Dolphins are always uplifting to see. They remind us of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s longtime friend, Chumash Elder Georgiana Sanchez. She often has told stories, sung songs, and shared her beautiful poems while holding her father’s intricate wooden walking stick.
The stick, carved with ocean waves, holding seashells, and topped with a dolphin, illustrates the Chumash Creation story of how the dolphins came to be. She carried the stick since her father’s death, in continuity, remembering, sharing and carrying those traditional cultural memories from the Creation, forward.
Holding the dolphin on the walking stick while sharing stories and poems at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s
Native Voices Poetry Festival in 2016 (Carlos Puma Photo).
The Power of Song
Georgiana Sanchez and Elder Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, share this week how stories are more than words, and songs are more than melodies.
Ernest Siva describes how this Luiseño song became essential during a Winter Solstice:
The Power of Story
Ernest Siva and Georgiana Sanchez were among the Native American storytellers sharing songs, stories, and cultural memories for years throughout the state, through the pioneering California Indian Storytellers Association. After one California Indian Storytelling Festival at Palm Springs, we asked Georgiana Sanchez to tell us more about the power of language. Here is what she shared:
A Chumash Poem:
Kitaq sutishwowoch (2006)
“Linguists have categorized our Chumash languages into six related, but distinct languages. The language my family speaks is known as Barbareño Chumash, because the Mission Santa Barbara was constructed in our regional homeland. Other Chumash languages are called: Ventureño, Inezeño, Purismeño, Obispeño, and Cruzeño. I’m sure we have our own names for our languages, but the linguists usually refer to them by these regional and mission labels.
“Here is a poem I wrote:
Kitaq sutishwowoch
suwai'ip'i
s'anaqipnas
Hu'lmolmoloqiwash ah'ahashish
siyantikich
Kantikich Kiyantich
Kitaq sutishwowoch
I hear the sound of leaves rustling
The voice/the music/the way it sounds
It is very beautiful
The Ancient Ones the Spirits
they are alive
I am alive We are alive
I hear the sound of leaves rustling
Telling stories at Dorothy Ramon Learning Center’s 2016 Native Voices Poetry Festival (Carlos Puma Photo)
A Different Reality
“Please note that the word suwai'ip'i is not easily translated into English because it means the sound of the voice or music, or the way that something sounds, that is, the ocean, a baby laughing, cooing, or crying, or the sound of leaves rustling.
Suwai'ip'i resonates differently than the English word. In the Chumash language, the whole poem reflects a different dynamic, a different reality. The English translation is like a pale shadow of that reality.
The following is an excerpt from a talk I gave in Palm Springs [at the California Indian Storytelling Festival, 2004]:
“Each people’s language is its own dynamic. language carries within it the creative power to shape a person’s perception of reality. I’ll try to paraphrase what two linguists, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf, said about this.
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, or in a world of social activity that can be objectively rationalized apart from language. The ‘real world,’ the world we see out there, the world we interact with, is shaped by the language we use to explain it.
The worlds in which different cultures and societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached.
This is why we must reawaken our Indigenous languages. We must pray, sing, speak in our Indigenous languages. By doing so, we help to create a greater reality for all of humanity. As we perceive the world, so shall we act.”
Editor’s note: This article by Georgiana Sanchez, “A Chumash Poem:
Kitaq sutishwowoch,” first appeared in the Heritage Keepers newsletter, © Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, Winter 2006, Volume 3, Number 1, Page 4.
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Pat Murkland, Editor. Dec. 2, 2020.
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