Geek Speak: Dustin Rivers, Squamish language podcaster

Dustin Rivers is determined to do everything he can to revitalize Skwxwú7mesh snichim. The language of the Squamish people is nearly extinct, with only a handful of fluent speakers.

A 21-year-old Skwxwú7mesh-Kwakwaka’wakw activist who lives in North Vancouver, Rivers is the coordinator of SquamishLanguage.com, which aims to become a “doorway” to language resources for his First Nations community. This month, Rivers is gearing up to launch two audio podcasts about the Squamish language and culture. Na Tkwi Sní­chim and Sacred Places—which are set to debut on January 19 and January 24, respectively—will be hosted on the website, uploaded to SoundCloud, and submitted to the iTunes Store.

Rivers, who also teaches Skwxwú7mesh snichim classes, knows he’s starting a volunteer-run project that could last for years. He’s joined in his language efforts by his sister, Cheyenne La Vallee, who is helping out with the website. Rivers plans to establish a nonprofit organization, so their project could one day be passed on to others.

The Georgia Straight reached Rivers by phone at his home.

Who are the podcasts targeted at?

The podcasts are targeted at two different audiences. The first one is the language podcast, which will feature different episodes to teach anyone who wants to learn a bit of Squamish language. We are starting out with a list of 50 or 60 words that are commons words found around the home or the kitchen, just so they become useful words that people can apply to their own lives, especially within my community. They could use it with their children or their siblings or within their own home. That’s just the general audience of anybody who would be interested in learning some Squamish language, both within my community and outside my community.

The second podcast, Sacred Places, is going to feature interviews with prominent members of the community from the Squamish Nation. So, that one’s both for my own community to learn about Squamish culture and history and language and all that kind of stuff that’s connected, but also anybody else that’s out there in the world that would be interested in learning about this. Especially Vancouver people, because of the history and the community that’s here and has been here for so long and that’s neighbours to the city of Vancouver and North Van and West Van.

What methods will the podcast use to help people learn the language?

I’m going to be using the audio as a way for people to copy and then repeat. One of the big things that I want to try out or experiment with is trying to make it as accessible as possible. Often the mode for accessing these types of things is that they have to come to the language. So, I want to reverse that, and try and bring the language to them by, with the podcast and the website, putting it as close to their hands as you can.

With the podcast, you can put it on your iPad, your iPhone, or iPod, or anything, and it’s just already there. You don’t have to go anywhere. It’s already in your hands. But within the podcast, it’ll be basically just copying the word, pronouncing the word, and then using it in a sentence. I’m trying to keep it as simple as possible, so it doesn’t make it too difficult for people to try out and become interested in.

What do you hope the podcasts will achieve in terms of the future of the Squamish language?

One of the issues when it comes to language revitalization is there is an awareness or a stigma that also needs to be combatted. Either you have people who feel the language isn’t important or that it’s just not a priority for them or that they might feel like, “Oh yeah, it’s a priority, but it’s not a priority for me. That’s for someone else to learn.” There’s a bit of an awareness or an issue within my community that needs to be challenged and shown that there’s another way.

So, the podcast really aims to bring anybody—young, old, from wherever—including people that live in the community and people that live outside the community, because we have lots of our community members that live on Vancouver Island or Washington or Seattle or Ontario. I want to be able to bring them in through little, easy words and sentences and phrases and understandings that they can build just on their own, so that they become a bit more friendlier, a bit more aware of the language, of their own heritage. So, when it comes time, when they really start thinking about it, they can become really interested and really dedicated to learning more.

There’s a little bit of that curve to get over in order to kind of bring more people into the fold. I think that this can really help that, as well as just putting language out there into the community, so it’s used and people know it’s there and it becomes something of the community.

What led you to become an activist for revitalizing your language?

Since a young age, I’ve always been involved with learning the language. It wasn’t until recently, in the last two years, that I started to really dedicate myself. It was more so because I found out a way that I wanted to become fluent. That was a real achievable goal. It became an achievable goal in my eyes.

But I guess one of the issues is I’ve seen either the systemic barriers that prevented it from happening—from the language coming back—or just that there wasn’t enough people who are willing to fight for it, really willing to do what needed to happen for it, and not wait around for funding or the right people to get involved or any kind of authority to give the go-ahead. We just had to do it, because when I started really looking at it and seeing the facts of how critical the Squamish language is with it being nearly extinct, with less than six or eight fluent speakers alive out of 3,600 people, it feels like a crisis level needing our attention. It feels like this is something that really needs focus and attention and action immediately, if we are going to do anything about it.

Driven from that kind of place of crisis and determination, I thought something has to be done about this. So, given my background in activism, I wanted to focus all my energy and goals toward this. I feel like this is something I really need to dedicate myself to and, I think, that a lot of my people need to dedicate themselves to. But that’s the role I play in trying to get them to come be interested in this and to come be a part of this.

What has been the response so far in your community to your language efforts?

From what I can tell, a lot of people are quite happy, actually. I had a 63-year-old elder take my class in the fall, and he talked about how, when he was younger, he grew up with all the old-timers that we talk about now as being language teachers. He wished he had learned it from them, but he just never really cared back then. So, even though he’s in his 60s, he still has that interest in learning things. He took the class, and he really enjoyed it and really liked being a part of it.

So, it’s people like that who are really inspirational. No matter what stage their life’s in, they are still interested in learning the language. In this month, I’m starting three classes—two in North Van and one in Squamish—and all the classes range from about 25 to 35 people, so that’s about 100 or more that will be taking my classes. They’re all learning the same curriculum, the same words, and a lot of the same things. So, at the end of it, they’ll all be able to talk to each other, because they’ll all know the same things.

Some of the people taking my class might not even know each other, but they’re Squamish. Our nation’s so big we meet people all the time who are Squamish that we have never known before. But they’re all going to be learning the language. What ends up happening is it brings the community together, because you’re meeting people who you wouldn’t have met on your own, but you’re now meeting them for the first time and becoming aware of them or learning about them or becoming acquainted with them. It’s starting to rebuild the community in that way.

How To Say Thank You by SquamishLanguage

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