ECOLOGY OF LANGUAGE & PLACE

The Evergreen State College Winter Quarter 2009

Faculty: Rebecca Chamberlain 360-867-5845 [email protected]

Richard McKinnon 360-867-5946 [email protected]

Meeting Times: Monday/Wednesday, 6-10 p.m. Location:

Required Fees: $30 Mon. Sem II D 1105
Credits: 8 Wed. Sem II E 1107
⊕
taslaXdub ?e Ii tuyeLyelab ti?e? s?eyehub tuL?al tudi? tuha?I, yeXi liA?al s?eyehub ti?e?
Gedexeshaydubs ?e Ii le?eO ?aciAtalbix tuLCad elGe, ?esVal Ii AusRibil ?e ti?e? sGa?s swatixteds,
?esVal Ii Geseshuys ?al ti?e? su?ibuSs ?al ti?e? swatixted.

Our ancestors remembered these old stories from a long time ago, because the legends were what carried
the teachings, that coming generations would know where they were from, how their earth was prepared,
how they should conduct themselves as they walked on the earth.
--Vi Hilbert, taRSeblu?, Puget Sound Salish (Lushootseed)
⊕
Course Description:
During this two-quarter program, we will examine how language and place shape our experience of
the world. How do traditional languages reflect an evolving relationship to the natural world, and in what
ways does technology change the way modern cultures perceive and interact with their environment?
From the local to the global, we'll explore how language shapes our awareness, acts as container for
carrying and preserving culture, and affects the choices we make about living sustainability. We will look
at how traditional cultures and languages are disappearing, along with the complex eco-systems that
sustained them. Can we rekindle a relationship to oral cultures that listen to the voices of the land,
preserving ancient languages, sacred traditions, and stories, or does the information age push us to rely
more heavily on abstraction, leaving behind many of the skills that helped us live in harmony with our
environment? Can the tools of the information-age help us recover traditional wisdom? What are the
challenges and opportunities that face us as we seed to develop an ecology of language and place for the
21st Century?

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This course is for students who want to think deeply and write well. During the winter quarter,
students will engage in a rigorous course of reading, writing, performance, creativity, and critical thinking,
and will be introduced to Puget Sound Salish (Lushootseed) stories and language, as we look at issues past
and present. During the spring quarter, we will continue our work and begin natural history projects, as we
explore the challenges that we face locally and globally. As we investigate the role of endangered
languages and places, and the economic, educational, and technological factors that pressure them, we will
explore culture, history, natural history, linguistics, mythology and storytelling, literature, and
communications technology.

⊕
Translating the literature of one language into another is never easy, especially when the cultures involved
are extremely dissimilar. The task is made even more difficult when the translator must also render in
writing what has been an oral tradition.
--Thom Hess, Linguist, Lushootseed
⊕

Required Texts: We will read selections from the following texts, along with other articles and readings
that you can access on our class site or through electronic reserve in the library. See weekly reading
schedule for details. (W/S: We will use the text both Winter and Spring.)

Abrahm, David. “Landscape and Language.” The Spell of the Sensuous. New York: Vintage, 1996. (W/S)
Chamberlain and McKinnon. Ecology of Language and Place Reader. On program website or electronic
reserve.
Fill, Alwin, and Peter Muehlhaeusler. The Ecolinguistics Reader: Language, Ecology, and Environment.
New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2001. (W/S)
Guss, David M. To Weave and Sing. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.
Kane, Sean. Wisdom Of the Mythtellers. Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1994.
Strauss, Susan. The Passionate Fact: Storytelling in Natural History and Cultural Interpretation.
Golden CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1996.
Nettle, Daniel. Vanishing Voices: The Extinction of the World's Languages. New York: Oxford Univ.
Press. 2000.
Treuer, David. The Translation of Dr Apelles: A Love Story. New York: Vintage, 2006.

Supplemental Texts:

Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. New York: HarperCollins, 2006. (Useful winter, required spring.)

⊕
We have stories
as old as the great seas
breaking through the chest
flying out the mouth
noisy tongues that once were silenced,
all the oceans we contain
coming to light.
--Linda Hogan, “To Light”
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Expectations:

-Faithful attendance and full participation at all meetings, workshops, films, field-trips and seminars.
-Reading, writing, and posting weekly responses to the texts.
-Maintain a portfolio of class handouts, notes, papers, research, assignments from language, storytelling,
and linguistics workshops, and cumulative work for the quarter to be reviewed at fifth week and final
evaluation conferences.
-Participate in class linguistic, language, storytelling, and writing workshops and practice sessions and
present oral and written responses to lessons.
-Successfully complete individual and group projects, presentations, workshops, and other assignments on
time.

Course Equivalencies: Students can receive upper division credit for a total of eight quarter hours for
college level work in the following areas:
Ecolinguistics and Indigenous Languages 4
Storytelling: Process and Practice 2
Literature: Ecocriticism and Issues of Sustainability 2

Assignments:

1. Reading response papers each week, turned in and/or posted promptly before the beginning of seminar
(1-2 pages, typed). These papers will allow you to: 1) comment upon the assigned readings, lectures,
workshops, and films, and 2) summarize, reflect upon, and integrate program topics, themes, and issues.
There will be a total of 9 responses, over the quarter. You must post your paper each week on our group
web-site. (See handout, “Guidelines for Reading Responses,” for details.)

2. Workshops: Demonstrate knowledge of language, linguistic, and storytelling lessons and workshops.
This includes…
Written Work: Complete all workshops and written assignments from language, linguistic, and
storytelling workshops and maintain them in your portfolio.
Oral Work: Demonstration of oral knowledge through class participation and group or individual
presentation of songs, invocations, basic conversational phrases, vocabulary and the memorization
of a short story, etc.

3. Storytelling Performance: Develop and perform family and biographical stories in class, and develop
a traditional myth or folktale for a performance and vido/podcast. We will schedule various storytelling
performances mid-quarter and at the end of the quarter.

4. A Final (Group) Project and final performance/presentation (Weeks 9-10): Throughout the quarter,
we will be doing a number of linguistic, language, storytelling performance, writing, and computer
workshops. You will get experience in each of these areas. However, you should select ONE area to
develop with a group into a final project and presentation. (You can choose to develop a theatre project
with a group working together on a final production. However, you may also be working individually on
something such as a “writing project,” Either way, you will meet with a “project” group to develop, edit,
and refine your ideas, as well as plan how you will present samples of your work in the allotted time in
Weeks 9-10.) Your project should relate to some aspect of Ecology of Language and Place, as well as local
and global influences in our contemporary world. Each person will be given ten minutes to present their
work, therefore, a group of three people has 30 minutes to make their presentation. Your final project can
be . . . (Choose ONE of the following.)

A. Writing Project: (4-5 pages with revisions) research paper, essay, or creative writing:
B. Theatrical or musical performance, visual, or creative arts project:
C. A Media, Radio, Film, or Computer Project:
D. Community service, sustainability, natural history, indigenous language preservation,
or education project.

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Guest Artists and Field Trips:

We are fortunate to have a number of guest artists, field trips, and other opportunities as part of
our studies this quarter. These events are required as part of the class. Check the class schedule, syllabus,
and handouts for the dates and details of each event. They include:

Zalmi (esweli?) Zahir-- Lushootseed Language, Songs, Stories & Teachings.

Jan. 7th--The Power of Place & Names
Feb. 4th--Weaving the World in Words
Zalmai esweli? is one of the fluent teachers and speakers of the Lushootseed language, the native
Salish language of Puget Sound. He has worked on preserving the Southern dialect. He has developed a
number of activities to teach language through total emersion, on-line programs, and TPR (total physical
response) techniques. He has developed and written a number of publications and language texts, including
books on place-names. plants, canoes, and other subjects through the language and cultural teachings. He
currently teaches classes for individuals, tribal groups, and other organizations.
You can find out more about his work at: <pugetsalish.com>

Jan. 14th Joe McHugh Artist, Archivist, Activist: From family Stories to radio production—how stories
transform in different media.

Joe McHugh began telling stories professionally in 1978 when he was hired to organize to a series
of ethnic festivals in New York State. He went on to host a weekly segment on Appalachian folkways for
West Virginia Public Television. In the year 2000, Mr. McHugh founded the American Family Stories
Project and began traveling around the country, recording people telling their family stories. These stories
were later featured on a public radio series called "The Telling Takes Us Home" which aired on many
public radio stations and on the international English-language service of Voice of America.
Joe McHugh has presented at conferences, colleges, libraries, museums, and festivals throughout
the United States, Scotland, Ireland, and England. He has published two collections of folktales and humor
and an illustrated children’s book about the early days of aviation. His most recent book is a novel entitled
Kilowatt about the energy industry, big media, and the nature of time. He lives with his family in Olympia,
Washington.
You can find out more about his work at: < http://www.joemchugh.info/about_joe.html >

Thursday, Jan. 22nd, Peter Donaldson, Salmonpeople. Arrival Time: 6:30.

TESC Experimental Theatre.
Attendance is required. Admission will be free for members of our program. Latecomers
will not be seated. (Please mark your calendars, as this field-trip, as it is not on one of our
regularly scheduled evenings. If you are unable to attend, you must complete a make-up
assignment.)

Peter will also be coming into our program to do a series of storytelling workshops with us
throughout the quarter—see program schedule for details. Peter Donaldson is our Evans Chair
Scholar for 2008-2009. He is a remarkable performance artist who links storytelling with social activism
and Pacific Northwest history and ecology. His spellbinding performances push artistic and philosophical
boundaries. Salmonpeople is . . .
a one-man theatrical performance about the interdependence of salmon and people in the
Pacific Northwest. The story is told through the eyes of Cyrus Jackson, an everyman
character who finds himself employed up at the local dam as a salmon taxi. With inquisitive
charm and masterful freehand cartography, Cyrus unfolds a delightfully disturbing history
of the Pacific Northwest and a lesson on the ultimate economics of mother nature. Through
one man’s head-scratching, self-taught theories, we come to know our watershed address in
a way we had never before imagined and will never forget.

For more information, go to:

http://www.peterdonaldson.net/

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http://www.peterdonaldson.net/Salmonpeople/Performance/comments.html
http://www.peterdonaldson.net/Salmonpeople/index.html
http://www.salmonnation.com/voices/peter_donaldson.html   -an interview with Salmon Nation.

February 18th Susan Christian Playback theatre, storytelling improv games.

Susan has been a vital member of Olympia’s Playback Theatre since its beginning, and has depth
of insight about how the arts transform an individuals life and psyche. She is primarily a visual artist, and
occasionally teaches at The Evergreen State College. She says, “I show my work at Childhood’s End
Gallery and Side Door Gallery in Olympia, Washington; at Union Art Cooperative and retrofit.home in
Seattle; in group shows nationally; and in France. I’ve completed several public-art commissions.”
You can find out more about her work at: <http://www.susanchristian.com/about.html>

Class Website: http://acdrupal.evergreen.edu/languageandplace

We intend to use the website as a tool to broaden the circle of our learning community. In addition to being
a place to post readings and other course-related documents, the website will be an added channel for
communicating with each other, sharing our stories, discussing ideas and experiences, and presenting our
work.

Rebecca Chamberlain is a Northwest Rick McKinnon is a linguist and educator

writer, poet, and storyteller with a with a wide range of interests including the
background in the arts, humanities, and evolutionary origins of language (and the
natural history education. She did her human species in general), language
graduate work in Medieval literature and preservation, animal communication, conflict
American literature (specializing in Native studies, and educational technologies. Rick
American language and storytelling has taught at Evergreen since '00, and also
traditions). She also works with William works as the Learning Director at South
Blake, the Transcendentalists, and natural Puget Sound Community College.
history writing. She teaches a variety of
storytelling workshops and writing courses
around “place based” themes that include
issues of sustainability, eco-criticism, and
Northwest history. She has worked for
science museums, environmental, arts, and
cultural organizations.

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