Like a stream, the words flow through Elizabeth Phillips.
Since birth, she has known Halq’emeylem, the language of the Sto:lo people.
As a young child, she picked up English, the language of the priests who sometimes came to the door of her parents’ home on the Seabird Island Reserve near Agassiz. She was asked to translate their words for her father and mother, who only spoke Halq’emeylem.
Now 77, Phillips is the last fluent speaker of Upriver Halkomelem (the anglicized term).
Her knowledge of the language, the word meanings, syntax and pronunciation, is incomparable — “it lives within her,” says one linguist.
At the Cheam Band office, Phillips spends hours working with linguists who are recording Halkomelem in various ways, from taping her in everyday conversation to making ultrasound images of her tongue movements.
“I would like for the language to be truly known before my time is up,” she says.
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‘I would like for the (Halq’emeylem) language to be truly known before my time is up’ — Elizabeth Phillips
The work to save B.C.’s 34 indigenous languages from extinction is ongoing, but has become more critical in recent years as fluent speakers — those who learned it as their first language — grow older.
A 2014 report on the status of B.C.’s First Nations languages found that fluent speakers make up only four per cent of the First Nations population, down from five per cent in 2010. B.C. is home to more than half of Canada’s indigenous languages, and most of them are highly endangered. According to the report, at least four B.C. languages are “sleeping,” meaning there are no longer any fluent speakers.
“There is a terrible urgency,” says Susan Russell, an adjunct professor in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University. “Somehow we all have to stay alive long enough to get this stuff down.”
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‘There is a terrible urgency’ to preserve First Nations languages like Halq’emeylem, the language of the Sto:lo people,’ says Susan Russell, an adjunct professor in the Department of Linguistics at Simon Fraser University. ‘Somehow we all have to stay alive long enough to get this stuff down.’
Russell has retired from teaching, but hasn’t given up her linguistic work. At a conference she presented a conversation recorded several years ago between Phillips and another Cheam elder, who has since died. The two women speak about normal life — “who is sick, who was healed, about their grandchildren.”
Preserving a language is about more than creating a dictionary.
“You can’t learn a language from a dictionary,” says Strang Burton, a Sto:lo Nation linguist and instructor at the University of British Columbia. “You need to know how to use it. The context is important.”
So is the pronunciation. Burton recently used a special ultrasound machine to observe and record the movement of Phillips’ tongue as she spoke. The images will be superimposed over a video of her speaking to provide a more complete picture.
“I asked him if my tongue was pretty,” jokes Phillips, who has an easy laugh and exudes a quiet energy. She is a familiar sight on the Cheam reserve, taking a walk each morning at 5 a.m.
The words that flow so easily fail her only once during a long interview. She does not want to speak about St. Mary’s residential school in Mission, where students were punished for speaking Halq’emeylem. There are no words for that time in her life.
She was a particularly young speaker when first asked to work with linguists who were developing a Halkomelem writing system and dictionary in the 1970s, says her daughter Vivian Williams. A number of elders, including Phillips’ mother, who did not speak English, were also asked to help with the project. Phillips acted as a translator at times.
In the 1990s, she began to work with Burton, who was making an audio recording of the dictionary with several fluent speakers.
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‘You can’t learn a language from a dictionary,’ says Strang Burton, a Sto:lo Nation linguist and instructor at the University of British Columbia. ‘You need to know how to use it. The context is important.’
Over the years, the number of fluent speakers in Sto:lo Nation, which includes bands from Langley to Yale, dwindled. Now, only Phillips remains.
“I miss Rosaleen George,” she says, reflecting on a friend who was also fluent in the language. “Her and I used to talk for hours on the phone.”
Her grandchildren and great-grandchildren have become a particular joy. Like many of the next generation, they are learning their language. It is hoped there will be new bilingual fluent speakers of languages like Halq’emeylem when the older generation of “first-language” fluent speakers is gone.
Phillips’ six-year-old great-grandson has proved an especially quick learner.
“He grabs his drum and sings a thank-you song every morning,” says Williams. “The language is in him.
“When I was a child, I remember being with my grandmother in town and she would speak Halq’emeylem. I would think ‘Why can’t she speak English?’ and I was ashamed of her.
“But now this six-year-old boy is proud. It’s his language.”
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