The Beginning of a Long Road

My grandma spoke Ichishkín, but not enough to me or my siblings. We lived with her and grandpa. One day grandpa lied down for a nap just before I left with my mother, and that was the last time I saw him.

I don’t remember my grandmother grieving, I never seen her cry.

She had sisters. They all were at her side. They spoke Ichishkín amongst each other, but not to us.

They would sing songs with a little bell for every meal throughout the day. We learned those songs, but the interpretations must’ve gone in one ear and out the other for some of us.

When we’d go into town we’d attend services at the Agency Longhouse where they’d sing with both a bell and 7 drums. We were kids so we’d dance for what seemed like a whole bunch of songs but dancing to them was easy.

I vaguely remembered the interpretations, I was young, too young to know what wisdom or knowledge was, but I knew old people had it.

‘Old People’ is an English term we’ve used since we started learning the foreign language. We call ours ‘nchi’nchima or wiyánchima, the people with a large presence or the experienced people.

We had a longhouse right outside our place there in Upper Dry Creek on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation. There our grandmother and family would host extended families and friends throughout the winter months, pleading and humbling ourselves for a plentiful future.

When the seasons came, we followed them and their resources, into the mountains, onto the plains, down to the rivers and lakes. We didn’t learn it all because we always did only part of the work while elders and adults did the rest of the bundling, scraping, poking, drying, grinding, etc., whatever it was we were doing.

We continued singing the songs at our table throughout our childhood until our grandmother passed. I was 16.

From there her eldest daughter became our knowledge keeper and language speaker having learned it as a child from her mother and grandparents.

But only a few years later, she too passed.

She shared many things with her family, friends, and children. I know very specifically the things she shared with me as I was an adult then when Geneva ‘Jello’ Charley was sharing and teaching.

I would ask her about prayer, words, and phrases. Some stayed with me, some didn’t.

When she passed, I was living in Portland and working in a recording studio that never came to fruition. I was around 20 years old.

So, we lost our two elders in our family who spoke the language, my aunt while I was off doing my own thing.

I returned to the reservation for an internship a couple of years later. The receptionist was Kate Jackson who always greeted people in Ichishkín. Ellen Thompson also worked at the store and too always greeted and shared the language she retained.

The Spilyay Tymoo newspaper was overseen by the Government Affairs Department I was interning at. The newspaper had our three languages printed within for students near and far. I began looking at the languages wondering which one I would take up, maybe all of them.

After a while though, I realized I wasn’t learning as much as I had thought, having learned greetings in each language and sometimes becoming confused from one word to the next.

I started focusing more on Ichishkín.

I would do my best to find every newspaper that had our language printed in it so I could look and see what words and phrases had already been released.

The more I learned, the more I tried.

I would ask Kate at the front desk and I would go to the store to ask Ellen. I was on this language kick without going to classes, simply looking forward to our printed newspapers, visits with Kate, and trips to the store.

I would go to the longhouse once in a great while and think to myself ‘how come there is no longer 7 drummers and a bell ringer as when I was growing up?’

One day, I decided to accompany a couple family members to a home service for the lighting and blessing of my older brother/cousins’ home. There ended up being only 7 of us that showed, 4 men and 3 women. I sat on the side.

A drum was handed to me ‘we’re short drummers, just keep beat, if you want to make a sound when it’s your turn just go a head and we’ll pick you up or you can just pass it on to the next drummer and he’ll sing one for you’.

All of those times I had seen that they were short drummers here and there flashed before my eyes and now again, they needed help.

I calmly took the drum, and for some reason they put me after the last drum, meaning I was definitely not last or at the end.

When it came to my turn to sing a song, the room got quiet, wondering if I was going to sing a song or pass.

A moment later, my voice made a sound, cutting off part of the beginning of the song I sort of remembered. The drummers knew what song it was so picked me up and it carried on.

Since we were short drummers, the count went back around and it was my turn again, ‘ugh’.

I didn’t want to try to sing the same song again amongst experienced drummers, so I tried to start a different song, a song that probably became many songs in one, probably ended up meaning nothing, but I gave it heck, singing my own song, probably embarrassing, but the song kept going along, who knew what it was.

After the song, the room got quiet again, and the other drummers assured me that ‘it was okay’, that ‘songs have their spirit and they want to be sung so will jump in periodically in an effort to get sung’.

After that, I simply wondered ‘what the heck I was doing there holding a drum’.

My mom called a day or week later, proud, ‘I heard you picked up the drum and helped out, I’m proud of you, you ought to keep it up, go talk to your uncles about it’.

I wasn’t interested actually.

A week or so passed and my older brother/cousin called me letting me know they were going to help out a family at the longhouse and that they were going to be short-handed and that maybe I ought to help keep beat and that if I stood by him, I wouldn’t have to sing.

So, I showed up, ribbon shirt and moccasins, no drum, so my cousin let me borrow one.

We started, and again, I was nervous. I didn’t know a song I could start correctly. So, I leaned over to my cousin and asked him about a song. He whispered the beginning in my ear. So, upon my turn to start a song, I sang that song.

After services, I began learning from my uncles Wiggie, Wilson, Chubby, and Max. My older brother/cousins were great resources as well who had been drumming, helping, learning, and leading.

Reflecting back on when I would see how shorthanded they were on the drumline, I started helping out more.

I learned a couple more songs to sing on the drum, couple more even with words in them. I didn’t know the language, but I was happy to sing and help wherever I can.

The more I learned, the more I realized I didn’t know, the more I wanted to know.