Help, they ripped out my heart and I need a new one.
As of tonight I don't know what to do.
I've been digging pretty successfully at the Mohegan language, and it led me to Pequot which only made sense. Things were looking pretty good. I even (gasp) smiled when I came across an old mention of how we thought and lived in metaphor, which is how I am by upbringing to the point people have trouble understanding me from time to time. Validation!
But then someone, a professional someone who has been with the revitalization efforts for a number of years, called me yesterday to tell me some things I didn't know. I mulled it over, looked into that, decided things weren't looking too good, and did the right thing despite having being kicked in the face in the past: I emailed tribal council to inform them. I didn't have to. It was just the right thing.
I got an email from someone who - after all these years - informed me of some things that I suspected because I know how egos work and other things I could have been told years ago to save a lot of heartache and trouble.
And I've been crying bitterly for hours now.
It's not right to use a language to ostracize someone from your tribe. It's not right to isolate them from knowing anything when they're clearly working for the greater good because you think you can do better. Because you have the ability to go to university and they're struggling to pay bills. It's not right to step on someone's back and toss her aside when your efforts at being noticed as amazing only got you a pathetic pipe with the other people. Why, if I were the right kind of power I'd always been accused of being... sigh. I am not.
Academia is brutal. Selfish. Full of egos. What I learned in no particular order are the following things:
The Mohegan language - at least one of the versions claiming to be THE Mohegan Language - has been copyrighted. This is why all the tribes are struggling to make their own languages. (And here I thought it was a simple adherence to history, but m'kay.)
At about the same time as that nasty intervention happened between me and that bitch, the tribe had reached out to the Mohegan nation for guidance in where to go with their language efforts. A bitch went to university, paired up with someone there, and they've been working on it all these years. Which is something I DEFINITELY NEEDED TO KNOW.
I... I could've switched to Munsee. I could've shut down my website. Saved money. I could've... had a V8.
There was at least one linguist who was simply taking words from other dialects, changing a letter, and claiming those were genuine Mohegan words. They basically faked information, and that's one huge basis to the entire wrong mess.
The Mohegan Nation has been taking down their online portals and information to learn the language. The Brotherton are slowly doing the same. I don't find the timing very coincidental. The language itself is under academic duress.
Quite a few people have joined my brother's program. Good for them. I did reply to that email, but refrained from any dirt I probably should drop but morally cannot. Let them find out the hard way what it is to associate something so vital with the wrong people.
Something I'd begun to notice a long time ago and had confirmed is that the language being taught - based largely on what the last speaker recorded before she died in 1908 - isn't quite Indian. The words are there. A *few* thoughts. It's also very very Victorian.
And that if I must continue with the SNEA dialects, perhaps my best focus is Pequot - the language that my grand-ancestor Uncas and family spoke. ACTUAL Mohegan-Pequot as a dialect, not as a mother language group. Not what a Fielding spoke, especially since there are those out there who have questioned her fluency.
Or I should say fuck it and see if I can learn Munsee, which would still be a language my forefathers spoke. Just not the royal ones. The ones with the REAL power. The medicine ones.
But I'm still crying my eyes out. Why on earth it's allowed to kick a tribal member to the wayside like that over fame is beyond me. I'm grateful for those who finally had the damn balls to tell me something.
But still crying my eyes out.