National holiday today
In order to celebrate today's holiday, I decided to spend a few hours learning about local pre-European culture. Here is a summary of what I found:
The SF Bay area was originally inhabited by Ohlone-speaking people, also called Costanoans. They lived here for over 4000 years, and the main archeological evidence for their existence are "shellmounds," which are now considered to be burial sites. Ohlone cultures are characterized by the use of Tule rushes for building houses and boats, living in temporary villages and wandering in a relatively small area over the course of a few years. These houses and boats last only a year or two before they begin to decompose, and don't leave archeological traces.
They lived as hunter-gatherers, eating acorns, tule flowers and bulbs, seaweed, shellfish, fish, sea mammals, deer, and other foods. They also build sweat lodges, where they would purify poisons from their body by intense sweating.
Although many of the European missionaries and settlers had the best of intentions, their main effect on the local population was to bring and spread diseases, including smallpox, syphilis, and the bubonic plague. The settlement of California brought about one of the most devastating declines in population. In the SF peninsula, the population fell from around 10,000 to 3,000 in the end of the 18th century, representing an 2/3rds mortality rate. Popluation before European contact is difficult to determine, but it is agreed to have been higher before first contact. Due to settler activities and government cultural assimilation policies, this population continued to decline until it reached a minimum of fewer then 100 in the early 20th century. Since then, Ohlone population has grown slightly. The Ohlone story is representative of what happened to most native tribes of California and Pacific Northwestern states. The Four Directions Institute site has a very good list of links describing the Ohlone. Many of the tribes from this language group, such as the Muwekma, are still awaiting Federal recognition.
Difficult as many problems for these people are, I consider the most threatening to be that of language extinction. Now is the ideal time for the revival of some of these recently-extinct and nearly-extinct languages. The population of most of these threatened tribes is beginning to increase, and the US government is now open to allowing native cultures to exist. As the examples of Hebrew and Hawaiian languages show, dead languages can be revived as modern spoken languages. The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival gives mini-grants of $100-$500 to speakers of native languages to allow them to teach their language to members of the younger generation, and to record their language. UC Berkeley linguists, including Sheila Guzman are working to restore these languages back to living languages. There are resources avaliable for these langages, such as a grammar guide, dictionaries, recordings, and other resources. I believe that we, as members of a culture that has actively and passively destroyed hundreds of cultures, have a duty to prevent further extinctions of languages and cultures. We can start by discouraging racism and anti-Indian sentiment whenever we come across it, we can learn more about local native cultures, and we can give financial support to organizations that promote and support native cultures and tribes. If any of you have ideas of how else we may help, please contribute.
The SF Bay area was originally inhabited by Ohlone-speaking people, also called Costanoans. They lived here for over 4000 years, and the main archeological evidence for their existence are "shellmounds," which are now considered to be burial sites. Ohlone cultures are characterized by the use of Tule rushes for building houses and boats, living in temporary villages and wandering in a relatively small area over the course of a few years. These houses and boats last only a year or two before they begin to decompose, and don't leave archeological traces.
They lived as hunter-gatherers, eating acorns, tule flowers and bulbs, seaweed, shellfish, fish, sea mammals, deer, and other foods. They also build sweat lodges, where they would purify poisons from their body by intense sweating.
Although many of the European missionaries and settlers had the best of intentions, their main effect on the local population was to bring and spread diseases, including smallpox, syphilis, and the bubonic plague. The settlement of California brought about one of the most devastating declines in population. In the SF peninsula, the population fell from around 10,000 to 3,000 in the end of the 18th century, representing an 2/3rds mortality rate. Popluation before European contact is difficult to determine, but it is agreed to have been higher before first contact. Due to settler activities and government cultural assimilation policies, this population continued to decline until it reached a minimum of fewer then 100 in the early 20th century. Since then, Ohlone population has grown slightly. The Ohlone story is representative of what happened to most native tribes of California and Pacific Northwestern states. The Four Directions Institute site has a very good list of links describing the Ohlone. Many of the tribes from this language group, such as the Muwekma, are still awaiting Federal recognition.
Difficult as many problems for these people are, I consider the most threatening to be that of language extinction. Now is the ideal time for the revival of some of these recently-extinct and nearly-extinct languages. The population of most of these threatened tribes is beginning to increase, and the US government is now open to allowing native cultures to exist. As the examples of Hebrew and Hawaiian languages show, dead languages can be revived as modern spoken languages. The Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival gives mini-grants of $100-$500 to speakers of native languages to allow them to teach their language to members of the younger generation, and to record their language. UC Berkeley linguists, including Sheila Guzman are working to restore these languages back to living languages. There are resources avaliable for these langages, such as a grammar guide, dictionaries, recordings, and other resources. I believe that we, as members of a culture that has actively and passively destroyed hundreds of cultures, have a duty to prevent further extinctions of languages and cultures. We can start by discouraging racism and anti-Indian sentiment whenever we come across it, we can learn more about local native cultures, and we can give financial support to organizations that promote and support native cultures and tribes. If any of you have ideas of how else we may help, please contribute.