A recent vandal attack in central Oregon’s Warm
Springs Indian reservation left the three tribes that make up the
reservation at a loss for words. Literally.
In
early August, two 12-year-old boys broke into the trailer that
houses the reservation’s heritage program and caused over $10,000
in damage. What hurt the most was the destruction of computer disks
containing language archives, including legends told by elders no
longer living, and translations and transcriptions from languages
no longer spoken.
The archives were the heart of
a program to revive the languages of the Wasco, the Warm Springs
and the Paiute – the three tribes that share the 640,000-acre
reservation.
“When you are talking about dying
languages, you are talking about things that are never retrievable
again,” Wilson Wewa Jr., cultural director for the Confederated
Tribes, told The Oregonian.
But not all was lost.
Citizen response was “amazing,” says language program coordinator
Myra Shawaway. Volunteers from as far away as British Columbia
offered their services to help retrieve the missing information.
Although the disks didn’t have backups, 98 percent of the material
has now been recovered. Volunteers took apart the damaged computers
to salvage hard drives that at first seemed completely destroyed.
Shawaway says the school heritage program will resume as scheduled
at Warm Springs Elementary School, beginning with teaching the Warm
Springs tribe’s Sahaptin language.
*Jamie
Murray
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Vandals didn’t silence the past.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
