Restoring Dignity to Language Translations of the Jicarilla Apache: The Retranslations of Goddard Texts: A Restorative Justice-Informed Research Collaboration

• In Event: Universities Confronting their Past: The University of New Mexico Addressing Complex Legacies of Harm

Proposal

The history of research involving Native American communities in the Southwest, including ethnographic and linguistic fieldwork, is inextricably linked to both the development of Americanist Anthropology and the inception of the University of New Mexico (1889). James F. Zimmerman, the seventh president of UNM, was actively responsible for initiating the university’s Department of Anthropology. In 1927, President Zimmerman and the Department of Anthropology’s first chair, southwest archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett founded the “Laboratory of Anthropology” in Santa Fe, NM (Fowler 2000:ix). In the early 20th century scholars came to the New Mexico in an attempt to record and translate Native American languages and document cultural practices. These early efforts to describe and document indigenous languages, cultures, and people did not include the proper cultural context for the translations to be accurate. Most of these early efforts to describe indigenous languages, cultures, and people were taken from Native community members in duress and did not include the proper cultural context. Although these texts contain a wealth of information about the culture, history, and traditional practices, the original collection of materials hearkens to a harmful and dispossessed past for Native American intellectual agency and autonomy in academia (Deloria 1963) and contributed to the legacy of academic exploitation.
This presentation will share an example of the how the principles of restorative justice informed a collaboration between Jicarilla Apache elders and linguists and anthropologists from UNM. Jicarilla Apache Tribal elders wanted to re-translate texts collected from the 1890s to the 1930s to update outdated and inaccurate translations. Veronica Tiller, Jicarilla elder explains “we are trying to correct the misinterpretations, the stereotyping of our language and our people, and trying to add more to the cultural context to create a more accurate interpretation of our stories.” Their first project was to re-transcribe and translate Jicarilla Apache texts originally gathered by Pliny Earle Goddard (1911). Jicarilla elder team members found the Goddard materials inaccessible without the help of linguists and anthropologists. The aim of the re-translation project was to focus on the broader meanings and socio-cultural import of Jicarilla discourse; rather than focusing primarily on the grammatical structure, morphology, and phonemes. The Jicarilla elders focused on reclaiming the stories in order to explicate the broader meanings, a focus that was lost in the original Goddard documentation. The elders feel strongly that this project is a way to rebuild the strength of the community, centered on the traditional world view and spirituality. This project produced a new body of literature, providing oral stories and Jicarilla language materials for community members. It is also making the texts accessible to Jicarilla community members with accompanying information about culture and history. This is part of a larger effort to clarify the historical record when it comes to indigenous knowledge by being inclusive and centering indigenous communities’ own perspectives and goals.

Author

• Mariann Skahan, University of New Mexico