John E. Smelcer
Poems from a Vanishing
Language
AS THE SON of an Alaska Native father and a part-Cherokee mother, I
have had influences in my life that rarely touch the fabric of
non-Indian lives. Although Alaska is certainly not as television
oftentimes portrays it -- either in the rather surreal Northern
Exposure or in adaptations of Jack London novels -- it is
nevertheless a great and diverse land of extremes, of millions of lakes
and hundreds of rivers, of the highest mountains in North America as
well as the coldest places, of vast and dangerous oceans and icy seas.
It is a place where moose and caribou outnumber the population of
humans.
This is the land of my heritage. My father is a
half-blood Athabaskan Indian. His mother is the last in our family
lineage of pure blood Indians. At around eighty years old she is also
one of only about ninety surviving speakers of our language -- Ahtna.
Ahtna (distantly related to Navajo) is one of thirteen dialects within
the Athabaskan language group. In fact, about 5% of our nouns are loan
words recognizable in these related languages, even in Navajo thousands
of miles to the south.
Virtually all of the remaining speakers of our
language are elders. Very few young people speak it. Several years ago,
I myself began to take a keen interest in our Ahtna way of speaking,
realizing all too clearly how fragile and precarious our language and
traditions were and continue to be. For example, I noted through
research how nearly one-third of our speakers died each decade. Surely
our language would not survive the next twenty years if more members of
the younger generation did not take an active interest in learning and
preserving Ahtna. With this in mind, and having two Indian grandmothers
to teach me, I began to learn this very beautiful and rare tongue.
Then, within the past two or three years, I began
to experiment with writing poetry in Ahtna. It is quite challenging. As
a writer, the process for me is backwards. Usually in English I have an
idea of what I want to write about and then proceed to write about it,
my language choices seemingly unlimited, given the gigantic vocabulary
(hundreds of thousands of words) of what is in fact my mother
tongue-English. But because the other language of my heritage is so
limited in terms of the number of words (perhaps only a thousand are
known) I must first start with the words and let them determine my
poem's direction. What will they let me say?
The process goes something like this. I have a
notecard and notebook collection of terms, variations, and phrases. I
clear an area on my living room floor and lay out the notecards in rows
of relatedness (place names, other proper nouns, common nouns, verbs,
etc.) and then start to isolate noun and verb phrases that might go
together. Then I look for proper nouns and place names to complement
the phrases. After a while, a kind of linguistic string begins to take
shape, and finally I lay all the cards out in sentence order (remember
sentence structure exercises from high school?) to start to piece
together lines. Meanwhile, throughout the process, one side of the
notecard has been in Ahtna, and the other side has been the English
translation. It's a slow and sometimes tedious technique, especially
with trying to follow this linguistic string simultaneously in both of
the languages, but it is truly a process of discovery. I generally have
no idea of what I will write before I begin.
So, am I the translator of my own poetry, or am I
writing my poems in two languages simultaneously? Probably both. I will
say, though, that at times I have had to stray from the literal, even
if both versions did arise in my own mind. For example, in my poem "Son
Tsaan" ("Falling Star"), the literal translation of the phrase "Son
Tsaan" would be "star shit." Quite simply, it appeared to my ancestors
that a shooting star was the night sky excreting upon the earth!
Somehow, though, in the English version, to translate the phrase in a
way that would retain the original metaphor would skew the poem as a
whole away from its linguistic and dramatic string. I had to make this
single word choice be further away from the original in order for the
two poems themselves to be closer.
I am currently the only member of our tribe
writing poetry in our language (let alone translating it into English).
While I mentioned that there are a handful of Native speakers of Ahtna,
only one or two can even recognize it in written form. In fact, there
was no written form whatsoever until after university linguist James
Kari, in collaboration with dozens of tribal elders, established an
orthographic structure for Ahtna in the early 1980s. In the same way,
although there is a rich heritage of Ahtna traditional stories-all with
powerful poetic elements-my poems are the first writings in the
language which would fit the European-derived classification of
"poetry."
As for the Ahtna pronunciation, it would take a
25-50 page linguistic discussion to even begin to provide a
pronunciation guide. (In fact, the dictionary to our language devotes
forty-seven pages to explaining our pronunciation and orthographic
system and is still somewhat incomplete, even inaccurate, in many
instances.) What could I teach in a few paragraphs or even a few pages?
After studying our language for years, I barely have a grasp of
pronunciation. True, there are some correlations to Standard English
orthography, but many of our sounds are distinctly unique from English
as are the patterns between spelling and pronunciation. For example,
the word in Ahtna for "hammer" is "c'tsiiti'" (ka-chit-e). Who would
imagine c' = ka and ts = ch?
This year my tribe appointed me as the Executive
Director of our Indian Heritage Foundation. Now, as the elected
"culture bearer," it is my job and life duty to document and preserve
our traditions and language. With the guidance of the village elders,
my work includes oral history projects, dictionary revision,
documentary film-making, and even the creation of language books for
our children. I also see my poetry in Ahtna as another starting point-a
place from which others may one day follow, keeping the word alive in a
vanishing language that-despite our great efforts-still remains at the
brink of extinction. --Anchorage, Alaska, August 7, 1996
John E. Smelcer
T�ade Yenida�a
Nhw�el nahwgholnicde
yenida�a tiyhda�a,
yenida� atah kughileltah--
s�el dahwdghitaey�.
Na� oox yen ts�ezdaann, kultsaenn
tikiyaasde daetl�.
Nat�aan�delaeyi lults�ikalael
t�aa k�ay� giis kanghilyaan.
Gha yen denae du� u�att� iinn
naghale�e� kiilnii
t�aede laa.
Tl�adaa�a sezyaa bene
nansoghe ba�ba� xugha dannolyaey
nildaak�e tikiyaasde
xutah c�etsendelnen.
Yihwts�en xugha�en stanacnel�iinn
tse kay�dalnen.
Konts� aghade hwlazaann c�a xu�el ts�eneyel
yen kaskae xughe kenaes
xona kaskae xona igge� dakidaetl--
kaskae na� oox yen
ts�ezdaann.
Hwnaghe nilhual� aen.
Yank�tnelnen. Denaegge� ledases.
Nuuke� nihdelnen
T�aede sighilyaal
igha�ane sdyes yen.
Kaskae zel el� yuut
"Nen yaene� �ele� txisdliile!"
T�aede nak�.
Koldze� nihwdelnen
del nikalt�uut�
nen� t�aaxdze� c�e�sdedlii.
Yahwdelnen el� kaskae uyii tkudyaak.
John E. Smelcer
The Virgin's Tale
Let me tell you a story
from many generations ago,
back in legendary times--
so long ago that the language
is hard for me.
A girl observing the puberty ritual
went into a menstruation hut.
The autumn wind, nat�aan�delaeyi,
"that which carries leaves,"
blew beneath a full moon.
This chief, who had many wives,
saw this girl and wanted her.
He went out to the edge of the lake
and left a gift of dried salmon
at the door of the ritual hut
where an odor drifted among them.
Then he crept away before the sun rose.
She stayed inside for seven days
until the chief spoke to her
and they went into his house--
he and that girl
who had just observed the puberty ritual.
Inside, they looked at each other.
He flirted with her. He winked at her.
They stood so close together
she became scared
and escaped from him.
He ran after her yelling,
"You cannot do it only by yourself!"
But when he caught up she had vanished.
All that remained
was her blood soaking into the ground
and a voice coming up from that place.
Someone was singing beneath the surface of the earth.
But even after the sky cleared the chief mourned.
John E. Smelcer
Hwtsiil Tidangiyaanen
Tadlzuun tl�ogh k�eltsiinitl�ogh dghelaay cene�
tehwdeldiyna da�snidaetl natu�.
Pedni tehwedeldiyna nilk�aedze� ghot�
tse sdaghaay ogltsii;
tse Saghani Ggaay �cen�iis neke�e �et
nekeghaltaexi�,
tse kayaxygge ogltsii tabaaghe k�eze.
Pghatsiitsen baes hwlsiil, c�etiyi ya�atse
k�e dghelaay cene� k�eze tehwdeldiyna
yenka dldaek ts'ilghu,
yen dldaek.
Pghak�ae luk�ae i�nilaex, c�etiyi nic�ayilaan
glts�aek�e �uyuunistl�en
hwna yanlae baa pk�e�e�lc�et� yikaa.
John E. Smelcer
Weir Fisher
Flowing out of green foothills
the shallow stream enters the sea.
It began its winding course
long before these banks were cut;
before Raven stole the stars and moon,
when no village stood along these shores.
Below the stone weir, an old man waits
like the hills along the creek
for what the stream will soon bring
or what it will take away.
Once They arrive, he will lift his thin spear
while gray clouds slow the speed of light.
John E. Smelcer
Ggax Kuna�
Bendil Ghaxen
cagheandze� gge� nesdyaa
son� yikaas k�edghildzaxi gge�.
Uts�e� lkec�endeli nay�aaye�
xaydilk�aan naats utanay �tnelk�aani.
Ggaek sok
yaykaas nadghik�aan
nildzikedel yikaas k�edghildza�.
Yaykaas nadghik�aan nhwdghik�an�
Bendil Ghazen, tsitnitggas.
Ggax Kuna� yaak.
Yehts� en k�a �ele� xodze� lnakutniile.
John E. Smelcer
Near Gakona Village
Bendil Ghaxen,
Chief of Tazlina Lake Village,
awoke from his sleep
before the morning star had risen.
It was November, Uts�e� lkec�endeli
nay�aaye�,
the month after birds gather to migrate,
so he built a fire to warm his soup of blood
and fat and the liver of a rutting moose.
Just then he heard Raven's caw
and the Northern Lights appeared--
zigzagging across the sky
in the failing light before dawn.
Where it touched the ground near him
that place was burned
and the Chief's hair turned white.
This was long ago near Ggax Kuna�, Gakona Village.
It has not happened like that again.
John E. Smelcer
Son�Tsaane�
Tiyhda�a
Ba�ane Ts�ilaaggen Tak�adze�
nilyaats.
Tsaal K�aas
tidangiyaanen
tic�aniyaa
ti�aasni�aan.
lts�ii dilliy.
Ikeghiyaa
nic�a�i�yaa
yai� tezyaa
ldahwtniniyaal
kol�ii ghiyaa.
Iyiits� kenildogh.
Hwtnitl� iits�
Tsaal K�aas
nic�a�ilt�uus, dghelaay zdlaen
son� tsaane�.
John E. Smelcer
Falling Star
A long time ago
during spring on Klutina River
it began to snow.
He-Who-Trains-the-Chinook Wind,
an upper Ahtna Indian war chief
and expert hunter
went out into the forest
on birch snow shoes.
The wind was strong.
He came upon a great tree
which he climbed.
He ascended the tree
for many days
until he was out of sight.
In the distance, a cloud
moved against a mountain.
Darkness fell
and when He-Who-Trains-The-Chinook Wind
jumped,
he became
the first falling star.
John E. Smelcer
Sneyaa
Tsets daghael
sii ben deltaan
dazeni kedadetnes.
C�et�aan �unetniigi,
k�agi delk�ac.
C�isnatse dakuditniis,
ts�elbae ti�diniggaats�
sii sedze�.
John E. Smelcer
Loneliness
While packing firewood
I came upon a small lake
and loonsong.
Flowers blossom,
a pika calls from a rock.
Suddenly there is a noise.
I am alone again.
Loon dives into the water.
John E. Smelcer
C�etsesen
Dahwdezeldiin� khot�aene kenaege�
ukesdezt�aet.
Yaane� koht�aene yaen�,
nekenaege� nadahdelna.
Koht�aene kenaege� k�os nadestaan,
lukae c�ena ti�taan�
Tez�aedzi Na�.
Sii c�etsesen--
sii sedze�.
Sii �e koht�aene k�e kenaes,
dahwdezeldiin�.
Sii ndahwdel�en, dandiilen,
dayn�tnel�en.
Sii kahwtel�aen,
sii �e nekenaege�nadahdelne kenaege�.
John E. Smelcer
The Writer
I am beginning to write in our language,
but it is difficult.
Only elders speak our words,
and they are forgetting.
There are not many words.
They are scattered like clouds,
like salmon in Stepping Creek
at Tonsina River.
I do not speak like an Ahtna,
but hear the voice of the spirit,
hear it a distance
speaking quietly to me.
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