Comanche Shoshone Delegation Travels to Utah...

The Comanche Shoshone Delegation, which included Mike Burgess and Tiffany Wright, attended the Shoshone Reunion in Utah from September 13 through 16.

Burgess said the languages have dialects that could mean or describe different things.

“It still comes back to the basic language of words and how the accent or how the various vowels or consonants put together. So, the more I've been to these reunions, the more I'm liking it,” he said. “So, I understand why our elders came to the committee in 2000 and 2001, and they were talking about keeping this network, starting this relationship with all the sister tribes under our language, the Uto-Aztecan as they call it. But now we're saying we're all based off of the Shoshone dialect of the Uto-Aztecan language, which basically comes out of the mountains of Mexico.”

Burgess said they’re a branch of Uto-Aztecan history.

“What I've read and heard was, yeah, we're a branch of that, but it's a really a larger language from Nahuatl,” he said. “And among those people are the Mexica. The Mexica were the people that the strict Aztecs could not defeat at all. They went into the mountains, tried to whip them over and kick them around, and the Mexica kicked them out. And those are some of our ancestors way back in the 1400s, 1300s, before then. So, this history is coming about.”

Burgess said it’s important to get the younger generation involved.

“And for having it here and bringing as many young people as we can is the way our elders saw to keep our language active, alive, and growing, growing with our youth. And it's very important that we, the language department and our Shoshone Reunion Language Committee, we need to network together,” he said. “We need to do more things, bringing back daily instruction or daily interaction over the language. So that's why I understand why in 2001, I was on the committee. We supported the programs. It wasn't an easy discussion on the CBC at that time, but the majority prevailed because we had elders come and talk about the relationship, the families that were connected. And finding this connection would help us to grow the future of our nation.”

Burgess said it’s important for people to know where and who they come from, but they can get lost.

“But we try to do our best because we have so many young people coming from urban areas, among other Indian communities who were taught something, and they come home and they want us to start doing it the way they know,” he said. “When, in fact, they need to sit, listen, and observe how we do things and why we're doing it that way. We had a good teacher with us today. We had Morgan Tosey coming with us. With all of the young men that we had, the adults who wanted to go dance, and we did. And some of our young guys were there for us, helping out and moving things around.So now it's very important for our community to continue to grow.”

One of those youth was Numunu Ruvalcaba.

“I feel that being involved and being around it keeps you not only out of trouble, but in connection with your elders, with your grandparents, gives you something to talk about. The energy around the arena and around the Shoshone reunion is just so positive,” he said. “There's always people smiling.”

Ruvalcaba said being connected to it all gives a sense of belonging.

Wright said it’s important to attend the Shoshone Language Reunions.

“It gives us that deeper connection, not only with our relatives, but with our language. And the connection that it gives us is comparing and contrasting our languages, seeing where we meet in the language and seeing where we differ in the language, and having those conversations of why our languages look the same and why they look different,” she said. “I did bring two of our other language employees with us, and they are currently learning the language. They currently have over 600 hours of immersion…and over 550 vocabulary words and phrases that they have learned since they had started in January of this year.”

Wright said working with learners and seeing how they make their own connections can be applied to the community.

“And make that connection with our relatives up here,” she said. “I think it brings a stronger connection to our language when we travel so far out and see and hear our language out here or where we have had other reunions in the past. We can really get a sense of belonging, community, our place that is still here in this world. We're vast, we're far, you know, we're near and wide, and this really brings that all into perspective.

Wright said they’re able to take these lessons back home.

“I am really hopeful for where our language will be in the future, in the near future and in the far future,” she said. “I think that our communities have that sense of desire to see our languages thrive, to see our culture thrive.”

There were a variety of events, including a fashion show, dance demonstrations, a parade and learning sessions.

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