Kalispel tribe hosts annual Celebrating Salish Conference to build community in language learning: ‘This is our shot in the arm’

Thuds on a boulder-sized drum and the strong baritone of a Salish singer echoed throughout Northern Quest Casino, where hundreds gathered Thursday night by candlelight.

In the middle stood several honorees, accepting awards for their dedication to learn and pass on various dialects of Salish, the ancestral language spoken by Indigenous tribes of the Inland Northwest.

Once prolific in the region, Salish has faded due largely to forced assimilation efforts by European colonizers. But on this night some 800 speakers, educators and learners of Salish came to the 14th annual Celebrating Salish Conference.

“Communication ties us to the land, ties us to places, ties us to a custom of things we did,” said JR Bluff, language director with the Kalispel Tribe and master of ceremonies of the conference. “The language and all that that does, it just kind of binds it all; it gives us the power to move forward. It’s another fuel to really live the culture.”

Recognized for their “trailblazer” efforts, award recipients each lit a candle at the crowd’s core. They then passed their flames from wick to wick in a spiral until everyone present carried a flame. The action symbolized how Salish is spread, from one speaker to another, and to honor those at the forefront who assume the often lonely task of saving a language from extinction.

Swaying, stomping and humming to the belts of the singer, all in a mass held their dripping candles to the ceiling, reflecting the orange glow of candlelight. Slowly, the scent of hot wax overtook the strong sage smell that lingered in the air from smudging, a burning of sage to cleanse spaces from what took place prior.

The three-day conference includes presentations, workshops, a karaoke contest, a Salish-only talent show and an award ceremony that serve to celebrate and inspire those learning the language.

“It just really creates camaraderie,” Bluff said. “I think a lot of people, sometimes we get stuck in silos, we’re just stuck and all we’re doing is teaching for the day, teaching for the week, teaching for the month, and that’s not what we want. It just helps kind of unify that thought, we’re all together in this.”

Reveling in that togetherness, Tiana Louis, Salish name Goya’dayensdih, was nominated as a trailblazer by her husband, Les Louis, Míwlnaʔ, for her 18 years teaching Salish. The two, both teachers of the Colville-Okanogan dialect of Salish in Similkameen, Canada, have come to the conference nearly every year it’s offered.

Tiana teaches adults in an online class, which can feel isolating, she said, exacerbating the feeling of loneliness in learning a language not commonly spoken.

“We hear our fluent speakers say that it’s lonely, right? Because we go to ceremonies and it’s just our family,” Les said. “There’s not a lot of other families with young ones, so our children are growing up with language and culture and traditions, but there’s none of their peers.”

The large festival of speakers from the far regions where people use the language reminds them that they’re not alone .

“One of the elders that’s usually here talks about how this is our shot in the arm,” Tiana said, gesturing to her shoulder, the typical vaccination site. “This gathering is our shot in the arm to make it through until the next year when we can get together again.”

A teacher of more than 18 years, Tiana estimates she has taught Salish to hundreds of students, including Les.

“In our traditional way of life, she walks that walk, so that’s what she’s brought to our family,” Les said as tears welled in Tiana’s eyes.

Tiana encourages her seven children to speak Salish, and raised her youngest entirely in the language for their first few years of life.

Her devotion to her language is etched in her skin: a tattoo of her own design, two lines of ink descend from the corner of her lips down her chin, where in the center sits a spiraled shape.

“I dreamt it,” Tiana said. “This is a sprout in my beadwork where I come from, and it has to do with the language growing from my mouth.”

Salish School of Spokane founder LaRae Wiley also received a trailblazer award.

During the ceremony, group of young kids weaved through the legs of some adults in the crowd, mischievously whispering and trying to blow each others’ candles out from afar. Adults eyed them and their flames attentively, though none scolded them or tried to stop their play.

Eventually, with a massive gulp of air, an older kid extinguished the candle of another child. In a heartbeat, she relit the younger’s candle with her own before any tantrums ensued.

The event has grown since its inception 14 years ago, which saw around 50 attendees. Around the room, speakers swap Salish phrases in their various dialects, which share some similarities but aren’t interchangeable.

The diversity in the sound is music to Stanley Bluff Sr.’s ears. The 81-year-old Kalsipel elder, and JR Bluff’s father, recalls being enveloped by Salish in his childhood. His parents hardly spoke English, and all the elders used Salish.

Embroidered on his jacket, the elder Bluff’s Salish name is Smóq̓ʷeʔ, meaning stork. His grandfather gave it to him when he was 6 years old, after seeing him fish on the Pend Oreille River.

“Prior to the dams on the rivers, that river would freeze over we would go out there ice fishing, all hunched over,” Stanley said. “My grandfather would say, ‘Smóq̓ʷeʔ,’ like a stork.”

As his parents’ and grandparents’ generations passed away in the late 1970s, the language faded with them and became less commonly used. Today, Stanley is encouraged to see hundreds surround him with a passion for revitalizing his familial sounds, the youngsters giving him a particular hope.

“We have to do something, and you can just feel their urgency to revive it so we can identify ourselves,” Stanley said.

As language director, the younger Bluff oversees language learning through the tribe, including at the kindergarten to third grade Snyoyoʔspuʔúsm immersion school in Cusick, meaning “Place of the strong-hearted,” JR said. He teaches teachers and develops curriculum for Salish to make the daunting task of learning it more accessible to further spread the language.

Having established curriculum and education infrastructure in place makes it easier to “climb the mountain” of learning Salish and reach the peak of fluency.

“When we started this, we were going to the top of that mountain, and elders knew how to get up there, and they would tell us how to get up there; they might even show us to get up there,” JR said. “When we blaze this trail, we need to start clearing some of the brush out so it’s easier to travel. And then the more we travel that trail, the wider we’re going to build that trail, and all of a sudden we got our freeway to the top of the mountain.”