Átway Tuxámshish, Dr. Virginia Rosalyn Beavert (In Memorium)

November 30, 1921-February 8, 2024

In her own words from The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnúwit Átawish Nch'inch'imamí: Reflections on Sahaptin Ways,  p. 72.

Tmáaktapam waḵ’íshwit, átaw iwá. Shix̱ nam imínk átawitma náktwaninta. Pápa’atawitapam. Awkláwna lísx̱am wa níyii niimí waḵ’íshwit, cháwna tl’yáwita kuna kw’áx̱i táx̱shita, chaw. Tamánwitkina wa íchna tiichámpa, chaw áwtik’a. Wáshna níyii kútkut náktkwanint tl’áax̱wnan tuun waḵ’íshwityiinan.

Respect your life. It is valuable. Take care of your loved ones, love one another. We are given life only once. We cannot die and come back to life again later, no. We were created and put here on this land for a reason. We were given life to dwell here and take care of everything that has life.

(Contributors to the below: Brian Saluskin, Julie Saluskin, Joana Jansen, Janne Underrinner, Sharon Hargus, Keegan Livermore)

Beloved Yakama elder Dr. Virginia “Tuxámshish” Beavert passed on February 8, 2024 at the age of 102. She was the eldest female elder of the Yakama Nation, and known as a linguist, educator, author and WWII Veteran. She was the first woman to be elected Secretary-Treasurer of Yakama General Council, in which she served from 1978-1985. In 2015, the Yakama Nation dedicated the Tuxámshish Higher Education Center, named to honor Dr. Beavert. The Yakama Nation wrote, “She achieved many milestones in her lifetime and impacted many lives. She will forever be remembered for her dedication to preserving the Ichishkíin language and her love for teaching.”

Additionally, she was a daughter, wife, aunt, horse and cattle person. She contributed to the medical records field and Hanford nuclear site endeavors before caring for her elderly mother, Ellen “Xápt’iniks Sawyalílx” Saluskin, and beginning her work in cultural preservation. She connected language and treaty rights to the cause and supported Tribal Sovereignty throughout her work. Her activism combined with her ability to speak multiple languages meant she could help translate for people who were arrested for "illegal" fishing. Her teachings uphold and perpetuate traditional ways through her language.

To those speaking and learning Ichishkíin she was known as Sapsikw’ałá (Teacher). She taught introductory through advanced language classes to students of all ages, and encouraged students from the Yakama Nation and tribes across the country to pursue work in language and culture preservation. Early recordings she shared with students were from a tape recorder, sitting by her house. As technology progressed, she was able to keep pace and shared her recorded Ichishkíin words through the dictionary, which is also available online. Knowing that such a reference was needed as a tool for students and teachers, she was steadfast in her documentation. Her resolute determination and strictness with pronunciation would be lightened with her stories about people and the resources. Her rhythmic way of speaking is forever treasured in the hearts of the Yakama people and others in the Northwest.

Her language work spanned her lifetime. In 1935 at the age of fourteen, due to her knowledge of the language and culture of her own tribe as well as neighboring Salish tribes, she began working with cultural anthropologist and linguist Melville Jacobs. From 1943-1945 Virginia Beavert served in the Women’s Army Corps, U.S. Air Force as a Wireless Radio Operator at the B-29 Training Station in Clovis, New Mexico. During the war her stepfather Alex Saluskin started to write down his language, knowing that this was a critical step in passing it along to future generations. When Dr. Beavert returned from her army service, she promised to continue his efforts, which she did until the time of her passing. She tirelessly continued, even when not everyone agreed with or supported her language work. Her own mother questioned it, until her mother accompanied her on a language trip and came to understand what her daughter was doing. Recently her work included providing valued guidance and support to the Yakama Nation Language Program. Her perspective and cultural insight was foundational in determining the future direction of the program. She assisted with interpretation for public information posters and projects to boost language learning and use, and encouraged the program to continue reaching out to elders and heritage Ichishkíin speakers. The storybooks and songbooks she contributed to will be enjoyed by many for years to come.

Dr. Beavert earned a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Central Washington University (1986) and a Master’s degree in Bilingual/Bicultural Education through the University of Arizona’s American Indian Language Development Institute (2000). She received a Doctorate of Humane Letters (honorary PhD) from the University of Washington in 2009, as well as a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Oregon in 2012, graduating from UO at the age of 90 as the UO’s oldest-ever graduate.  Her dissertation, titled Wántwint Inmí Tiináwit, A Reflection of What I Have Learned, documents older traditions that are being lost, with a particular focus on the language of those traditions.

Her scholarly work spans publications that range from personal memories to history to Yakama legends. She collaborated on numerous linguistic and language restoration projects. She compiled a book based on her dissertation that was published in 2017, titled The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnúwit Átawish Nch'inch'imamí: Reflections on Sahaptin Ways, edited by Janne Underriner. She also authored Ichishkíin Sinwit Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary (2009) with Sharon Hargus. She compiled and edited a book of Yakama legends and stories Anakú Iwachá (The Way It Was), first published in 1974 in collaboration with D.E. Walker, Jr., with a second edition published in 2021, in collaboration with Michelle M. Jacob and Joana Jansen. She worked with the Confluence Project on connecting people to the history and culture of the Columbia River through recordings and contributing language to the Story Circles at Sacajawea State Park.

She taught Ichishkíin at Heritage University from 1990 through the early 2000’s, where she was an instructor, Scholar in Residence, and Director of the Sahaptin Language Program. She was a language instructor and Elder board member at the Northwest Indian Language Institute (NILI) and the Department of Linguistics at the University of Oregon (UO) from 1997 until her passing. She was the Sapsik’ʷałá Program Distinguished Elder Educator, College of Education, UO beginning in 2016. She taught in numerous other schools and institutions throughout her lifetime including the Yakama Nation, Wapato School District, Central Washington University and Yakima Valley Community College.

Dr. Beavert received numerous fellowships from organizations such as the Smithsonian Institute, Dartmouth College, the NEH, and the Washington State Arts Commission. She was a key planner of the Yakama exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, and served on committees and planning councils related to the documentation and preservation of Native American languages.

Dr. Beavert was acknowledged with many honors and awards for her language preservation and teaching efforts. She was the 2002 Washington State Indian Educator of the Year, and in 2004 was honored by the Indigenous Language Institute for her lifetime of work on language revitalization. In 2005 she received the Washington Governor's Heritage Award, which recognizes individuals and organizations for their significant contributions to the creativity and culture of Washington State. In 2008 she was awarded the prestigious Ken Hale Prize by the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas. That year she also received the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Oregon for her significant contribution to the cultural development of Oregon and society as a whole. In 2015 she was recognized as the Elder of the Year by the National Indian Education Association.  In 2019 she received the Lifetime Achievement Award presented by The Museum at Warm Springs, Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, and in 2021 the American Indian Language Development Institute at the University of Arizona recognized her contributions with the Ken Hale Award.

Book Publications:

Anakú Iwachá: Yakama Stories and Legends, 2nd Edition. 2021. Co-edited with Michelle M. Jacob, Joana W. Jansen. WA: University of Washington Press.

The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnúwit Átawish Nch'inch'imamí: Reflections on Sahaptin Ways. 2017. Edited by Janne Underriner. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

Ichishkíin Sínwit Yakama/Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary. 2009. Co-written with Sharon Hargus.  Toppenish and Seattle: Heritage University and UW Press.

Yakima Language Practical Dictionary. 1975. Co-written with Bruce Rigsby. Toppenish, Washington, Consortium of Johnson-O'Malley Committees, Region IV [State of  Washington].

Anaku Iwacha: The Way It Was (Yakima Indian Legends). 1974. With Deward Walker, Technical Advisor  Yakima, WA, The Consortium of Johnson O'Malley Committees, Region IV [State of Washington].

Joel Sherzer (1942-2022)

Joel Fred Sherzer, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin and co-founder of the Archive of the Indigenous Languages of Latin America (AILLA), passed away peacefully on Sunday, November 6, 2022.

Joel’s major publications include Kuna Ways of Speaking: An Ethnographic Perspective (1983), a groundbreaking ethnography of speaking (often considered the first full-length ethnography of speaking). His Verbal Art in San Blas: Kuna Culture Through Its Discourse (1990) was an exercise in using his discourse-centered approach to language and culture to explore the verbal artistry of a variety of Guna genres of speaking and chanting. The final book in his Guna trilogy, Stories, Myths, Chants, and Songs of the Kuna Indians (2003), further explored verbally artistic ways of speaking, chanting, and singing among the Guna. A summary of Sherzer’s thinking on speech play and verbal art as a critical site for ethnographic investigation was published as Speech Play and Verbal Art (2002). His last book was Adoring the Saints: Fiestas in Central Mexico (with Yolanda Lastra and Dina Sherzer, 2009).

Joel was an early member of SSILA, and he was a cherished mentor and colleague to many of our members. The full obituary is available here: https://ailla.utexas.org/node/233. 

Donald Gene Frantz (Jan. 20, 1934 - Sept. 20, 2021)

Professor Donald Gene Frantz, Don to his friends, family, and colleagues, passed away at the age of 87 on September 20, 2021.

Don’s principal contributions to linguistics were in the field of Algonquian Studies, in particular through his lifelong work on the Blackfoot language. He also worked on other languages, including Cheyenne and Southern Tiwa.

Don laid the groundwork upon which those of us who work on Blackfoot build our efforts. His dissertation, published by SIL in 1971, became the foundation for the first and to date only modern grammar of the language, first published in 1991 with updated editions in 2009 and 2017. His lexicographic work resulted in the publication, with Blackfoot co-author Norma Russell, of the Blackfoot Dictionary of stems, roots and affixes, also in three editions, 1989, 1995 and 2017. Don donated his lexicographic database to serve as the initial building blocks for the Blackfoot Digital Dictionary (https://dictionary.blackfoot.algonquianlanguages.ca/.)

Don was originally from Alameda, California. Before his career as a linguist, he was a member of the Coast Guard. He studied linguistics at Berkeley and was sponsored to do missionary translation work by the Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL) program in Norman, Oklahoma. After he graduated from Berkeley with a BA in Linguistics in 1960 he was sent to northern Montana and Southern Alberta to work on the Blackfoot language. He moved with his wife Patty and daughter Lisa, first to the Blackfeet reservation in Browning, MT, and later to Siksika, Alberta, where they lived in Gleichen and later in Arrowwood, where sons Tim and Jeff were born in the next few years. He graduated with a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Alberta in 1970.

In addition to his work on the grammar and the dictionary, Don also developed the first formal orthography for Blackfoot. His system was officially adopted by the Canadian schoolboards in 1975, and is still the most commonly used writing system, although others also continue to be used.

Don remained active in bible translation and other missionary projects throughout his life. He was responsible for the production of the Blackfoot version of “The Jesus Film” into Blackfoot.

Don did language consulting work in New Mexico, Eastern Canada, Nigeria, and Cameroon. He also taught language development classes in Alaska and Peru. He regularly spent summers teaching at SIL back in Norman, and then in North Dakota when the program moved there.

Don spent his formal academic career at the University of Lethbridge. In 1977 he was hired to the new department of Native American Studies by Professor Leroy Littlebear. He was promoted to associate professor in 1989 and to full professor in 1990. He officially retired the next year, in 1991, but continued to teach courses in Blackfoot grammar until 2016.

Don was a quiet, unassuming, deeply religious man, who generously supported, advised and encouraged the next generation of Blackfoot linguists. We hope his work lives on in our own.

—Inge Genee, University of Lethbridge

Victor Golla (1939-2021): Some Personal Remembrances

Sean O’Neill

(This was originally posted on the In Memoriam 2022 page for the on-line 2022 Annual Meeting)

 Most of you know about Victor Golla, as the founder of this organization (SSILA) and is the namesake for one of the awards. Many of you also knew him, either personally or in passing. If you knew him at all, you knew that he loved backstories, especially those with intrigue and lurid details. 

 I first met him when I was a motorcycle-riding teenager Northwest in California, and after taking one of his classes on linguistics, I never looked back. There was nothing dry about it. Even as we took a fine-grained look at the mechanics of languages, it felt more like we were learning about the inner workings of the human soul.

 His storytelling was mesmerizing, and he knew so many backstories about the great scholars--not just in anthropology or linguistics, but throughout history. He shared things you would never find in the literature, cobbling together poignant psychological sketches of the brilliant minds throughout the ages. Many of them were what we might politely call “characters,” like John P. Harrington, but Victor could always see beyond all those quirks and foibles. Of course, the value in each character was hearing their unusual—and often hard-won—insights and perspectives, not to be found elsewhere.

 In this spirit, let me now share a few backstories on Victor, who was as fascinating as some of characters that intrigued him—on par with Sapir or Harrington or all of the others, some of them less famous, that he admired. In his own work, such as his monumental volume on California Indian Languages, Victor was able to distill a lifetime of insights from past generations, weaving that wisdom into the stories he was telling in his own writing. Hence his interest in backstories had a purpose, giving him a panoramic view of the profession. He cared about every voice, which was probably part of his vision in bringing this organization into existence.

 For my part, I will always picture Victor at two o’clock in the morning furiously typing out another paper, away from the fray of academic discord—and with a cat nearby. He was so quick to return emails between two and four PM!  (He loved typewriters and once showed me some special ones that were modified for working on Indigenous languages, with their special characters.)

 Some of you may not know Victor’s pathway to linguistics, which was circuitous, to say the least. Inspired by Alan Turing, he sought to build his own machine—this one, for translating Russian scientific literature into English at the height of the Cold War. His first love was Russian linguistics, and he always had an eye for science. But the mainframes of his time (with punch cards and vacuum tubes) were simply not up to the task. His dream is probably still out of reach today, and others, like Chomsky, encountered difficulties here, moving on to more tangible problems.

 As it became clear that challenge—however worthy—was impossible, given the limited technology of the day, his mentor, Mary Haas, stepped in to talk some sense into the young Victor Golla. As he parted ways with this impossible dream, Haas convinced him to take up the study of an Indigenous language. She apparently had a quiet sense of social justice, and she often asked the students to forge relationship with one of the communities near where they grew up.

 At that point, his fate was sealed. Victor grew up near Mount Shasta, and he was a great admirer of Edward Sapir, who shared his fascination with linguistic diversity and the psychological that animates human social life. She showed him an unfinished manuscript, left behind by the great Edward Sapir, something he hoped (in vain!) to publish in a few short years. In time, Hupa became the subject matter of his dissertation, and an endless, lifelong fascination which culminated in volume 14 of the Collected works of Edward Sapir, which I helped him finish with my knowledge of computer programming, a shared passion.

 I would be remiss if I didn’t mention his love of cats. Apparently, he wanted his pets to be mentioned in his obituary--the ones that sat at his side on his deathbed and the ones that accompanied him in the night when he was writing.

 Now I have one more cat story to share. When news came that his mentor, Mary Haas had passed away, Victor was understandably shaken. We were working together that night on Sapir’s unfinished works. When our meeting ended, I walked him to his car, a little worried about his shell-shocked state of grief. Along the way, we encountered a small cat, which was somehow drawn to him. (Somehow, they sense a cat lover!) At that moment, Victor Golla, the great scholar, set his books on the ground and lovingly pet the cat on the street for a few minutes, perhaps finding solace. At that moment, I remember him telling me that Mary Haas was also a lover of cats.

 With both scholars, I feel this sense of kindness reveals something about the depth of their empathy--the same trait that made both great scholars: seeing the people behind the social and linguistic facts we study in linguistics. At that point, Victor treated the cat with same care and devotion that can be seen in all his professional work. Never too important to connect with a cat! Never lost on the facts, but cognizant of the human dramas that shape and echo through the linguistic forms.

 Let me end on a note of humor, directly from the mind of Victor Golla. His wife, Ellen, shared a note that he wrote in his final months, with his vision for a memorial. He pictured a tribute where I would read short passage in Hupa, and Andrew Garrett would read something in Yurok. In the background, a song by Monty Python would be playing, namely, “Always Look on the Bright side of Life,” the tune Pythons wrote to accompany the death of “Brian,” fictional contemporary of Jesus. Let me add that Michael Silverstein also loved the Pythons, raucous comedy from a highly intelligent troop and a sign of a great deal of right-brained thinking--seeing larger patterns beyond the obvious minutia, the global thinking that might be lost on a more narrowly focused mind.

Heidi Anna Johnson / Anna Castle (1956-2022)

Dear SSILA members,

AILLA has heartbreaking and unexpected news to share. Our friend, mentor, and colleague, Heidi Johnson, passed away unexpectedly on Wednesday, February 2, 2022. Heidi was the manager of AILLA from 2001 through 2012, and she built this archive into the internationally recognized language repository that it is. She laid the groundwork and built the foundation for everything that we do today.

Heidi spread the word about language archiving and its best practices not only among fellow archivists, but to a broader audience, including Indigenous communities working to preserve and use records of their heritage languages and linguists assisting in such efforts.

After retiring from AILLA in 2012, Heidi launched a successful writing career. As an independent author, she published fifteen mystery novels under the pseudonym Anna Castle (https://www.annacastle.com/about/), her most popular, the Francis Bacon Mysteries series. As reflected in her tagline, she wrote with "heart and wit." 

Heidi was a major contributor to the documentation of Indigenous languages of Mexico; her 2000 (UTA) dissertation "A Grammar of San Miguel Chimalpa Zoque" was a Mary Haas Book Award honorable mention; a pioneering digital language archivist. She was a gifted and charismatic teacher and speaker, and a clever and engaging author. And, most importantly, she was a loving daughter and sister and an unflaggingly enthusiastic and supportive friend. She will be missed by all whose lives she touched.

In sadness,

Susan Smythe Kung

In memoriam session at SSILA 2022

SSILA lost several long-time members in the last two years. We plan a session to honor their memory at SSILA 2022 Annual Meeting, on Saturday, January 22, at 3:30-4:30 pm Eastern Time. Please register for the conference (free) to attend this celebration of their lives.

We are aware of the following members who passed away during this period. Their names link to LSA or local information about their lives and legacies.

Victor Golla (founding member, Secretary/Treasurer/Editor 1982-2007)

Harriet Klein

Michael Silverstein

Pieter Muysken

Paul Platero

Durbin Feeling

Douglas Parks (Member at Large, 2003-2005)

Raymond DeMallie

If you would like to speak to share memories of one of these people, please contact Aaron Broadwell (broadwell@ufl.edu), who will organize a schedule of speakers.  Given the time constraints of our meeting, shared memories should be brief (2-3 minutes).  If we have neglected to name a departed SSILA member above, please let us know and we will be happy to add them to the list of those to be honored.

Aaron Broadwell

Victor Golla (1939-2021)

Photo courtesy of the Lost Coast Outpost.

SSILA is saddened at the passing of Victor Golla, one of our founding members and the SSILA Secretary/Treasurer and Newsletter and Bulletin Editor from 1982 - 2007. He is the namesake for the SSILA Victor Golla Prize that honors SSILA members who have devoted their careers to linguistic scholarship and service to the scholarly community, just as he had done. We plan to have a memorial for him, and other long-time SSILA members, at the 2021 Annual Meeting online, January 21-23. In the meantime, here is the in memoriam for him that appeared on the LSA website, in colleagues’ own words. And here is a delightful tribute to his life from his hometown newspaper, the Lost Coast Outpost.

Durbin Duran Feeling, Cherokee Linguist, 1946-2020

The community of Native language linguists and speakers is saddened to learn of the death of the pre-eminent Cherokee linguist, Durbin Feeling, who died August 19, 2020 at age 74.

 Durbin was one of the last remaining Cherokee speakers who spoke the language as his mother tongue, learning English when he went to school. 

Durbin earned an Associate of Arts at Bacone College in Muskogee, OK in 1966.  From 1968 to 1970 he served in Viet Nam as a helicopter machine gunner, earning several combat honors, including the Purple Heart.  During his service time, he wrote letters home to his mother written in the Cherokee syllabary.  In 1979 he earned a BA in Journalism at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah.

During this time, Durbin worked with linguist William Pulte to produce two of the most useful and influential Cherokee linguistic tools, the Cherokee English Dictionary and An Outline of Cherokee Grammar, published together as a single volume in 1975.  He began graduate work at UC Irvine in 1988, serving as an instructor at the Cherokee Institute, and earning his MA in Linguistics in 1992.

In 1992 Durbin began work as a tribal linguist for Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.  At the same time, he served as an adjunct professor of Cherokee at the University of Tulsa. 

In 1999 Durbin was an Assistant Professor of English at Northeastern State.  He taught the Cherokee language at the University of Oklahoma for several years before returning to consult for Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

In 2004, Durbin was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters by The Ohio State University.

Durbin was given many honors by Cherokee Nation. In 2011, he was named a Cherokee National Treasure.  The Nation also honored him by naming their language preservation bill and their language center after him.

Besides his influential dictionary and grammar, Durbin also published A Handbook of the Cherokee Verb in 2003 with Craig Kopris, Jordan Lachler, and Charles van Tuyl.  in 2018, he published Cherokee Narratives with former collaborator William Pulte and son Gregory Pulte.  This book represents a decades-long ambition:  to provide morpheme-level glossing and tone marking on original Cherokee texts.  He served as a language consultant for many linguistics papers and data bases.

Durbin had more collaborators than can be accurately named, since he was often the anchor of both academic and community Cherokee language projects.  Some of his NSF/DEL collaborators were Marcia Haag and Keith Johnson (Cherokee language sound description and analysis) and Dylan Herrick, Tracy Hirata-Eddy, Lizette Peter, Marcellino Berardo, and Brad Montgomery-Anderson (Documenting Cherokee tone and vowel length). He was also a member of the VW Foundation-sponsored Prosody of the Wider World workshop in 2012 and of the working group "ToPIQQ: Tonal Placement – Interaction of Qualitative and Quantitative factors.”

Other collaborators were Hiroto Uchihara, Chris Koops, Wyman Kirk, and Ryan Mackey.

Durbin was always immersed in developing technology that would help speakers and students gain access to the syllabary.  He was instrumental in getting the syllabary onto word processor keyboards and developing a unicode for it.

 Durbin was on the first Board of Directors of the Endangered Language Fund, where he served as a proposal reviewer for many years.   

Apart from his importance to Cherokee language and linguistics, Durbin was a kind and respectful man, always wishing to minimize credit to himself and always saying yes to demands for his time and expertise.  He cannot be replaced.

Submitted by Marcia Haag

John Asher Dunn (1939–2017)

John Asher Dunn, a long-time researcher in the Tsimshian (Sm’algyax) language, died on July 4, 2017 in Oklahoma City.  He was born June 19, 1939.  He earned a BA degree in Philosophy from St. John’s College in Collegeville, MN and received his PhD in Linguistic Anthropology from the University of New Mexico in 1969.  He taught at Oregon State University and the University of Northern British Columbia before embarking on a long career at the University of Oklahoma, serving as a professor and eventually Chair of the Department of Anthropology before joining the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Linguistics to found the BA degree in Linguistics.  He retired from OU in 1999, but continued to assist the program by teaching linguistics courses until his health would no longer permit it.

After retirement, John immersed himself in the contemplative life that he had earlier engaged in as a postulant monk at St. Gregory’s Abbey in Shawnee OK and St. John’s Abbey in Collegeville.  He joined the Community of Solitude and took the name Brother Cuthbert, taking his final vows in 2014.

John studied the Tsimshianic languages of British Columbia for decades, spending summers there to work with speakers to create dictionaries, grammars, and pedagogical materials for those communities.  His major scholarly works are A Reference Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language (1979) and Sm’algyax:  A Reference Dictionary and Grammar for the Coast Tsimshian Language (1995).  He also developed and published locally a set of six books for native schoolchildren, Teachings of Our Grandfathers.

Beginning in the 1990s and continuing for the rest of his life, John worked on the linguistic justification for his theory that the Tsimshianic languages have shared roots with Proto-Indo-European.  He maintained a website for his research, and published a summary of this work, A Tsimshian Proto-Indo-European Comparative Lexicon in 2017, weeks before his death.  As Brother Cuthbert, he completed his work in his life-long interest in Gregorian chant and plainsong with the publication of Cuthbert’s Little Plainsong Psalter, also in 2017.

John Asher Dunn was a brilliant and beloved teacher: the Linguistics achievement award at OU is named for him. He was a gentle and modest colleague who made unique contributions to American languages.

Submitted by Marcia Haag, Professor of Linguistics, University of Oklahoma

Richard Andrew Silas (1951–2016)

Willem de Reuse's note: This was one of the 7 fluent speakers of Han Athabaskan, so there are now 6 left.

Richard Andrew Silas was born Nov. 2, 1951, to Charles Silas Sr. and Nancy Malcolm Silas in Eagle. He was the second oldest child of six children born in the family. Dickey was brought up in the Han Gwich'in culture and was a fluent speaker of the Han language. He grew up in Eagle Village all his life and continued to live there a few weeks before his death.

Dickey was an avid hunter, and he was chief of his village at one point in his early years. Despite being underage, he joined the military at 17 because he loved his country and was willing to go to great lengths to keep his family and his country safe. He was deployed into the Vietnam War and served as a helicopter mechanic. He was sent on dangerous missions with no guarantee of return. Many of his comrades felt safe knowing he was aboard during their missions because he was incredibly knowledgeable in his profession. He was known to his family and friends as "Boh' tzou" which means in the Han Gwichin language, "medicine man."

In winter 1978, he met Fanny Williams, of Fort Yukon. He was a little bit older than Fanny but not by much, and their relationship bloomed and in fall 1979, little Samantha Renee was born. Sam was the apple of his eye. He loved and doted on her. She was nicknamed "Klonzi" which means left-handed. Together, Dickey and Fanny raised Sam as their only child. Samantha was raised in unconditional love and family values.

Dickey spent many of his early years helping his father build houses. Sadly, his mother tragically died when Dickey was 9. His grandmother, Sarah Malcolm, took him in and helped raise him while his father continued to provide for the family. Charlie Silas Sr. passed on when Dickey was an adult working in Prudhoe Bay. Grandma Sarah became "mom" and she was addressed as such in daily conversation. Dickey spent a short time in Oklahoma, going to school for small engine airplane mechanic school. He spent a few years in the military before returning to his home village of Eagle. He spent short stints of residency in places like Chicken, Tanacross and Tok. He went to high school in Tok and also in Mt. Edgecombe. In reading transcripts written by Dickie, his words to his daughter were simple:

After November 1960, my father, your grandfather couldn't read, write or go to movies. My mother, his wife, died and he himself went blind, still he taught Junior and I things to survive. We'd had grown up in very many different mining camps during the winter; dad trapped and we moved all the time. I think dad was about 30 and mom was three years younger. I've never been ashamed of our earlier life; we struggled and did things the hard way. We saw the bad, the good, and the hard way of surviving. By God's will I'm still here and no one can tell me different. Dad wasn't strict, but fair. Mom wasn't there. During the time I went to boarding school somehow dad always made sure he sent me my allowance, $20. Things were hard; as of now, I know not to take things for granted. This is only a short story but I love my way of life. Someday you and Charles will see it my way if I walk away. I'd be untrue to my heritage; it's the only way I know. Dad.

Dickey leaves behind his daughter, Samantha Renee, and his two beloved grandchildren, Charles and Viennaetta; his loving aunt, Angela Harper; his former partner, Fanny; brothers William "Bully" and Rick, and family members from Pelly Crossing, Dawson City and Tanacross.
Funeral services in Fairbanks will begin at noon with visitation, and services at 1 p.m. Tuesday, April 19, at St. Mathews Episcopal Church. No potluck will be held as family will be transporting Dickey home to Eagle immediately afterward.

Services in Eagle will begin at noon with visitation and funeral service at 1 p.m. and gravesite service at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday, April 20.
Please visit www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsminer to sign an online guest book.

Published in Daily News-Miner on April 19, 2016. Read more here.

A. Richard Diebold, Jr. (1934–2014)

Please visit this link to read Richard Diebold's obituary. He was a dear colleague at the University of Arizona, and wrote important work on the Huave language of Mexico.

Alice Anderton (1949–2016)

SSILA mourns the loss of an important scholar and activist, Alice Anderton. Alice received her Ph.D. in Linguistics from UCLA in 1988, and her dissertation was entitled The language of the Kitanemuks of California. She published primarily on Uto-Aztecan languages (Kitanemuk, Comanche), but was active in advocacy for native languages in general, and Oklahoma languages in particular.

Alice's dissertation is a synthesis of J. P. Harrington's notes on the Takic (Uto-Aztecan) language Kitanemuk, formerly spoken north of Los Angeles. Working with Harrington's often chaotic notes, Alice's analysis includes a full grammar and dictionary which have proven to be a vital resource for recent language revitalization work by the Kitanemuk people.

Alice taught at Oklahoma State University, the University of Oklahoma, Cameron College, and the Red Earth Museum. She was the founder of the Intertribal Wordpath Society, a group which advocated for the preservation, teaching, and legal status of Oklahoma native languages. The Intertribal Wordpath Society was responsible for producing more than 200 episodes of a television series about native languages, which interviewed many elders and helped to raise awareness of linguistic rights in Oklahoma.

Alice was also instrumental in writing and lobbying for the Oklahoma Indian Language Heritage Protection Act, which countered a potential "English Only" law in the state by ensuring the legal status of native languages.

Alice was a rare combination of scholar, teacher, and activist, and she will be deeply missed by her friends and colleagues.

A full obituary can be found in The Daily Oklahoman.

Emiliano Cruz Santiago (1986–2015)

Emiliano Cruz Santiago, an SSILA member and Miahuatec Zapotec-speaking linguist who dedicated his life to documenting his language and culture, has died at the age of 29.  Rosemary Beam de Azcona has written an obituary that includes a list of his publications.

Emiliano Cruz Santiago

February 8, 1986 – October 27, 2015

Emiliano Cruz Santiago, the Miahuatec Zapotec-speaking linguist who dedicated his life to documenting his language and culture, has died at the age of 29, leaving behind his 8 month old son, José Enrique Cruz Mendoza, his young widow, Ricarda Mendoza, his bereaved family, and his shocked and saddened colleagues around the world. He published the first book in his language, an anthology of folk beliefs and traditions, and leaves behind two other books to be published soon: one is a nearly 500 page document consisting of a grammatical sketch, orthography primer, and mostly glossed and translated texts transcribed from recordings, and secondly a dictionary of which he is the first editor, with more than 6,000 entries and around 10,000 lexical items including subentries.

Emiliano began working as my consultant at the age of 19 while still a high school student. He was a bookworm who spent his free time in the Andrés Henestrosa library and was always carrying a newly checked-out stack of books as well as a notebook which he used to write down anything that interested him. On the second day we worked together I was comparing two forms, one that ended in a vowel and the other which didn’t, and he asked me, “Isn’t that apocope?” Years later when I asked how he had known that term he supposed that it was something he remembered from some books about ancient Greek poetry that he had checked out of the library. On the third day we worked together he said to me as soon as he sat down, “Do you know that in my community we have a 260 day calendar that we use to dictate when we perform certain rituals? I asked my father about it last night and took all these notes…” and then he showed me pages of details he had carefully recorded about this Mesoamerican ritual calendar which survives in his community. I don’t know at what point I concluded that he was a genius, but I knew that he was born to be a linguist the minute I heard him say “apocope”.

The Fundación Alfredo Harp Helú awarded him a scholarship to study an undergraduate degree in Linguistics at the University of Sonora, where he was advised by Zarina Estrada. He first visited the United States through a program run by the US State department for what it considered leading indigenous university students from Latin America. Through follow-up activities led by the State Department he later met in Mexico City such notable people as Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, and then-first lady of Mexico, Margarita Zavala. He collaborated with me on an ELDP grant that I received and subsequently was awarded his own grant from ELDP, visiting London for their training workshop. He worked for four months in Washington, D.C. on a project with Mark Sicoli, Víctor Cata and Gabriela Pérez Báez to analyze tone in verbal forms in 11 Zapotec languages for the purposes of reconstructing tone in Proto-Zapotec. He was well matched to this task because he was always keenly aware of tone since our first few months working together. He also attended a language documentation workshop led by the Living Tongues Institute in Santiago, Chile. His first linguistic presentation was at the Instituto Welte in 2007 in Oaxaca. He conducted several orthography workshops in San Bartolomé Loxicha and in the last year he was involved in an initiative to get primary school students to compose literature in Zapotec. On that occasion he performed his own composition of spoken word poetry in Zapotec having to do with Mexican history and politics, and sang the Beatles’ classic “And I love her”, which he had translated into Zapotec. One of his last academic presentations was an invited talk on the 260 day ritual calendar at the Biblioteca de Investigación Juán de Córdova. He had hoped to study a master’s degree in Linguistics at CIESAS in Mexico, and a PhD at UT Austin.

All his life Emiliano suffered from hypokalemia, a condition which caused his body to have dangerously low levels of potassium and suffer temporary paralysis. Several attempts to diagnosis his condition in Mexico failed and often resulted in doctors telling him it was all in his head. While on his State Department-sponsored trip to the United States he suffered one such attack and was taken to an emergency room in Arizona, where he received the correct diagnosis. Since then he was mostly able to keep his condition under control through diet. However, on the night of October 25, 2015, an attack began with atypical symptoms and, not recognizing it as such, he did not take his potassium salts. Over the following day his condition worsened. On the morning of October 27^th his family sought medical attention in San Agustín Loxicha, another Miahuatec Zapotec-speaking town, adjacent to his own community and the hometown of his wife. One doctor turned him away. The next doctor could see the severity of his condition but had run out of potassium. The town ambulance was called but was out of town on an errand and they had to wait for an hour and a half. In the ambulance Emiliano had difficulty breathing and they tried to give him oxygen but the ambulance’s oxygen tank was empty. He died en route to the hospital, about a half an hour away from the potassium injection that could have saved his life. During his wake and burial his family honored his memory by documenting the funerary traditions they were practicing in Zapotec, considering that he dedicated his life to documenting such traditions in their language.

Emiliano’s life as well as Emiliano’s death reveal certain realities faced by people in many indigenous communities throughout Mexico. As he documented himself, Emiliano came from a culturally and linguistically rich environment. He was someone with the potential to contribute to humanity by sharing this cultural and linguistic knowledge, which he did tirelessly for 10 years. He produced more cultural and linguistic documentation than many older academics produce over much longer careers. His family, his community, and our discipline have nevertheless been deprived of the opportunity to see how much more he could have accomplished over the coming decades, this because indigenous communities such as the Loxichas are typically marginalized and lack the health care (and other) resources available in urban population centers, basic resources like full oxygen tanks. Emiliano was someone who connected disparate cultures---in his short life he met foreign dignitaries and academics, indigenous language activists, and people from many walks of life. He translated John Lennon compositions into Zapotec and Zapotec folk beliefs into Spanish. To those of us who did not grow up in Southern Zapotec communities he shared his language and culture, and to those who spoke his language he shared an orthography, a catalog of traditions, and a knowledge of how the language documentation revolution might contribute to preserving their history. We all benefitted from the wealth of knowledge he shared in life, and now we suffer this loss with his unnecessary death. Both the richness of what he gave us and the injustice of what we now lose are the result of where he was born and where he died---the Southern Sierra Madre of Oaxaca.

Works by Emiliano Cruz Santiago:

• Jwá’n ngwan-keéh reéh xa’gox – Creencias de nuestros antepasados. Colección “Diálogos, Pueblos Originarios de Oaxaca”. Oaxaca: Culturas Populares.
• (With Rosemary Beam de Azcona et al.) 2013. “El hombre que conoció a Cocijo”. Tlalocan.
• (With Rosemary Beam de Azcona) In press. Los compuestos verbales y las expresiones idiomáticas en el zapoteco miahuateco de San Bartolomé Loxicha. In Francisco Arellanes, Mario Chávez-Peón and Rosa María Rojas Torres, eds. Lenguas Zapotecas. México: UNAM.
• (First editor, with Rosemary Beam de Azcona as second editor) Forthcoming. Diccionario del zapoteco miahuateco de San Bartolomé Loxicha.
• Forthcoming. Xith reéh kwent: Moód tixu't mén noó kéh' mén dí'z déh Guéz xíil
• Entre tantos cuentos: Para leer y escribir el zapoteco de San Bartolomé Loxicha.

Additional materials produced by Emiliano Cruz Santiago are to be archived with ELAR, including video recordings and ethnobotanical fieldnotes.