Indigenous Languages in North America

This post was originally published on October 10th, Indigenous People’s Day. It has since be reworked and adapted for this new site.

Happy Indigenous People’s Day to everyone except Tucker Carlson and any other out-of-touch, old white dudes.

Okay, context. For those that don’t know, Tucker Carlson is a Fox News host that likes to take ordinary things and turn them into national conspiracies. The most recent one? Kamala Harris’ stint in Canada as a teenager and how that somehow disqualifies her from office (I would argue we need more leaders with international experience as that fosters relationships and collaborative efforts the world so badly needs now). The main focus though, was his mispronunciation of Canada’s capital city, Ottawa.

Now this may not have blown up as big here in the States, but Canadian media is all over it. I came across the story on CBC (having a Canadian boyfriend means I check Canadian news almost daily and I highly recommend all Americans, not just those of us in international relationships, regularly check international news sources for greater context and less bias) and what struck me about this story is that they focused not only on his hilarious click-bait pronunciation mistake, but how it highlights the marginalization of Indigenous People and their languages.

It got me thinking about how language around North America is so much more diverse than we think. We tend to think of North America as limited to three main languages; English in the U.S. and Canada, French in parts of Canada and Spanish in Mexico. If you’re like many ignorant Americans, you may forget French is spoken widely in large parts of Canada, or that Mexico is part of North America.

***I’m joking I know my readers are smart people, this is just a jab in case this piece somehow gets back to Tucker Carlson, his base or other Fox Newsies.

Anyways, moving on, you will surely see English, French and Spanish names throughout all three countries. The three colonization languages are used throughout the continent, even in the monolingual United States. Here in Washington state, where the French influence was minimal to non-existent, we have plenty of towns hold French names:

• Bellevue – the Seattle area’s second city, just across Lake Washington, can be broken down into Belle (beautiful in French) – vue (view)
• Des Moines – also the capital city name of Iowa, is a city southeast of Seattle, means roughly “of the monks”
• Palouse – small town/area in Eastern WA, butchered spelling of pelouse, or lawn.
• La Crosse – another small town in Eastern WA, means “the cross”

I could go on and on, and I will, for just a moment, to provide “bigger than Washington” context, the following state capitals have French names and/or origin:

• Baton Rouge, Louisiana
• Boise, Idaho
• Des Moines, Iowa
• Juneau, Alaska
• Montgomery, Alabama
• Montpelier, Vermont
• Pierre, South Dakota
• Richmond, Virginia
• St. Paul, Minnesota

So yeah, French is everywhere (usually poorly pronounced, to the horror of the French and French Canadians) and it goes without saying, if you’ve ever visited North America, so is English. Mexico has a bit of both, but clearly is mostly Spanish, but surely you’ve noticed Spanish is also around in the States and Canada.

If you’ve spent any time on the West Coast of the States, you’ll know there are loads of Spanish-named places, just look at California and other southern-border states. Even here in the Northwest, we have Spanish-origined places:

• Anacortes
• Juan de Fuca Strait
• San Juan Islands

However, bringing it back to Tucker Carlson and idiots like him, we cannot forget that there are so many more languages and cultures in the three countries, most importantly, those that were here long before our colonial and immigrant ancestors showed up. The CBC article where I first saw the ridiculous clip was all about how that while Carlson may or may not have intentionally mispronounced the city, it turns out his pronunciation is actually pretty close to the original Indigenous word, odaawe, meaning a place for people to come and sell or trade, then through colonization it became anglicized to today’s, Ottawa.

Now, let’s not give him any credit, there’s like a 0.1% chance that he knew that. What he was more likely doing was trying to make Canada seem like a bizarre, far away country that Senator Harris Vice President-elect Harris (whom he was targeting in the segment) partially grew up in.

However, I will credit him and CBC (mostly CBC analysis) with getting me to think more about how language around North America is so much more diverse than we think. We tend to think of Canada and the US as “English-speaking” countries, parts of Canada as French-speaking and Mexico as Spanish-speaking.

BUUUUTTTT

Did you know that historically, there were an estimated 300 Indigenous languages in the US and since most are passed down orally, only around 150 remain today? This is due to a long history of systemic racism that prevented Native children from speaking their ancestral languages and over the years, many have died out as the last speakers died. That doesn’t even include the more than 50 Indigenous languages in Canada or all the Indigenous people and languages in Mexico.

 In my home state of Washington there are 32 Native tribes (only 29 recognized Federally, the remaining three have a long history in the state) and roughly 140, 000 Native citizens. Many tribes lend their names to our counties, islands and cities, here in Washington, Chehalis, Cowlitz, Lummi and Spokane are just a few examples. And not only to the tribes themselves lend their names to the land – let me re-write that, we named the land for the tribes it was taken from and their languages and words have also been used to name many locations around the state, as well as the country as a whole.

As part of my unpacking of systemic racism and this whole North American (and South American…anywhere the European colonists went…we don’t have time for WORLD history today) marginalization of Indigenous people, I looked up a few of my favorite Native-named places in the PNW. I’d like to share with you:

• Mukilteo – my hometown’s name has two speculated meanings; long goose neck (referring to the spit of land where the lighthouse stands today) or good camping ground.

• Seattle – Washington’s biggest city is named for Chief Sealth (or Si’ahl), a Duwamish leader of the Coast Salish people who have lived here for centuries.

• Tsawwassen – most known as being where you catch ferries from mainland BC to Vancouver Island, it’s a stretch of land named for the Tsawwassen First Nation, roughly translating to “beach at the mouth”.

• Semiahmoo – a bay and resort near the WA/BC border, originally inhabited by people of the same name.

Also, the anglicized names we use now, are likely our interpretations of Native languages we can’t really understand. I’m wondering if Ottawa isn’t the only place we’ve altered the pronunciation of? Can you imagine? Have I been mispronouncing my hometown this whole time? I just found out that Sealth/Seattle are anglicized names for Si’ahl. Why does no one talk about this?!? Please sit tight, going to do even more research and update you as I learn more, because that’s what 2020 should be about for all of us.

***It should also  be pointed out that for all of us settler-descendants (anyone not Native) everyday should be Indigenous People Day, as we’re living our lives on stolen land. Yeah I guess it’s cool we used their words to name our settlements…but (we may be mispronouncing them) we should keep in mind who this land really belongs to.

How does language play into location names where you’re from?