacher,'' Mose recalls. ``By the time I left Kazym, practically all the villagers would greet me with such a salutation. I felt like a dignitary.''
The Utah students were treated with the same respect.
``The people there were so kind to us,'' says Navajo Ursula Tom. ``Every morning we would walk around the village and everyone would say `hello' or `hi,' because that was the only English they knew. We went to one village and everyone wanted to have their picture taken with us, the `Americanski.' ''
The Utahns' visit to Kazym was not without its awkward cultural moments, however. During a tour of a tribal ``museum,'' a Khanty woman unveiled an altar upon which sat a bear pelt and head. As the animal stared blankly out at the Utah Navajos, they were told the bear is revered by the Khanty and that its powers are solicited for protection. While Navajos similarly recognize bears as being spiritually powerful, they also see bears as creatures to be avoided -- only Navajo medicine men are allowed to touch the bear fat used in a sacred ceremony to make a man strong.
``They asked us to kiss the bear to show respect, and we can't kiss or touch bears in our traditional ways,'' says Navajo Allison Cly.
Adds Olivia Holiday: ``It probably seemed sort of rude, but we had to say, `No, no thank you.' ''
When the Russian students visited Utah, they were blessed by a medicine man and invited to a sheep slaughter and mutton feast, the first time many of the Khanty students had eaten mutton. At Mexican Hat Elementary School, they were given a demonstration of a computer program that helps Navajo students learn English.
``The students say the computers in our school in Kazym are 50 to 70 years behind yours,'' says Rakhimkubra, the translator. ``They feel like they are on another planet.''
During much of the exchange, the two student groups and their adult leaders frequently relied on periodic scans of a language dictionary, some universally understood gestures and a few key phrases to communicate.
``They know `Pizza Hut' for sure,'' says Harry Wilie, a Navajo who hosted two of the Khanty students in his Orem home. ``My kids were sitting down with [the Khanty students] and when we said `E.T.,' they knew it. They could name all [of Disney's] `Aladdin' characters.''
In Kazym, during a celebration remembering the end of World War II, Mose says he was approached by an elderly Khanty man who was a Russian Army veteran, wearing a uniform bedecked with medals. The man told Mose he was honored to meet a man whose people were the ``Navasky,'' the Navajo Code Talkers who relayed Allied battle plans via radio during World War II.
``How many years have we been taught to fear the Russians, the `Commies,' the Reds?'' asks Mose. ``Yet this simple man offered me a hand of friendship and respect that transcended space and time. I have never felt so proud as I did then to be an American Indian.''
Wilie, who grew up on the Navajo reservation, says meeting the Khanty made him feel part of a bigger society.
``When you see these people, it's like putting pieces of the puzzle together,'' he explains. ``I hear the similarities in how they talk, the words and stories they have. So many years have passed and such a great distance separates us, but we still have not changed that much.''
----- Original Message -----
From: Patra Kelly
To: dara@sltrib.com
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2008 2:20 PM
Subject: Don Mose article
Hi Ana,
Thank you for responding to my phone call. I would really appreciate receiving the article written about Don Mose and his students and their trip(s) to Siberia. Probably the one you mentioned of April 22, 1996 is best. I passed through Monument Valley that year and spoke with him. I was very interested in his description of their recent experience visiting the Khanti in Siberia and the similarities of culture and language (Navajo and Khanti peoples). On the internet I was only able to find a description of a first trip to Siberia--Don Mose and other educators--but I am more interested in his travels with the Navajo students. But of course whatever you have will be great! You said you might be able to e-mail it to me? Thank you! Let me if I need to send you something for sending it....
Sincerely,
Patra Kelly
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