Steve and Megan Dragswolf - Our life

The Pirahã of the Amazonian jungles change everything when it comes to language and missions work

via newyorker.com | The Interpreter

A very long and very interesting article concerning the Pirahã Amazonian tribe and their language. The article follows a lapsed American missionary as he continues to work with this tribe's linguistics, hoping to fully understand everything that makes up such a hard to understand language. The problem lies in the tribe's resistance to anything outside of their experience, or anything outside of what they know. As such, they don't follow traditional linguistic patterns that most languages follow. Yet the most interesting parts, to me, were the talk of the tribe's resistance to Christianity as there were several missionaries dispatched to evangelize the tribe.

Everett, the American linguist/ex-missionary, explains that the tribe lives completely in the "now." They don't have any concept of abstract ideas, and it's not that they can't think about abstracts, it's because they don't want to. They stick with what they know and experience instead of philosophy. So when a person walks out of sight of the tribe, that person is deemed "out of experience" instead of gone. Any sort of talk of Christianity and its ideas fall on deaf ears as it's hard to get the Pirahã to understand it as an "experience."

Everett's ex-wife still works with the tribe as a missionary trying to figure out the language enough to translate the gospel. She's found that the key to understanding the language may be in their songs.

Another tribal language gone

via dailymail.co.uk

The last known speaker of a 65,000 year old language,Boa Sr, died a week ago. In the video above we get to hear a small sample of a language that was somewhat melodic, or maybe she was just singing in her language.

Boa was from the tribe Bo, from around Bangladesh/India area, which is thought to be one of 10 tribes that can be traced back to the "pre-Neolithic period" when people started migrating.

The best reason for me to watch my language

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth! My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

James 3:7-12 (The Message)

Dances with Werewolves gets in step

http://www.fangoria.com/home/indie-frights/3072-dances-with-werewolves-gets-in-step.html

From Fangoria:

“DANCES WITH WEREWOLVES is a working title, and the movie is a classic American romance which will be done mostly in the Lakota language,” [Actor Noah] Segan tells Fango. “Set against the pioneering days of the Wild West, the insecurity of Reconstruction after the Civil War and the tumultuous relationship between white settlers and Native Americans, we examine how encroaching civilization drives a tribe, as a last resort, to invoke lycanthropy to defend their land and way of life. When a young pioneer and a Native American princess fall in love, the impending battle between their two families could at least tear them apart, if not tear them to shreds. Think ROMEO & JULIET meets BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF meets RAVENOUS.”

Jodi Rave: One of the last fluent Mandan speakers

http://64.38.12.138/News/2009/014474.asp

“Edwin Benson will wear a cap and gown for the first time in his life since majoring in the language, customs and traditions of the Nu’eta, a knowledge base passed to him from elders who lived in the last historic earth lodge village of the Three Affiliated Tribes in North Dakota.

Benson has been awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of North Dakota. “If anyone deserves it, he deserves it,” said Gerard Baker, a Mandan-Hidatsa and National Park Service superintendent at Mount Rushmore. “He’s one of the best professors I’ve ever seen. It goes beyond the honorary caption. He goes way beyond a doctor in the academic sense.” Benson, 78, who lives in Twin Buttes, N.D., on the Fort Berthold Reservation, has gained international stature for his vast knowledge of the Mandan and Hidatsa tribes. He’s renowned for graciously sharing his knowledge with all people. The North Dakota State Board of Higher Education recently voted unanimously to award Benson with the honorary doctorate. He will receive it Saturday during UND graduation ceremonies in Grand Forks, N.D. “I had a white man call me with great news I never expected from a white man,” Benson said in a phone interview from Twin Buttes Elementary School. “To be honest, I cried. I felt better after I cried. I didn’t know how to accept it. It was like a dream, too good of a dream to be true, too good to wake up.””