Four Views of “Prayers and Catechism in Kootenay Language” · Four Views (jenniferandrella.com)
For my Four Views project, I looked at a text that was written in both English and the “Kootenay” language, which is a language isolate spoken by the Ktunaxa people who live in what is now Montana and Idaho in the United States and British Columbia, Canada. One of the most interesting things that came up in my research was the language revitalization efforts currently ongoing for the Kutenai or Ktunaxa language and hundreds of other indigenous and endangered languages.1
In general, language revitalization is an extensive, expensive process that requires an entire community to work together to bring a language back. Many of these programs have found major success; Hawaiian was almost extinct in the 1970s, but now has almost 20,000 fluent speakers. Cornish was entirely extinct, the last native speaker having died in the 18th century, but now has a community of people who work to study the language (Daigneault). One of the easiest ways to start a language revitalization effort is through an online database of some sort. Many languages, such as the Cherokee language, have their own apps (while other languages like Hawaiian and Navajo are featured on Duolingo). FirstVoices is an open-source website that allows Indigenous peoples to record words, phrases, stories, and songs, both written and with audio recordings. The Ktunaxa language is being recorded on FirstVoices, as well as on other websites. According to research done by Christopher Horsethief in 2012, only 24 fluent speakers of the Ktunaxa language were left, and all of them were above the age of 65 (Horsethief 1). Hopefully, the concerted effort of the Ktunaxa people will be able to keep the language from going extinct.
I find it particularly interesting, too, that the language is a language isolate, meaning it is not connected to an established language family. It can be very difficult to revitalize a language when there are many Indigenous or dying languages spoken because resources are spread amongst the languages. In Canada, where the Ktunaxa language preservation effort is focused, over 70 Indigenous languages are spoken (“Indigenous Languages Across Canada”), and funding towards revitalization efforts is generally based on grants spread amongst any of the many communities speaking any of these 70 languages. However, it is even more difficult to preserve the Ktunaxa language as it has no grammatical relation to other Indigenous languages, which would be able to provide an outline for preserving the language. There have been attempts to connect Ktunaxa to the Salish language group, but it is not generally accepted by linguists.
I also ended up learning about the Kootenai War of 1974, which I doubt I would have ever learned about if not for researching the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. The Kootenai peoples were robbed of their land continuously and majorly divided by the US-Canadian border by surveyors in 1860 (“Tribal History”). Only two communities remained in the United States and were not recognized federally, and in 1974 only 67 Kootenai people remained on US soil. September 20, 1974, they declared war on the United States and set up boundaries around the land they occupied, charging ¢10 to pass through. President Gerald Ford signed a bill ceding 12.5 acres of land to the Kootenai Tribe and federally recognizing them. As a form of political protest, I find that declaring war to be very interesting. It’s not hard to imagine that the United States was already practically engaging in war against the Kootenai Tribe, who were hardly surviving in dilapidated conditions and without a well-maintained road, water, or a proper sewage system—the Kootenai people were not acting unreasonably by declaring war back. Alongside that, 12.5 acres is not a large amount of land at all, and not at all a loss to the United States. Now, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho holds 2,200 acres and has 200 members.
Something I encountered while working on the Four Views project was a lack of information on the Ktunaxa Nation in Canada and the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, as well as the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The population of the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho combined with the Ktunaxa in Canada numbers under 1,200, while at one point, there were over 5,000 people in the tribes before they were split by the U.S.-Canada border. Some tribes split by the U.S.-Canada border, such as the Blackfeet tribe, are able to cross “freely,” meaning with tribal ID instead of a passport (Dominguez). While that alone proves to be far less simple in practice, the Ktunaxa do not even have the option to attempt to cross the border in that manner. Part of blind spots in the history of the Ktunaxa people I think stems from the division of people who identify as Ktunaxa or Kootenai—there is the Ktunaxa Nation in Canada, the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The Kootenai Tribe of Idaho claims to have never signed a treaty, but the Hellgate Treaty of 1855 shows signatures from “Kootenay” peoples who went to live on the Flathead Indian Reservation and became part of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribes. There is also a denotation of difference between Upper Kutenai peoples and Lower Kutenai peoples. All of these peoples have shared history but now occupy different territories and have different values, goals, and (important to me) different websites with conflicting information at times. There is not really one specific museum dedicated to Ktunaxa artifacts and culture, nor is there a database—that I could find—of information. Of course, there is no obligation to digitize history and culture, but the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho continually recognizes that the Kootenai River Inn, constructed in 1986, is one of the largest pieces of their economic development as a small tribe, and in an increasingly digital age, it might be helpful to add to their digital footprint. The Ktunaxa Nation in Canada, Kootenai Tribe of Idaho, and Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes are distinct peoples in distinct places; it would not make sense for there to be a Kootenai tribal museum that attempts to represent all of these peoples. It’s a complicated issue in regards to where Native objects end up, and how they end up in non-Native archives. Certainly, because there is not a Kootenai or Ktunaxa archive does not mean that items should end up anywhere else, but it does offer a sort of explanation. My item, while related to Kootenai culture, is a Jesuit prayerbook, hence why it is in a Jesuit archive. Where do other, older items go? Who claims ownership of them and decides what to do with them? These questions go unanswered, which is why Native items end up in the ownership of non-Native peoples.
1In Canada, the tribe is spelled as Ktunaxa, while the language is referred to as Kutenai and Ktunaxa fairly equally, but I found that Ktunaxa people were more likely to spell it as Ktunaxa than Kutenai. However, in the United States, the tribes are the Kootenai Tribe of Idaho and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai people, so when referring to them, I will spell it as Kootenai.
Bibliography
Daigneault, Anna Luisa. “How to Resurrect Dying Languages.” 18 December 2019. Sapiens. 30 May 2024. <https://www.sapiens.org/language/language-revitalization/>.
FirstVoices. n.d. 30 May 2024. <https://www.firstvoices.com/>.
Horsethief, Christopher. “Re-differentiation as collective intelligence: The Ktunaxa language online community.” (2012): 8. <https://arxiv.org/abs/1204.3891>.
“Indigenous Languages Across Canada.” 29 March 2023. Statistics Canada. 30 May 2024. <https://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recensement/2021/as-sa/98-200-x/2021012/98-200-x2021012-eng.pdf>.
Kootenai Tribe of Idaho. Tribal History. n.d. 30 May 2024.
Kutenai Alphabet, Pronunciation, and Language. 23 April 2021. 10 May 2024. <https://www.omniglot.com/writing/kutenai.htm>.
McNeel, Jack. “Kootenai Tribe Declared War Against U.S. in 1974.” Idaho Senior Independent 3 June 2019. <https://www.idahoseniorindependent.com/kootenai-tribe-declared-war/>.