At UCR, we are actively building interdisciplinary,
tribally responsive research partnerships. These enable
the university to fulfill its mission to serve the
public by working with tribes as well as to add purpose
to its teaching and research programs.
Last spring 2002, acting as Costo Chair, Joel Martin
helped negotiate an important partnership with a major
tribe in the region that has allowed UCR to hire the
preeminent linguist of the languages of California
Indians in the world, Dr. Eric Elliott, who is fluent
in Luiseño, Cahuilla, Serrano, and many other
languages. He wrote a 1700 page dictionary of Luiseño.
Everyone had talked about wanting to hire him to work
to save these languages, but no one had ever been able
to make it happen. So he had been working as a third
grade teacher of Spanish in a public school in San
Diego. The elders of Pechanga challenged UCR to create
a language program and UCR met the challenge.
Joel Martin introduced the linguist to the tribal
officers, the tribal officers to the university’s
language experts, the language experts to the linguist,
and round and round it went. Many times Dr. Martin
felt as if he were turning the sides of a Rubik’s
Cube trying to get everything lined up. Finally, after
months of negotiations, the tribe agreed to fund the
whole project and it began officially July 1st, 2002.
"...he heard the voice of a Luiseño man long gone who said he was
telling his people’s stories to the white anthropologist because he knew
that one day his descendants would want to know about their own culture."
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Already Eric has recovered cultural knowledge that
had been lost. He transcribed and translated obscure
wax cylinders on which an earlier ethnographer had
recorded Luiseño elders long ago. On one of
those cylinders, he heard the voice of a Luiseño
man long gone who said he was telling his people’s
stories to the white anthropologist because he knew
that one day his descendants would want to know about
their own culture. That gave us chills.
But the most gratifying thing of all is to see Eric
teaching Luiseño to Luiseño children
in the daycare at the Pechanga Reservation. He does
this three days a week. Already children are teaching
their parents the right way to say things like Poyú’ ‘A$ó’$ush (Goldilocks,
literally “her hair yellow). |
