When the Pilgrims stepped ashore in Massachusetts, they met native Wampanoags who spoke Wopânâak. That's the name of the language, and it died out in the mid 1800s, leaving written documents but nobody that could speak it.
Cut to 1993 and a woman named Jessie Little Doe Baird has a dream in which her ancestors told her that she was to revive the dead language. Say what? Take a bunch of old written documents, figure out what all those squiggles meant, figure out how to pronounce them, and how to use it in daily conversational mode with tribe members.
Oh, and keep her husband, four kids, and household squared away as well.
[spoiler] She did it. [/spoiler]
Quote:
Since then, Jessie has devoted her life to resurrecting Wopânâak, working toward the day when the language that greeted the Pilgrims could once more be spoken aloud in southeastern Massachusetts. Her path has required one leap of faith after another, but she's had more successes than failures along the way. She's written a dictionary, gotten a master's degree in linguistics from MIT, and has even won a MacArthur "genius grant." But Mae remains her greatest achievement. She was born to be the first.
Before July 4, 2004, there hadn't been a native speaker of Wopânâak born into the tribe for six generations. Jessie marked the end of that sad legacy with a single word: Kuweeqâhsun ... Translated as "good morning," it literally means "you are in the light." Jessie always warns that metaphors don't translate, but it's impossible not to see optimism in that phrase. On that day, the hopes of an entire people shone down upon one little girl, the seventh generation, wrapped in the arms of her exhausted mother.
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It's quite an amazing story and interesting read, at
Yankee Magazine.
Also the
Wopânâak Language Reclamation Project.