I just attended a talk by two very interesting people. One speaker talked about indigenous languages in the Rocky Mountains. The other speaker spoke about the layers of history and his tribes stories and beliefs.

The first speaker covered a lot of information very quickly so there was a lot that I didn’t catch. There were some points that he made that I thought were very interesting though. He said that we, as human beings, are expendable, but language stays forever. This is in reference to the fact that even when people or a race die, their language can still persevere. When we looked at a map of the language boundaries in the Rocky Mountains I noticed that all of the boundaries are either on the left or the right of the mountains ridge. The speaker explained this, it is because no people live on the very top of the mountains, they all live in the valleys. It is easier to live in the valley and on the side of the mountains, so that is where the languages are.

Also in his speech he talked about how many of the languages are dying. He said that there is only good information on about 11 out of the 30 languages that are, or once were, in the Rocky Mountains. One of the great anthropological figures that documented some of these languages was Franz Boas. Even some of the languages that we know of now are dying. The people of the Rocky Mountain area are trying to teach their native language to young students in school in hopes of preserving the language.

The second speaker was part of the Maori tribe in New Zealand. He spoke a lot about how important history is, and the layers of history involved. In his tribe there are many stories that can explain various historical facts. For example the story of how the Northern island was created. It is said that their great ancestors went out fishing and didn’t want to bring their little brother with them. But the little brother snuck into the canoe anyway. When they were far enough away from the shore the brother popped up and surprised them. The older brothers said that he couldn’t fish anyway because he didn’t have any equipment. But the little brother was prepared, he used his dead grandmothers jawbone as a hook and his own blood as the bait. Of course he caught a huge fish, but the little brother asked the others to look away while he recited and incantation before reeling him in. The brothers did not look away and so the fish fell apart, creating what is now the northern island. When you look at a pictures of the island you can see that the fish was a sting ray, and in the southeastern part there is a chunk missing where the hook was.

Another thing that he talked about that I found very interesting was topophilia. Topophilia is the affective bond between people and place. One thing that they believe a lot in is mauri, which means life force. Everyone has a life force, a mauri, and there are certain places where a persons mauri can be replenished. Waterfalls the place with the strongest mauri, so that is where people will go if they need to be healed. He said that people go to waterfalls to be cured of sickness, depression, or even just to “recharge your batteries”.