LITTLE BOSTON — When Donald Sullivan started taking classes to learn Klallam, his tribe’s language, he had flashbacks. Back to his childhood, at the table of Geneva Ives, his great-grandmother. She’d teach numbers, animals, help him to sound out words.

Gradually he's started to develop more of a passion for his culture, for picking up the language. As he's learned more of the complex language, he's now doing for his own 5-year-old daughter Gracelyn what Ives did for him at about the same age.

Cat: pìcšpš.

Deer: húʔpt.

Killer whale: q̓ɬúməčən.

Sullivan started with easy words, her favorite animals, ones that she was beginning to pick up in English. She learned phrases like “ʔə́mət či ʔiʔ ʔíɬən” (“sit down and eat”) and the language started to become more a part of daily life.

“It’s fun to see, because she wants to learn,” Sullivan said. “She wants to sponge these things up, and just incorporating it into her normal daily routines is what’s great about it. The thing that really started me off was I vividly could remember my great-grandma Geneva teaching me in her kitchen, so that’s what I wanted to pass down to Gracelyn.”

Inspired to add the language more to daily life, Sullivan saw an opportunity on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation in North Kitsap: the community’s street signs. Drive through the reservation now and you’ll see his handiwork: Signs with Klallam characters corresponding to street names in English have gone up in recent weeks.

It was a simple concept, but one that might inspire more interest in the language.

“Making it a part of everyday life allows it to just be more comfortable,” Sullivan said. “That’s the big thing, a lot of people get scared because the letters are funky, plus a lot of them are hard to pronounce. It’s nothing like English, you have to really talk it out of the back of your tongue.”

The idea came from one of the Port Gamble S’Klallam's sister tribes on the Olympic Peninsula, the Lower Elwha, which had added similar signs on streets and around its tribal campus, Sullivan said. He applied for grant funding distributed out of his tribe’s gaming revenue and was approved to move ahead with the project.

The project took him further into the language and the tribe’s history as he translated the words, mulled meanings and contextual word relationships and learned why some of the streets were named what they were. Some words or concepts were easy to find in the Klallam dictionary, others took more research. He sought out family and other community members to make sure what he came up with was the most accurate translation.

With the correct characters confirmed, he bought the 37 signs: For Little Boston Road NE: nəxʷq ̓íyt súɬ. For Kloomachin Place: q ̓ɬúməčən swʷʔiyá. At Cubby Sparks Place NE: ɬáwəstən swʷʔiyá. And so on throughout the reservation.

“I’m super proud of the project and really grateful (Donald) had a vision and a passion,” said Laura Price, Sullivan’s cousin and the tribe’s culture, arts and history director. “He followed through and made it happen. When I drive around and look around, it feels like we’ve had an upgrade. I feel that sense of pride that we have our own tribal language upfront in the roads that everybody goes by every day, a constant reminder that our language is important and alive.”

It’s just one of the ways tribal members are making the language accessible and more available. Over at the early childhood center, signs point out the Klallam name of a room, labeled just above the name printed in English. A club offers an opportunity for youth to play games and do activities that help them to learn the language. Traditional songs and dances help youths to pick it up as well. Perhaps someday, students might be able to learn the language for high school credit.

The tribe doesn’t have any first-language speakers, those for whom Klallam was their first language from childhood, anymore, Price said, although there are those in the tribe who have been studying it for 20 to 30 years or more and who have a greater level of knowledge.

“I’ve never heard anyone who is an expert,” she said. “We’re all learning at different levels.”

Perhaps someday.

“That’s the end-game goal here,” said Sullivan, who realizes how much more he has to learn. “With me just starting a couple years ago … there is so much. You have to make it a part of everyday life.”

Nathan Pilling is a reporter covering Bainbridge Island, North Kitsap and Washington State Ferries for the Kitsap Sun. He can be reached at 360-792-5242, nathan.pilling@kitsapsun.com or on Twitter at @KSNatePilling.

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