March 22nd, 2024, the community was invited to the Betty Green Event Center in the Elk Valley Casino in Crescent City. The reason for the festive evening was the Klamath Promise Neighborhood Grant Initiative.
The Klamath Promise Neighborhood – KPN – hosted the community dinner as the culminating event of a weeklong series of open houses, celebrations and grand-openings that focused attention on the work of more than a dozen KPN Community Partners. Those partners – from the School District and Workforce Center to First Five and Gateway Education – were all represented, and joined in celebrating the community collaborations that define the Klamath Promise Neighborhood.
In 2021, the Yurok Tribe was awarded a $30 million Promise Neighborhood Grant from the US Department of Education. Since then, through the Klamath Promise Neighborhood Initiative, the tribe has sought to partner with and provide funding to a ton of local organizations, all striving toward the collective goal of making Del Norte a healthier, happier, more resilient place – a Promise Neighborhood.
Award-winning Indigenous Hip Hop Artist Sten Joddi – best known for his role in the FX production Reservation Dogs – was present and performed, as well.
Yurok language lessons will soon be more accessible than ever before—the following is a PSA from the Yurok Tribe.
The Administration for Native Americans recently funded the next evolution of the Yurok Language Program’s comprehensive effort to fully restore the everyday use of the Tribe’s first form of communication. Over the next three years, the Program will use the ANA award to make learning the Yurok language more accessible than ever before. The primary goal of the project is to reintegrate the language within households, workplaces and community events. To accomplish this objective, the Program is creating a series of digital platforms containing interactive educational tools, implementing culturally relevant learning exercises and developing a virtual archive featuring a diversity of resources. The Program is also establishing a community-wide team of language liaisons, comprised of tribal staff and local residents, who will help promote and participate in learning opportunities.
“When we designed this project, we focused on how we could best serve the community, while supporting the development of new and existing language speakers. We wanted to ensure that language is spoken in the home, that language is spoken in the workplace, and that we hear and speak the language at our ceremonies and gatherings,” said Yurok Language Program Manager Victoria Carlson. “We also thought about the elders who dedicated their lives and energy into preserving the language.
The Yurok language team feels we are on a path they would want us to pursue.
“The Yurok Language Program has developed an outstanding teacher training program. The language is now taught in head starts and public schools. We have built an amazing foundation to take the next step, which is to move the language out of the classroom and into the community. We want to empower people to use the language in their day-to-day lives,” said Distance Learning Coordinator Brittany Vigil.
“We’re really focusing our efforts on bringing the language back to where it belongs, which is everywhere,” added Yurok Language Cultural Coordinator James Gensaw. “One of the things they did when they tried to exterminate us was remove language from the home. One of the primary goals of this project is bring the use of the language back into the homes of all of our members.”
The Planting Seeds: Reclaiming Yurok Language Domains and Building New Circles project reflects the input of more than 130 Yurok citizens, who provided feedback on the Program’s future goals. The three domains, which include Reintroduction to Ceremony, Yurok Tribal Employees, and Distance Learning and Community Engagement, were each selected for a specific purpose.
“The domains touch on the aspects of our daily lives as Yurok people. We want to normalize the use of the language in everyday situations,” said Distance Learning Coordinator Brittany Vigil, who is leading the development of the digital assets.
The first online platform is a new website, yuroklanguage.com Currently under construction, the site will contain language curricula, digital animations with Yurok songs and much more. The Language Program is also building a series of applications offering on-demand learning materials, including videos and audio recordings of tribal elders telling traditional stories.
“I want people to see the Yurok language every day of their lives. They’re going to see it in their email, or at a community class or on social media. We want to normalize the everyday use of the language,” said Distance Learning Coordinator Vigil.
“Once the distance learning courses, digital platforms and the online archive are in place, they will be available to the community. For as long as there is a Yurok Tribe, all of these learning tools will be organized in one place for future learners,” added Barbara McQuillen, the Yurok Language Collections and Teacher Training Coordinator.
The Program has already organized the first of many immersive activities, including acorn-gathering and eel hook-making events where participants learned terminology related to the activity. Plans are in the works to put on similar events in the near term. The language will also be incorporated into the Tribe’s most high-profile gatherings, such as the Salmon Festival and Spring Flings.
“There are numerous studies that show hands-on learning stimulates language acquisition. Immersion is actually the best way to learn. It triggers a ton of language growth,” said Yurok Language Cultural Coordinator James Gensaw. “The online and in-person language activities cater to every learning style.” There are benefits that go well beyond language acquisition and retention too. For example, second language learners regularly perform better in reading, math and language arts. Indigenous communities who have higher levels of language retention are shown to have lower rates of cigarette smoking, substance abuse, suicide, domestic violence, and diabetes. Native Children who learn their language have higher levels of self-esteem, higher levels of confidence in their own abilities, and decreased levels of anxiety.
“New research indicates that those who learn their native language are less likely to attempt suicide too,” said Language Collections and Teacher Training Coordinator Barbara McQuillen. The Program is currently looking for 15 language liaisons from the tribal government and the community. In addition to supporting the Program, the liaisons will receive assistance with achieving an intermediate-low level of proficiency in speaking the language. The Program encourages all interested community members to sign up to become a liaison. If you’re interested, please email Yurok Language Distance Learning Coordinator Brittany Vigil-Burbank at bvigil@yuroktribe.nsn.us.
The Planting Seeds Project represents a natural progression of the successful Yurok elder-led campaign implemented between the 1950s and early 2000s to preserve the language. At every juncture, the Yurok Language Program team acknowledges their predecessors’ dedication to saving the language. Taking the mantle, the Program has made the language available in the Tribe’s Head Starts in addition to public high schools on the Yurok and Hoopa Reservations and in Del Norte and Humboldt Counties. The language will continue to be offered in these educational institutions for the foreseeable future. During the past five years, the Program has trained a team of talented teacher candidates and continues to develop new instructors. In fact, some the teachers from the initial class are now training new language educators. The Program also provides community language classes. Prior to the pandemic, the courses were taught in-person, but now they are available via Zoom.
“We believe this project is a reflection of what our fluent elder speakers would have wanted us to carry on to ensure the survival of our language. I feel confident our language team will be able to accomplish the goals of this project,” concluded Yurok Language Program Manager Carlson.
Source: (Joana Jansen, Northwest Indian Language Institute, University of Oregon; Lindsay Marean, Owens Valley Career Development Center; and Janne Underriner, Northwest Indian Language Institute, University of Oregon)
The following is a press release from the Yurok Tribe.
In response to the rapidly increasing number of COVID-19 cases in the region, the Yurok Tribal Council voted to close the Yurok Reservation for three weeks starting today.
“We are taking every available precaution to protect our elders, individuals with preexisting health conditions and the whole community. Since the start of this emergency, we have exercised an abundance of caution because we know the potential impacts of widespread disease,” said Joseph L. James, the Chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “We will reopen when we see a consistent decline in infection rates. The closure is one part of a comprehensive plan to prevent the spread of the illness.”
“We need everyone to play active role in stopping the spread of the virus,” said Serene Hayden, the Yurok Tribe’s Incident Commander. “We strongly encourage residents to practice all of the personal safety measures, such as wearing a face covering in public, avoiding large gatherings and staying home as much as possible.”
To date, there have been 15 COVID-19 cases on the reservation, ten of which were confirmed late last week. In addition to wearing a mask while outside of the home, reservation residents are advised to refrain from travelling off-reservation unless it is for essential purposes, such as medical appointments and visits to the grocery store. COVID-19 testing is available five days per week in Klamath and Weitchpec.
The COVID-19 Temporary Closure Order applies to nearly all non-residents. Those authorized to enter the reservation include but are not limited to the following: essential Tribal staff, law enforcement, emergency medical personnel, commercial service providers, social service providers and through travelers driving on the local highways and county roads.
On March 13, 2020, the Yurok Tribal Council declared a state of emergency to activate the Tribe’s incident management team. In early April, the Tribe closed the reservation following a local rise in COVID-19 cases. A phased reopening of the reservation began in October when there were far fewer instances of the illness and local non-essential businesses were allowed to resume operations on a modified scale. The conditions did not permit a full reopening. However, the tribal government is functioning at full capacity with non-emergency staff working from home.
The Yurok Office of Emergency Services recently moved the Yurok Reservation to Tier 1 on the community risk level chart, which is the most restrictive stage. Humboldt and Del Norte Counties are also in Tier 1.
All non-essential tribal buildings are currently closed. Pem-mey and Pek-Tah Fuel Marts were deemed essential. Both facilities have altered operations to keep patrons and staff safe. The Redwood Hotel Casino is closed to tourists, but essential personnel will continue to occupy a small number of rooms.
The Yurok Tribe has mounted a comprehensive effort to confront the public health, social and economic aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. Tribal staff have delivered thousands of food boxes and PPE to Yurok elders. Students have received high quality distance learning tools. The Tribe implemented a forgivable loan program for Yurok businesses. It has also distributed direct aid to Yurok elders, families and individuals as well as many other types of assistance too.
For additional information on the Tribe’s COVID-19 response effort, please visit Yurokoes.org or the Tribal government’s primary social media pages. If you have a question, please call the Yurok Tribe’s COVID-19 hotline at 1-888-225-8952.
We visited elementary and middle school students at the Northern California Indian Development Council’s after-school program to learn how inclusive Del Norte County Schools are for our Native American students as well as how our schools might be hurting them and what they would like to see changed. Students shared stories of personal experiences they have had with classmates and teachers as well as offered solutions to how we can help build a better learning environment.
Telling the untold stories of Del Norte and Tribal Lands through amplified youth voices.
