The Re-Awakening of Wampanoag

The language that never died.

The history of Thanksgiving in the United States is a complex one, and the Wampanoag (Wôpanâak) nation, or, “People of the First Light,” is front and center.

The Wampanoag have lived in present-day Massachusetts and Rhode Island for over 12,000 years. They were also the ones to share a meal with the Pilgrims centuries ago. I thought it would be appropriate to share more about the Wampanoag — specifically, their current efforts to create new speakers of the Wampanoag language, even after it fell asleep.

The Wampanoag Nation

In the 1600s, the Wampanoag nation consisted of 69 tribes and tens of thousands of people. But life after the English settlers arrived was never the same. Needless to say, the history of the Wampanoag nation has not been an easy one.

Disease brought on by European traders in the early 1600s resulted in the deaths of about two-thirds of the Wampanoag at the time (around 45,000). King Philip’s War in 1675 led to the deaths of about 40% of the Wampanoag population, with many remaining healthy males being sold as slaves. Later, in the early 1900s, Mashpee Wampanoag children were sent to the Carlisle Indian School in an effort by the government to assimilate Native tribes.

Massasoit, a Wampanoag Chief.

Currently, there are about 4,000-5,000 Wampanoag living in New England, with three of the original 69 Wampanoag tribes remaining. And for approximately the last 150 years, the Wampanoag language has fallen silent.

Until it was re-awakened.

Reconstructing a Language

At the core of the Wampanoag language reclamation effort is the Mashpee Wampanoag jessie little doe baird.

baird in Wampanoag dress.

baird, who went on to study linguistics at MIT, started her journey to revive the Wampanoag language after experiencing recurring visions in which people who appeared to be her ancestors spoke to her in a language she did not understand. This became her driving force, even though she was over a hundred years removed from the last native speaker of the language.

To reconstruct the language, baird — with the help of linguist Ken Hale — drew from multiple sources, both written and spoken. One source of primary importance was copies of the John Eliot Bible, which was a printed Bible translated into written Wampanoag (the first Ameri-Indian language to be codified in an alphabetic writing system). Some other existing documentation, including land deeds, letters, and legal documents with written Wampanoag, provided more clues for reconstructing the language.

One of the copies of the John Eliot Bible.

Another source that was drawn from was other languages in the Algonquian family, (which numbers about three dozen languages total), some of which are still being spoken today. One specific area that the written resources were lacking in was more culturally specific words, such as local flora and fauna. By drawing from languages within the same family, baird and Hale were able to reconstruct missing words to the best of their ability and compile a dictionary of over 11,000 items.

In the 1990s, baird launched the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project, which aimed to create educational materials and hold classes for teaching the Wampanoag language. baird also decided to raise her daughter Mae Alice as a bilingual speaker of English and Wampanoag — one of the first native speakers of Wampanoag in centuries!

baird and her daughter Mae meeting Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and Tribal Chief Vernon Lopez (2007)

In 2010, baird was awarded a MacArthur “genius grant” to continue her work with reclaiming the Wampanoag language. In addition to achieving fluency herself in Wampanoag, she has also led others to learn the language through youth courses, summer immersion camps, classes for adults, and more. The Wampanoag language revitalization movement continues to grow to this day.

The main goal of much language revitalization work is to reinstate intergenerational transmission of the language in the home. Wampanoag is an example of how more often than not, transmission of the language is severed not from disinterest, but from intense sociohistorical and political obstacles. So the fact that the Wampanoag language is playing a role in the lives of the Wampanoag today is no small feat, and a massive reason to celebrate.

While it is difficult to bring a sleeping language back to life like baird did, it is also not unheard of. Another striking example is Daryl Baldwin, a linguist and member of the Miami tribe in Oklahoma who reconstructed the Miami language and raised his children as native speakers of Miami.

It is stories like these that remind us of the fact that…

“There is no language for which nothing at all can be done.” -Joshua Fishman

Thanks for reading this week’s newsletter! If you enjoyed it, would you consider subscribing & sharing with a friend? Thank you for the support, and see you next Tuesday!