Trio work to revive pidgin language
West Coasters used Chinook Wawa in 1800s, early 1900s
VANCOUVER — A former Vancouver mayor, a retired UBC anthropology professor and an animator are hoping to spark a revival of the pidgin language that introduced such words as skukum (robust or strong), saltchuck (ocean water), muckamuck (to eat; “high muckamucks” were those in power), and potlatch (giving, or a ceremony where goods are provided).
First Nations people, English and French traders and settlers, missionaries and government officials used to communicate with each other up and down the West Coast in the 1800s and early 1900s using Chinook Wawa, or Chinook Jargon, but now it’s virtually nonexistent.
“Chinook Jargon arose as a common language to allow all the people who lived along the West Coast to communicate,” said Jay Powell, 77, a retired professor who learned to speak the language 55 years ago when he was stationed on various native reserves in the Pacific Northwest and who is still fluent.
The language has only 500 words primarily from the Lower Chinook language and borrows from the Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka), Salish, English, French and Hawaiian languages.
“I’m not certain a full-scale revival of Chinook Jargon is anybody’s goal, but if everyone in an area would learn 20 or 40 words over the years, we would be richer for it,” Powell said.
Powell is one of several speakers scheduled to speak at a daylong event Saturday organized by the Global Civic Policy Society, founded by former Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and his partner, Lynn Zanatta.
Wawa (which means talk) was the working language of the Hastings, B.C. lumber mill 100 years ago and Sullivan noted it’s significant that the dominant language is native, which proves how important natives were in the culture then.
He knows of a native community in Oregon called the Grande Ronde that still practises it and was shocked and pleased to overhear two people speaking Chinook in a coffee shop in Portland recently.
Lucas Green, 29, considers himself a language hobbyist and was instantly intrigued by Chinook Wawa, enough that he taught himself about 200 words. “I could have a very slow conversation about the weather,” he said.
The Burnaby animator created a one-minute animated Chinook Wawa primer.
There were word lists and dictionaries published in the early 1900s. But Chinook Jargon was eventually forbidden in schools.
Sullivan said he would like to see Chinook Wawa used in a ceremonial way at the B.C. Legislature, as former Lieutenant-governor Iona Campagnolo did at her swearingin ceremony in 2001.