Poundmaker FN urged to revitalize ‘endangered’ Indigenous language
Floyd Favel has travelled the world studying how theatre is performed in different cultures. But when the filmmaker from Poundmaker First Nation set his mind to developing an Indigenous performance method, he decided to look in his own backyard.
“I remember as a teenager meeting an old man who showed me a few sign language gestures and I remember being interested,” Favel recalled.
Favel began researching Plains Indian Sign Language — which he describes as a “little-known art” — and was fascinated.
Roughly 150 years ago, the rudimentary language had been the main form of communication for Indigenous groups across the North American prairies who spoke different dialects. Over time, the language fell out of everyday use. However, some gestures remained ingrained in Indigenous storytelling traditions, whether storytellers realized it or not.
“Unconsciously we do use remnants of the Plains Indian Sign Language system when we use our language and we tell stories. Unconsciously. We don’t know that it’s part of the lexicon of the sign language, but we do use some of those gestures and images,” Favel said.
Favel says Plains Indian Sign Language can have a place in contemporary times, including in theatre and art, and wants members of Poundmaker First Nation to play a role in its revitalization.
He’s among the organizers of a storytellers’ festival happening this month on Poundmaker, about 200 kilometres northwest of Saskatoon, and has invited one of the few experts in Plains Indian Sign Language to come to tell traditional stories using sign and give a presentation on the language.
The expert, Lanny Real Bird, lives on the Crow Reservation in southeast Montana. He describes Plains Indian Sign Language as “endangered” and estimates there are fewer than 1,000 people with any knowledge of it.
Real Bird began learning sign as a young boy because he had family members who were deaf and hard of hearing. Later, when Real Bird became a teacher of Indigenous languages, he realized signing could be an important tool to help people learn because signing while speaking made lessons more interactive, immersive and fun.
And teaching Plains Indian Sign Language further helps connect people to their identity, he says.
“There are a lot of people among our native communities who are seeking an identity. And one of the foundations of identity and defining our self image as a native person is our culture as well as our language,” Real Bird says.
“Once a person is introduced to their language after suffering cultural loss and historic trauma and some of the historic tribulations, relearning and reidentifying with something that is historically rare or historically important to their identity gives them a good feeling about who they are and it’s kind of a healing process for somebody to learn their language.”
Favel says he hopes Real Bird’s presentation helps people in the community realize that learning Plains Indian Sign Language is not only possible, but an exercise that has value.
“The majority of people, they ’ve maybe heard about (Plains Indian Sign Language) in the past, but not really put a focus on it and thought maybe it was a long-lost art so far in the past that maybe it has irrelevancy to today,” Favel said.
“But this is an art that the world needs, to be able to communicate through the use of gestures and signs across all linguistic divisions.”