rare voice lost
Published: April 19, 2008

www.triplica te.com/news/ story.cfm? story_no= 8396
<www.triplica te.com/news/ story.cfm? story_no= 8396>

Submitted photo

If she hadn't run away, things might be different.
As a young Yurok Indian girl, Aileen Figueroa was forced into a boarding
school in Hoopa along with her sister, Lydia.
It was the early-1900s, a time of assimilation. The girls were forbidden
to speak their native tongue, and only allowed to converse in English.
That did not stop Aileen and Lydia from speaking Yurok.
"They would, at night, put their beds together to speak their language,"
said Kathleen Vigil, as she reminisced about her mother Aileen, who died
last week.
When caught, the girls were scolded by their teachers and punished with
swats from a ruler, Vigil said.
"Every time they spoke their language, they would get reprimanded, " she
said. "They decided to run away."
Aileen left the school with another friend, leaving her sister behind.
For three days, Aileen and her companion traveled along trails and
camped through the nights until reaching Redwood Creek, where they were
caught by truant officers.
Vigil said her mother was allowed to go back to Klamath, while her
friend was forced back to the boarding school.
"She said that she got to stay with her family," Vigil said, "and that's
how she began to keep her language."
Aileen learned everything about the Yurok language, becoming fluent.
Before she died from complications of pneumonia April 11 at the age of
95, she was one of only about a dozen living Yurok Indians who have that
distinction of being fluent.
"She was one of the last fluent speakers of the Yurok language," said
Lisa Sundberg-Maulson, who grew up knowing Aileen and even learned to
weave her first basket from the Yurok elder. "She dedicated her whole
life to preserving the culture and the language."
Aileen spent more than 60 years teaching the Yurok language and culture
to anyone wanting to learn, and was a master basket weaver and singer of
native songs.
Though she was not a proficient writer of the language—it was only a
spoken dialect before documentation started in the 1960s—she helped
others to create the first phonetic Yurok alphabet. She was also
instrumental in organizing the Yurok Elder Wisdom Preservation Project,
which uses new technologies to document Yurok language and culture
passed down from elders.
As a teacher, Aileen worked with her daughter at the American Indian
Academy in McKinleyville and taught at other schools throughout Humboldt
and Del Norte County, including Margaret Keating Elementary in Klamath.
"If it wasn't for people like her, us younger Indian generations
wouldn't have access to continuing, to having a part of our heritage
from that time," Sundberg-Maulson said. "She is the people that lived
here before."
With Aileen's death, the Yurok Tribe now must struggle to gather
information on its language before it is lost.
"There's not too many fluent Yurok speakers left," said Carole Lewis,
the Yurok Tribe's language programs coordinator. "All of our speakers
are pretty much in their 80s and 90s ... and the rest, they're all new
learners."
As more elders die, Lewis said some Yurok words and phrases might
disappear with them. That is why the tribe is rushing to "save the
language," she said, by working with linguists to record and document as
much as possible.
Aileen's death silences an invaluable resource, Lewis said.
Whenever Lewis encountered words she didn't know, or had a question
about a particular phrase, she could always call Aileen for an answer.
Even now, Lewis thinks of questions she wants to ask Aileen, then
remembers that she can't.
"We're feeling the loss already," she said. "In terms of the language
and in addition to the personal loss."
Aileen's daughter struggles with the passing too, but she remembers the
time she spent with her mother and what she taught her.
"She taught me how to be who I am, how to be Indian, how to take care of
people, how to feed people," Vigil said. "You feed the people. You make
sure the people get fed and you take care of the kids, and you take care
of all the kids."
Now Vigil must pass this knowledge along without her mother by her side,
to ensure that future generations learn the language that her mother
found so important to preserve.
Vigil remembers a story of her mother that perhaps exemplifies Aileen's
attitude the best.
About five or six years ago, Vigil and her mother went to a Yurok
cultural meeting in Klamath where the tribe's headquarters are located.
Upon entering the meeting, which was already in progress, Aileen yelled
out, "Aiy-yu-kwee' !" which in Yurok means "Hello!"
The people at the meeting, Vigil said, turned to Aileen and reminded her
that they were having a cultural discussion, not one about language.
"She said, `You know you can't have culture without your language.
That's our identity.'"