Sign Language History

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fredfam1

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Northwest History: Plains Indian Sign Language Conference

The above link has some movies of examples of Native American Sign Language taken 130 years ago! It was thought to be a dying culture so someone wanted to record on video the various tribal signs. It cost $5000 to record these! What a fantastic historical record.
 
fredfam1 said:
Northwest History: Plains Indian Sign Language Conference

The above link has some movies of examples of Native American Sign Language taken 130 years ago! It was thought to be a dying culture so someone wanted to record on video the various tribal signs. It cost $5000 to record these! What a fantastic historical record.
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I agree. The Native American Sign language should be preserved and passed to future generations.

Thanks so much for this link!
 
jillio said:
I agree. The Native American Sign language should be preserved and passed to future generations.

Thanks so much for this link!
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You are quiet welcome. I live next door to the reservation and the reason I was researching this is I thought I would learn the basics of Native American Sign and teach a class on it for the tribe here. I'm not part of their tribe but I am partial, choctaw, cherokee. (My Baby ASL class last week went great! We had 9 hearing moms and 15 kids, maybe 14 or 16 it was hard to count with them crawling all over the place)
 
fredfam1 said:
You are quiet welcome. I live next door to the reservation and the reason I was researching this is I thought I would learn the basics of Native American Sign and teach a class on it for the tribe here. I'm not part of their tribe but I am partial, choctaw, cherokee. (My Baby ASL class last week went great! We had 9 hearing moms and 15 kids, maybe 14 or 16 it was hard to count with them crawling all over the place)
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Glad your baby sign class went so well. I just emailed your link to my deaf son. I thought he would find it very interesting as well.
 
That is a pretty cool video of those deaf indians. The famous sitting bull reportedly had a deaf son.
 
I am sorry to report to you that the chiefs are not deaf. The chiefs comes from many nations who talked different dialects and languages. They are signing the native languages so that the chiefs can understand each other. I don't understand their sign language, but I do have a book on native sign language but I never use it. I like the American Sign Language for the Deaf, because I am deaf. True, we have some deaf natives in many nations and the deaf natives had to use native sign language, but really the chiefs had to use the sign language to communicate with other chiefs when they can not understand their tongues(different languages they speak). The chiefs comes from many nations all over the United States and Canada to talk about problems with hunting, looking for food, places that they need to go and consider thinking about peace or war with the white people. The conference for the sign language was recorded by film in 1930 so that is seventy eight years ago, not one hundred thirty years ago. Anyway, I live on the reservation or First Nation Reserve in Canada. I am Cree/Cherokee and I know about those traditions, maybe not a lot but I do know. :grouphug:
 
Bebonang said:
I am sorry to report to you that the chiefs are not deaf. The chiefs comes from many nations who talked different dialects and languages. They are signing the native languages so that the chiefs can understand each other. I don't understand their sign language, but I do have a book on native sign language but I never use it. I like the American Sign Language for the Deaf, because I am deaf. True, we have some deaf natives in many nations and the deaf natives had to use native sign language, but really the chiefs had to use the sign language to communicate with other chiefs when they can not understand their tongues(different languages they speak). The chiefs comes from many nations all over the United States and Canada to talk about problems with hunting, looking for food, places that they need to go and consider thinking about peace or war with the white people. The conference for the sign language was recorded by film in 1930 so that is seventy eight years ago, not one hundred thirty years ago. Anyway, I live on the reservation or First Nation Reserve in Canada. I am Cree/Cherokee and I know about those traditions, maybe not a lot but I do know. :grouphug:
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You are correct. They were not deaf. But isn't it interesting that the one language that they found would allow them to communicate was a visual one? And just because they were not deaf doesn't mean this was not a signed language. It is good to have as a piece of history and supports the fact that sign languages are true languages. Believe it or not there are still college professors who do not believe that. I ran into a few.
 
I am cherokee and I remember once I had to memorize a bunch of native stories in native sign language. It was hard to say the least! Especially since it was an hour long...and I am hearing...and I was telling them in front of other natives and tribal officials.
 
Hi, Holly, and :welcome: to AllDeaf forum here. It is nice meeting you as we are both Cherokees, even though I am more on the side of Cree. I knew everything about Cree traditions than Cherokee traditions. I did not know that you can sign native sign language to other natives and your council(tribal officials) unless you are trying to explain them about the problems that you want to discuss. Does that mean you can not understand their tongue(different language from your own language)? Does their native signing help you understand what they are saying when answering your questions and concerns? You are hearing and I am surprise that you can sign to the chief and council. Hurrah!!! :h5:
 
jasin said:
That is a pretty cool video of those deaf indians. The famous sitting bull reportedly had a deaf son.
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I don't know and am not sure about Chief Sitting Bull having a deaf son. Maybe he had. I did not check out in that history of Chief Sitting Bull. I do know there was a deaf native man in the Ghost Dance before the turn of the century. The Ghost Dance was not allowed and was trying to stopped by the Calvary. To understand about Ghost Dance, the natives think that a bullets will not hurt or kill them from the calvary, and the medicine bags and putting on white powder stuffs on their body will help them be free from the bullets. One of the soldiers try to talk to the deaf native man because he was carrying a rifle. The deaf man could not understand him, of course. He did not put the rifle down and the native man next to the deaf native man told the soldier that he is deaf. But the soldier did not listen and shot him and kill him. That caused a riot between the natives and the soldiers fighting each other. It was very sad to lose a Deaf native man and many people died. That was the end of the Ghost Dance as they realize that it is false. :sadwave:
 
Bebonang said:
Hi, Holly, and :welcome: to AllDeaf forum here. It is nice meeting you as we are both Cherokees, even though I am more on the side of Cree. I knew everything about Cree traditions than Cherokee traditions. I did not know that you can sign native sign language to other natives and your council(tribal officials) unless you are trying to explain them about the problems that you want to discuss. Does that mean you can not understand their tongue(different language from your own language)? Does their native signing help you understand what they are saying when answering your questions and concerns? You are hearing and I am surprise that you can sign to the chief and council. Hurrah!!! :h5:
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Well actually, I was a little misleading when I said tribal officials. What I really meant was people important in the tribe, not really leaders or council members. And I was telling the stories for entertainment/educational purposes so there were also white people present, it was a bit unorthodox but everyone still loved it! This was when I went to Haskell Indian Nations University, I was part of a travelling team that went to powwows and other gatherings as entertainment. I told the stories while the other team members acted them out.

And to be perfectly honest, I only learned enough native sign to do those stories, and I can barely remember it now.
 
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It's a wonderful film collection. Thank you for bringing it here to AD.

It was filmed in Browning, Montana, 78 years ago. I'm sure of the time, because a teaching colleague at Fort Belknap College in 2000 attended the signing event as a young jingle dress dance when she 10 years old in 1930.

Sienna was still teaching the White Clay language and signs common to the plains Indians when I left Montana two years ago. I hope her priceless Gros Ventre stories with signs are being recorded.

I had to smile, because Sienna had a mild form of auditory dyslexia and would mean "cavalry," the horse soldiers, but it came out "Calvary," the hill where Jesus died . . . unless she inked "cal" with a cross on one hand and "cav" with a pictograph horse on the other. A grand old lady.
 
Wow..I no idea about this. Very interesting! :)

Thanks for sharing this.
 
Bebonang said:
I don't know and am not sure about Chief Sitting Bull having a deaf son. Maybe he had. I did not check out in that history of Chief Sitting Bull. I do know there was a deaf native man in the Ghost Dance before the turn of the century. The Ghost Dance was not allowed and was trying to stopped by the Calvary. To understand about Ghost Dance, the natives think that a bullets will not hurt or kill them from the calvary, and the medicine bags and putting on white powder stuffs on their body will help them be free from the bullets. One of the soldiers try to talk to the deaf native man because he was carrying a rifle. The deaf man could not understand him, of course. He did not put the rifle down and the native man next to the deaf native man told the soldier that he is deaf. But the soldier did not listen and shot him and kill him. That caused a riot between the natives and the soldiers fighting each other. It was very sad to lose a Deaf native man and many people died. That was the end of the Ghost Dance as they realize that it is false. :sadwave:
Click to expand...

I am Cherokee/Choctaw but only about 1/16th
 
Chase said:
It's a wonderful film collection. Thank you for bringing it here to AD.

It was filmed in Browning, Montana, 78 years ago. I'm sure of the time, because a teaching colleague at Fort Belknap College in 2000 attended the signing event as a young jingle dress dance when she 10 years old in 1930.

Sienna was still teaching the White Clay language and signs common to the plains Indians when I left Montana two years ago. I hope her priceless Gros Ventre stories with signs are being recorded.

I had to smile, because Sienna had a mild form of auditory dyslexia and would mean "cavalry," the horse soldiers, but it came out "Calvary," the hill where Jesus died . . . unless she inked "cal" with a cross on one hand and "cav" with a pictograph horse on the other. A grand old lady.
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Your reflections on Sienna's solution put a smile on my face. Isn't adaptation a wonderful thing?
 
fredfam1 said:
I am Cherokee/Choctaw but only about 1/16th
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No problem with the bloodline, even if you have a little bit of 1/16. You should be proud of your heritage between two worlds or is there more worlds than two? You are half breed or less than half breed. We, natives, are intermarrying to other people outside of our race. But the problem is that native women were being forced out of the reservation from the white government, just because we were married to white men or other nationalties and not get no record of our family tree and not get any native benefits like Indian Card, etc. We, native women, were being discriminated by the government, instead of our chief and council. The chief and council don't know what to say and not know how to fight the government for our rights. We are still working on it to change that and hope we can get our right back. It is hard just because we are different. We know that we are not the only one, there is black, Jewish, Chinese, Korean, or anyone who was discriminate like Deaf/HOH people who have to go through the oral crab. :(
 
Bebonang said:
No problem with the bloodline, even if you have a little bit of 1/16. You should be proud of your heritage between two worlds or is there more worlds than two? You are half breed or less than half breed. We, natives, are intermarrying to other people outside of our race. But the problem is that native women were being forced out of the reservation from the white government, just because we were married to white men or other nationalties and not get no record of our family tree and not get any native benefits like Indian Card, etc. We, native women, were being discriminated by the government, instead of our chief and council. The chief and council don't know what to say and not know how to fight the government for our rights. We are still working on it to change that and hope we can get our right back. It is hard just because we are different. We know that we are not the only one, there is black, Jewish, Chinese, Korean, or anyone who was discriminate like Deaf/HOH people who have to go through the oral crab. :(
Click to expand...

I am 1/16 Cherokee/Choctaw and the rest of me is German and Irish! I have a temper from the Irish, tenacity from the German and creativity from the Indian. But people that like me say I am eccentric, and people that don't like me say I am crazy. I guess since I have a plus amount on the eccentric group I am doing OK. When I advise people on natural ways to treat their illness I say, It came from the Choctaw medicine woman.
Another problem is families not wanting to discuss their heritage. I can't find anyone in my family that has kept records on it. But if you look at a picture of my Grandma, their is no mistaking the Indian heritage. One of these days I'm going to have a DNA test done.
 
deafbajagal said:
DNA will tell you the hertiage? I didn't know that...
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Some heritage lines they are able to follow, some they are not. It is a new thing and of course the geneologists and scientists are jumping on it as a way to develope the field. You can get some DNA tests for as little as $250.
 
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