Where the Language Lives: Vi Hilbert and the Gift of Lushootseed

Introduction

How do you know when you meet the teacher who will change your life? I met Vi Hilbert in the fall of 1978 when I walked into her Lushootseed class at the University of Washington. She was sixty and I was twenty-seven. Though petite and soft-voiced, Vi was a presence. She stood in front of the class and lifted her arms to welcome us as if this room were her home. Vi introduced herself to us: "I am taqʷšəblu (TAWKW-shuh-blue)." The room was full of students. Some tribal people, some linguists, some just curious, some completing an academic requirement. I fell into the last category, needing to take two quarters of a non-Indo-European language in order to earn a master of arts in teaching English as a second language. My advisor suggested Arabic or Japanese. I opened the course catalog, saw Lushootseed, and that was that.

I knew Lushootseed would be interesting simply because it was the language of Chief Seattle, for whom my city is named. Surely the language would reveal something of the culture of the First People of this particular place. But who was Vi Hilbert? How was it that she spoke the language when few others did? What would I learn from her?

During that academic year, I learned some of the Lushootseed language and stories, both of which gave a view into the traditions of the culture. Later I became one of Vi’s volunteers. As an outsider, I know there is much that I will never know. But to Vi Hilbert, it was important to introduce her volunteers to aspects of the culture, inviting us to witness canoe races, bone games, naming ceremonies, ritual burnings, and winter spirit dancing. She wanted us to understand her drive to preserve the language and see how it was intertwined with the traditions. This was a huge gift to us. It also helped us become better, more respectful volunteers. Over the next thirty years, I learned what I could from the language, the stories, the culture, and the spirit. More important, I learned from Vi Hilbert, from how she lived her life.

Lushootseed stretched my mind and my mouth. I struggled to pronounce the shushes, clicks, and scratchy sounds from the back of the throat. Even to say I am fine (ʔəƛ̕ubil čəd) required a minor explosion on either side of my tongue. I did my homework, spoke when Vi called on me, learned how to say King Salmon is swimming upriver. Elk is on the other side of the river. Bear is on this side of the road. I learned numbers, learned to say father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, grandma, and grandpa. I learned to say I have three sisters and no brother. But I kept thinking that Lushootseed was sadly doomed. It was only spoken by a few elders and not spoken much by children. What could be done? The odds against Lushootseed seemed too great. The fact that I thought this meant I didn’t yet really know Vi Hilbert.

I kept coming to Lushootseed class and brought Robby Rudine (now my husband) with me. Robby excelled at Lushootseed. He could not get enough of it. He asked Vi the kinds of questions she loved to be asked: how to say things she had never said in Lushootseed, what to call a computer, a printer, a postage stamp. Or how to seek the etymology of a term—for example, does the word for traditional healer come from the root word for naming? Without Robby, I fear I might have lost touch with Vi. With Robby, I volunteered time to help Vi with her work in whatever way we pastəd (non-tribal people) could. Over time, Vi invited us into her world. Over time, she became a mentor, and over more time, a treasured friend.

So begins my story of spending time with Vi Hilbert. Her lifework was the preservation of her native language—Lushootseed—and the culture it expresses. She taught the language, transcribed old recordings, translated those recordings into English, and published books of this work. She spoke at gatherings and told stories, all in Lushootseed. Vi made it a priority to make her work accessible to the public and especially to tribal people. She inspired those around her to help with the work, to take on the project that each was meant to do. Some have become Lushootseed teachers in their own right. Many tribes now offer Lushootseed classes for both children and adults. You can hear the language spoken at gatherings and see it written in public places throughout Seattle and the greater Puget Sound, our home on the Salish Sea.

Vi’s importance to me grew over time spent with her at Paddle to Seattle, at the Tulalip Longhouse for Treaty Day, at the Lummi Reservation for the Stommish canoe races, at naming ceremonies, and at ritual burnings. It came over years of observing how Vi carried herself in Indian Country or when speaking to a room full of psychiatrists, schoolteachers, or scholars, or to those gathered at Seattle’s Northwest Folklife Festival. It came from watching her find just the right story to share with a specific gathering, the story they needed to hear. It came from years spent with Vi—digging clams at her beach property, eating salmon cooked by the fire her husband and son tended, driving to a Salish Conference, or just going shopping. Vi loved shopping.

Over time, I recorded numerous conversations with Vi about her life, her Lushootseed work, and her culture. I transcribed those conversations and out of them came this book, one essay at a time. These recordings are part of the Vi Hilbert Collection in the University of Washington Ethnomusicology Archives. Excerpts of these recordings can be heard at the university’s website honoring her life and work: Voices of the First People: Audio and Video Recordings from the Vi Hilbert Collection.

Some essays in this book were published during Vi’s lifetime and with her approval. Each time, Vi received the first copy, and she immediately made a hundred copies to give out at her birthday party or next gathering. Late in her life, Vi called me her chronicler. The truth is that many in Vi Hilbert’s world have written about her, spoken about her, and been inspired by her. There will be more to come.

Where the Language Lives is not a definitive biography of Vi Hilbert. It is not the only book about or inspired by Vi. Nor will it be the last. Vi’s great-granddaughter Sasha La Pointe is a superb writer. Her work takes my breath away. Sometimes it calls on what she carries of Vi, including her traditional name, taqʷšəblu. Sasha is one to watch and follow.

Where the Language Lives is my account of what it was like to know Vi from 1978 to 2008, to observe her, listen to her, go places with her, be in some way part of her world. It is my way of bearing witness to all that she shared with me and with others. Writing this book is a way of completing the work Vi gave me and of thanking her for including me so often that she shaped the person I became. I have tried to do this with respect for the culture Vi introduced me to and with honorable intentions.

I have written about Vi because writing is my currency of appreciation. I owe her more than I can say. I offer words on paper, in the same way that I might bring her Skagit corn when it is sweetest, make her a pot of chili, or give her a pair of down booties to warm her feet. I write about Vi to remember her fully, to share her with others. I write about Vi to try to understand what it means to live in Seattle, a city right in the center of Lushootseed language territory. I write about Vi to remind myself how to conduct my life. I feel blessed and sometimes amazed by her friendship and the generosity with which she shared her traditions with those around her and with a larger world. I write about Vi to hold her in my heart.

Vi Hilbert in her Seattle home (photo courtesy Lushootseed Research)

Where the Language Lives

In my late twenties, I entered the University of Washington to study the process of language learning and earn a master of arts in teaching English as a second language. To understand the challenges my students faced learning a language unrelated to their own, I enrolled in a class called Puget Sound Salish (Lushootseed). Listed under foreign languages, Lushootseed was the native language of Chief Seattle and the First People of western Washington between the shores of Puget Sound (part of the Salish Sea) and the Cascade Mountains, from the Skagit River in the north down to Mud Bay in the south. Except for abundant place names, sockeye and geoduck are the only words I know that have made the journey from Lushootseed into English. I hoped following the trail into Lushootseed might offer a glimpse of the rich world it describes.

That first day, Vi greeted me as I entered her Denny Hall classroom. A petite, smooth-skinned Native American woman in her sixties, Vi wore a red blouse, a long, black skirt, and slim leather boots. She stood facing us, arms at her side, palms outward in what I would learn to recognize as a gesture of welcome. Her soft, clear voice addressed us first in Lushootseed, then in English. "Welcome, dear ones. I am taqʷšəblu, Vi Hilbert, of Upper Skagit. I thank you for coming here to study Lushootseed." She presented her language, which had only recently arrived in print. Inside our thick homemade textbooks we found drawings of animals from the time when they were people who could talk to each other, play tricks on each other, and teach each other lessons. That first day, we learned to name each animal and its location in the world. That is Eagle. Eagle is in the tree. There is Salmon. Salmon is in the river. Weeks passed before we learned the words for book, notebook, pen, and desk. The word for clock didn’t enter the picture for months.

We struggled to wrap our mouths around the explosive clicks and thick, throaty sounds. We practiced speaking a hard k or q sound followed by a soft blowing wind. We learned to say our names and where we came from. Native students were ʔaciɬtalbixʷ (people), further identified by tribal affiliation, like Tulalip, Skokomish, Snohomish, or Muckleshoot; the rest of us learned to say we were pastəd (the Lushootseed pronunciation of Boston, the origin place of the first Europeans in this region). We told each other we were well, hungry, thirsty, or tired. I am twenty-seven years old and have three little sisters and a cat. We added words as we went. We took Lushootseed dictation, watching Vi’s mouth with the rapt attention of hungry baby hawks. We wrote our homework using the Lushootseed orthography based on the International Phonetic Alphabet, the notation system that gave every sound its place on paper. Every day, Vi stood in front of us, welcoming us formally into her class and thanking us at the end. She always addressed us with the words of respect: siʔab for a man or tsi siʔab for a woman. Likely we all wondered whether we could possibly deserve the respect her words bestowed.

Gradually Vi Hilbert’s Lushootseed class became its own world, complete with our own Coyote trickster, a ladies’ man Mink, a slumbery Bear, an industrious Blue Jay, and a bewildered Deer. For an hour a day, we became an academic version of the world of the animals who were people. Once we played sləhal, a bone game, that calls on the bluffing power of one team to prevent opponents from divining which hand holds the unmarked deer bone versus the one marked with two black bands. Our teams encouraged and distracted each other with drumming and singing of rowdy bone game songs.

Even as I delighted in learning a bit of Lushootseed, I lamented what I perceived as the loss of the whole language. Vi shared tape recordings of speakers who were no longer with us, those who claimed Lushootseed as their first language, possibly their only language. Those voices boomed through time, with the confidence of fluency and linguistic complexity. They did not pause to search for a missing word. Vi hesitated at times, as if traveling back for an ancestral vocabulary check. Finding it, she spoke and we noted her words on paper. I recognized the need for linguistic triage to prevent the bleeding out of this language, yet I continued my academic path, completed my degree, and took a teaching job in Portland, where the Oregon Trail ended, where between the 1840s and 1860s, four hundred thousand settlers crossed the continent and forever changed the Northwest Coast.

In my thirties, I taught English to students from the Arabias, Asia, and Latin America. In my classes, students entered English and learned to say I am hungry. Are you sleepy? How old are you? Where are you from? I helped them approach American culture as well. I brought in my guitar, played folk songs, and planned field trips to a bowling alley, courtroom, county fair, and even the horse races. My effort and theirs combined to yield a more than reasonable success. At some point, I realized I had adopted something of Vi’s presence in the classroom—welcoming each student, thanking them at the close of class, granting them the respect Vi had shown us.

The gratification of teaching was enough for a time. Students passed through my classroom each quarter, rounds of them with names like Mohammed, Ahmed, Hiroshi, Chieko, Soon Li, Carlos, and Emilia. I did my best to connect with each student and to teach effectively, but I sometimes wondered about the churn of students. My efforts created more speakers of English, the monster language that devoured smaller languages, ones that described one piece of land where everything began and ended. Those worlds were shrinking as the languages that described them went silent.

I returned to Seattle four years later and married Robby, an artist and builder. We were drawn deeper into Vi’s world and she lifted her arms to welcome us. Her face had a few new lines but her posture was strong. She glowed with the status of elder, storyteller, and speaker. Robby took the language class again and I joined the Lushootseed literature class to consider the exploits of Coyote, Raven, Skunk, Octopus Lady, and the Basket Ogress. We learned about how Bear and Ant battled to see whether we would have Bear’s one long day of summer and a night as long as winter hibernation or we would have night and then day, night and then day. We went on to the epic story of Star Child and how the world came to be.

Vi brought recordings of speakers giving the story in the old words. She invited a few volunteers to the Longhouse at Tulalip to witness the winter spirit dancing and hear the language spoken by elders around the fires in that great cedar house. She taught us that the ways of the people were still practiced, that not everything had been swallowed by the advance of time or the growing number of pastəd. We went on driving trips with Vi to visit the story places. At Mount Si, we saw where the Bird Men pushed off to swing across the valley, leaving their footprints on the side of the mountain. Then we went to yəyduʔ (the swing), a rock formed when the cedar bough ladder the sisters Tupaltxw and Yaslibc used to climb down from the Sky World fell into a pile. On the Duwamish River in South Seattle near the Boeing airplane plant, we visited the place where North Wind and South Wind battled for supremacy. At each site, Vi stood to remind us of what happened there, telling us the story again.

In 1987, Vi was about to retire from the university. Linguists rushed to take her class one last time. So did Native and other students alike. A volunteer videotaped each class and no one missed a session. We knew that Vi would not offer it again, that we had to receive the gift as fully as we could.

But receiving the gift was not enough. As the year closed, a group of volunteers met at Vi’s