June 12, 2024
Language is the heart of culture, and where many natives across America have lost their ancestor’s tongue we have the ability to claim it back again.
From 2015 to 2024 I had been working on the Mohegan Language Project based on the work of Stephanie Fielding. Many sad and bad things happened over the years, which it turns out are for the best as I already knew my focus needed to change. This new website will touch that new focus and things related, including but not limited to Brotherton and Stockbridge-Munsee history and culture, our shared language Munsee, Old Pequot (the language of distant ancestors), Plains Hand Talk, and sometimes a social comment or two. Basically, this website is going to be centered around my studies while I keep it up close and personal. I can do no less.
Philosophy
I want the people speaking the language, but it’s important what they speak also returns our souls as tribal people. It’s my philosophy that we need to do more than just memorize a bunch of words. We need to remember how it is to think Indian. This means setting aside modern liberal and conservative ideas or even, in a lot of cases, our modern philosophies period. The first rule needs to be that you cannot assume what our ancestors were thinking, and you must never EVER interpret their actions through our modern moralities and ways of life. We aren’t trying to go backwards in things we now feel are wrong, but we have to accept our ancestors for the slave-owning (or not), murderous bastards they were and garner the parts out of them worth keeping.
So far in my research I have noticed marked differences in the way people thought that have directly affected what words we use between now and then. There are possible signs that we, the modern day people, are trying to force our ancestors into our personal molds. We have to stop.
Also, I have absolutely no moral dilemma in adding a donation area or selling items to raise money for this website. No one is obligated to pay me to read what I write here. I, on the other hand, am obligated to pay for the place and for the materials I must gather. Not to mention my time in some of the things I am planning.
I never held a fundraiser with the other project but one single time, and that lack of funds held me back. I won’t make that mistake again.
Method
You just have to simply do it to get something done.
I hope to get my hands on a lot of primary or secondary sources. It isn’t that the information gleaned from Fidelia Fielding or anyone else isn’t valuable, but older sources will take higher priority for me.
I want to share what I find about them here for you to enjoy. I want to provide links so you, too, can get a copy if it’s possible.
In the meantime, I will be sharing brainy things, cultural things, and sometimes even personal things. There may be a lot of videos as I find things. I will share learning materials when I can make them from memes to games to short articles. I may even make videos if I can get my act together for that.
If I can think of something that will help you and I learn, I hope to do it. This might be a card game. It might be simple flash cards. It might be a meme. I’m not picky.
Hand Talk
In the very beginning with my other project, I incorporated Indian Sign Language into some material for it. This was the first native American language I ever studied, and it seemed natural that the characters speaking to you would use it as a language bridge – it also can help as a mnemonic device for kinesthetic people like myself. This new project will use it as well – my goal is to get fluent with it someday. I have to start somewhere.
Materials produced will be for various ages, but the majority of videos will probably be aimed more at children. We as adults can learn from that material just fine. The children will hopefully be able to identify with the language through this so that they can speak it, to hopefully one day pass it on to their own children.
I will be learning with you. I hope you’ll participate.
The language is the heart of the culture, but change the way of thinking and the language changes with it… and soon we are something else than what our ancestors were. We can change with the times while keeping to our father’s footsteps if we try.
Gratitude
I would like to thank Will Oxford with the University of Manitoba and Rashad Young with the Pequot Museum for helping me find a new start, confirming personal discoveries, and pointing the way to information and materials to keep me on track. I must also send a special thanks to Melanie McKay-Cody, PhD with UArizona for her insightful responses AND her efforts in helping me figure some things out.
Further (and very large) thanks goes to Carl Masthay for providing amazing materials, discussion, and bonking my head figuratively regarding the important things. Willem de Reuse also deserves thanks and credit for much-needed conversations and resource direction. A whoop goes to Robert Shubinski for the same.
And finally, gentle and earnest thanks goes to Ives Goddard for stepping wizard-robe-adorned from his retirement cave to point a finger towards possible direction. That was probably a bathrobe, but robes are robes.
Let’s do this!
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If you want to help the best thing you can do is participate. To speak together, we have to be in this together.
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About Spearcarrier’s Ghostfox
Spearcarrier has been around the block while staying sheltered at the same time. Amazing! Through that journey she managed to get her bachelor in anthropology with a minor in history from the University of North Florida. Professionally, she’s worked on oral history projects and dug holes as a field archaeologist before striking out to be a self-employed goon. She’d tried to go to school for linguistics, but as a first generation graduate being raised in the wetlands there was very little understanding on how colleges worked much less know how to do it far away from home. She takes self improvement classes when she has the time to compensate.
Sachem Uncas is her 11th great-grandfather, Samson Occom her 7th… and she has quite a few Stockbridge-Munsee Medicine ancestors. She is a member of the Brotherton Indian Nation. Her father, Man Who Talks (or “Talking Feather”), raised her by his briny river with as much tradition as he thought to pass down. She has always stuck to her guns on the family lore, even when she was a practicing Christian or as those around her made fun of it.
Academic and self improvement History As far as She can Remember Considering
- AA anthropology, FCCJ (before) 2000
- also studied sign language during this time
- BA anthropology, history minor, University of North Florida, 2004
- Introduction to Environmental Law and Policy, certificate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2024
- There’s more. She just can’t remember yet.
Other
- “The Future of Powwow Dancing”, 2001