The Forgotten Trade Language of the Pacific Northwest

Links for more info:
Tenas Wawa - www.rjholton.com/cj/tw/
Gibbs 1863 Dictionary - www.gutenberg.org/files/35492...
Kamloops Wawa - www.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm....
Grammar/Vocab - www.fortlangley.ca/chinook%20j...
Academic Sources used (mostly):
Holton, Robert James. (2008) Chinook Jargon - The Hidden Language of the Pacific Northwest. www.rjholton.com
Thomason, Sarah. Chinook Jargon. University of Michigan, pp. 1-8.
Ickes, Kevin. (2001). The Evolution of the Chinook Jargon Language.
Other articles:
www.biographi.ca/en/bio/le_jeu...
www.thecanadianencyclopedia.c...
www.ictinc.ca/blog/chinook-ja...
thetyee.ca/Life/2006/01/10/St...
If you’ve ever been curious to learn a language, no matter how ‘irrelevant’ or small, just do it!
Keep it alive, and pass it on to the next generation!
Let’s make the world a more colourful place!

[@lezlie2k2]

'nayka wawa kʰinchuch wawa' and 'nayka wawa bastən wawa' both mean 'I speak English'

[@Mikemugee]

What are the other langauges in Wawa ? ex, I speak German.

[@Sara88890]

@@Mikemugee I speak would be, "Naka (I) wawa (speak) then the world for German which I don't know in Chinook Jargon, but then it would be the word for German then the word "wawa" again (wawa means both speak and language.) Maybe because Germans didn't come to the US in great numbers until the 1820s, or maybe I'm just not finding the right dictionary for that word.

[@loopyloon5401]

I figured kinjorj was used to refer to the king's while boston was used for the mid-western accent.

[@qalis2791]

@@Mikemugee historically all continental Germanic people were called 'Dutchman', in modern language you can use either 'jerman' or 'doitch'; naika wawa jerman/doitch wawa

[@POSSUM_chowg]

@@Mikemugee Spanish is "Spanyol-wawa", French is "Pasiyooks-wawa", German is "Dutchman-wawa" (and so is dutch), Chinese is "China Man-wawa", Japanese is "Chapanee-wawa", Swedish is "Huloima-Boston-wawa" (yep, it really is), the original Chinook language is "Dilet-chinook-wawa" or "Olman-chinook-wawa". So you could say "Nika wawa dutchman-wawa" for "I speak German". "Lalang" (from French la langue) is another word for language (or tongue) in Chinook. *Kunamokst alki nesika mamook-killapie okoke lalang!* *We will bring back this language together!*

[@oregonoriginal2044]

A couple chinookan languages still exist, one specifically is Kiksht, which is currently being taught once more on the Warm Spring reservation in partnership with the university of oregon. Thanks for bringing attention to our pacific indigenous languages.

[@mayajade6198]

You forgot the Chinook Jargon fact that always gets the most reaction out of people: It's where the word "potluck" comes from!

[@POSSUM_chowg]

The phrase "high mucky muck" also comes from chinook as well. The Chinook Jargon version of the phrase, "hi-yu muck-a-muck", means "[one who has] plenty of food to eat."

[@skeingamepodcast5993]

"The Hidden Language of the Pacific Northwest" is the book that got me interested. It's a great place to start for anyone looking into the language.

[@nicholasmartin9090]

Holy moly my PNW education didn't scrape the surface on this. Great video dude, keep up the good work

[@lolapulliam1059]

Never forgotten, a few Chinookan elders spoke the language and passed it on. It is alive and well. An interesting aside, I met a Chinook man who was born in the late 1930s, he didn't speak English until he was 9 years old.

[@alaskawatchers8045]

I apeak Chinuk wawa. You did a good job and making your own sentence was awesome. :-)

[@Sara88890]

I'm from Washington State and when I was younger I became quite interested in the language. One of the things I've found interesting is how some words have made it into local English; in the US we have a school dance where the girls ask the boys, in most places it's called a "Sadie Hawkins dance" but in western Washington we call it "Tolo" I never knew why until I learnt more about Chinook Jargon, it's short for "Klootzman tolo" - klootzman means woman, and tolo means to win so it comes from the Chinook Jargon for "women win". Then the is "muck-a-muck" which is some one who's the big boss of something, and "hooch" for alcohol which has even made it beyond the Pacific Northwest.

[@Tedmund13]

yes, I was about to comment something similar regarding how some of these words are still commonly used among locals. I thought everyone called it “Tolo” until I moved away and found that no one used that word for the winter formal dance where the girls ask the boys

[@vwgolf1991]

I'm from Vancouver Island (Gold River) and growing up in the 80's my mom would describe someone who thought they were a big boss as a muck-a-muck and the ocean was the salt chuck. A skookum baby was chubby and solid, a fair price for a used car was fair skookum, as in a win-win deal. I didn't actually realize this wasn't standard English until I was at least in my 20's and living in Vancouver where the population is much more diverse. I felt like such a hick so I tried to sound as much like a neutral "from nowhere specifically" Canadian, but it's nice to hear these words again.

[@Sara88890]

@@vwgolf1991 Hello neighbor (or should I say neighbour?) yes those words are familiar to me, and many live on in place names as well even if they aren't well known.

[@Shark-nq5ug]

I'm British Columbian, and i was wracking my brain as to where i've heard the word Chinook before. I've now realized that it's the name of one of the types of salmon here. I wonder if there's a story behind that.

[@Joseph-pz5bo]

There is also a native American people by the name of Chinook

[@beartracks]

You got some right and some not fully right I'm from Grand Ronde and a language teacher

[@gabrielebarra4465]

Hayu masi shiksh!!!!!! Thanks for showcasing my language ❤️

[@skeingamepodcast5993]

are you a fluent speaker?

[@gabrielebarra4465]

@@skeingamepodcast5993 yes!

[@mamayemajr.7514]

Gabriele you're not a native speaker stop the 🧢. You're fluent tho

[@POSSUM_chowg]

Hayu youtl naika spose nanitch huloima tillicum spose weght klaska tikegh chako kumtux chinook! Kunamokst alki nesika mamook-killapi okoke lalang!

[@siyacer]

​@@mamayemajr.7514???

[@alairefaye4619]

Ive found a few vids talking about the Chinuk Wawa, and ive come to realize i knew this Wawa in my youth. So ive begun looking for more info and trying to learn it again. Thank you for your vid. It helps HUGELY!!

[@jacksonsinclair2615]

Where did you grow up to hear wawa spoken?

[@torhatestheinternet]

Before their fame in the American Civil War, Grant was a quartermaster at Vancouver Barracks in Oregon Territory and Sheridan fought in the Rogue River Wars that would result in forcing Grand Ronde peoples onto the reservation (he later commanded the fort designed to oversee the area) - seems likely they both would have cause to use Chinuk Wawa. Very cool video - thanks for giving some perspective on a part of our region's history that's very often ignored.

[@williamreeve7219]

I live on Vancouver Island. The Chinook language seems to have disappeared here as a spoken language. Two native friends whom I knew in Victoria. BC in the 1970s used to sit on a park bench and practice speaking Chinook with each other because they knew almost no one else who spoke the language and it was fun to talk in a secret language which no one around them could understand. In the 1980s in Port Hardy, BC there was an elderly white guy who spoke Chinook and who was very sad that he could not find anyone else to whom he could teach the language. While, as far as I am aware, the language is functionally dead on Vancouver Island. Chinook words linger on, ghosts of the former language. There are quite a few place names on maps which are obviously Chinook in origin. There are also quite a few Chinook words in the colloquial language spoken by long-time English-speaking residents of BC. I am sure they do not reallze the origins of these words. A few of these words were mentioned in other comments but there are many more.

[@ThatFontGuy]

Loved this video, well done. I grew up on the West Coast of Canada and I remember my grandparents on Pender Island had a little handbook on Chinook Jargon that I read as a kid. Thats where I first heard about it. I am glad to see its getting attention and support as its a fascinating aspect to the history of this entire area. Great video production and presentation as well, well done :) Oh the use of "Boston" to refer to all Americans like arose due to the arrival of Boston Whalers on the West Coast.

[@ThatFontGuy]

As a hobby mostly I create fantasy fonts and writing systems (and create languages), your video now has me contemplating an attempt to create a writing system for Chinuk Wawa - I don't know if I will do it but its an interesting thought. Thanks for that :)

[@alicatsmusic9191]

This is so cool! I hope you can connect with the Grand Ronde speakers at some point! : )

[@vwgolf1991]

I spend my first 14 years in Gold River on Vancouver Island, and my parents used some of these terms without really thinking about it much. The ocean was the saltchuck, a good deal (or a fat baby) was skookum, someone who believed that they were more important than others were thinking they were a big muckamuck.

[@chipwalter4490]

I got a little dictionary of Chinook Jargon from like over a hundred years ago…it’s pretty cool. Some people get a bit surprised when they see it because they think there is swastikas on its cover. Obviously, these symbols on that book pre-date the German use of Swastikas (plus they face the other direction). You can find this dictionary online and I bought mine on eBay

[@jakmanxyom]

That "Wawa shorthand" looks like it could be given as much prominence as the Inuktitut and Cree syllabaries, maybe after some modernizing (creating new fonts etc) to facilitate language revival...

[@jaycorwin1625]

Okay this is the second of your videos I've seen. Good job! As it turns out I am from Alaska and my grandparents spoke Tlingit as their native language. I remember my grandmother's English was heavily accented. There are some Chinook jargon words in it (like Ginjichwaan---means Englishman, from "King George I") but American is not "Boston" (I don't think there is a specific word for it, only terms that mean European type man or woman). I've also heard that the word for "cat" in Tlingit was adopted from Chinook jargon but can't be sure (it's "dóosh"). That would mean that the trade language was spoken there once upon a time in Lingit aani (southeast Alaska) as a second or third language (along with English and Russian---yes, they were also there, hence all the Russian place names and the Russian Orthodox Church). Thank you for another great video.

[@darthapple87]

I don't have the Lingít dictionary handy so I'm sure there's an accent mark I'm missing, but if you look at X'unéi's updated Lingít dictionary we did have the term waashdaankwaan (Boston people) for USians! Currently, we mostly just say dleit káa (white people), though that shift came due to segregation on the basis of phenotype, I think. We're Tlingit too, and my uncle remembers Chinook Wawa being spoken in addition to Tlingit and English when he was a kid. TlingitLanguage (dot) com has the updated dictionary and lots of other good resources. Yéi áwé. I gu.aa yáxh x'wán!

[@jaycorwin1625]

@@darthapple87 Great information. I've seen Lance X'unéi's videos. I think he worked a lot with Nora and Richard Dauenhauer before they left us.

[@darthapple87]

@@jaycorwin1625 Aáa, he did!

[@OverOnTheWildSide]

Excellent info, thanks! I live in the PNW and have always been interested in this language and have some regrets I didn’t learn it.

[@bunk_foss]

Hello. I am from Washington. You stated no one knows about the boarding schools, but recently they've begun teaching us about them. We learned about the horrors for about a month. I didn't know the last one closed in 1996, but fortunately we were informed of some parts of it, and the generational trauma resulting.

[@krisaguilar6699]

My best friend (now deceased) was of the Grande Ronde tribe. I (a White person) was at the celebration pow wow in 1984 when the Grande Ronde finally received federal recognition. My friend's aunt was a tribal leader for years, until she died last year at almost 100 years. His mother, Marie Schmidt, went to Chemawa Indian boarding school in Salem OR, and she LOVED it. Later, as an adult, she was a big mucky muck at the school. The school is the oldest continuously operating Native American boarding school in the United States, and they named a room in her honor. She died in 2006. I know many others who loved going to that school. This guy should not be making statements about the Grande Ronde when he has never met anyone from that nation. No, the last boarding school did not close, because Chemawa is still going strong. Revisionist history at work. When I was a kid in Oregon, we still (White and Indian) used Chinook Jargon words; skookum, mucky muck, chuck, olalla, tyee, pil, etc. Then outsiders began to come to Oregon and trashed my state and the culture that developed here in isolation from the rest of the country. I'm ashamed of Oregon these days. When I meet folks while traveling, I never say where I'm from, because I'm so ashamed of the recent reputation of Oregon.

[@TheCansei]

Our class really enjoyed your presentation: hot diggity damn!

[@gerardvanwilgen9917]

The Chinook Jargon word for "Hawaiian" (kʰanakʰa) is definitely from Hawaiian. In Hawaiian "kanaka" means "person". So there is at least one Hawaiian word in Chinook Jargon.

[@minorityreporter9104]

many native words are from polynesian origin all the way up and down the coast from Alaska to peru, even the 10,000 year old kennewick man skeleton found on the banks of the Colombia river was said to have a skull unique to polynesians by the scientists, their seems to be a cover up of the polynesian presence here in the n.w by tribal councils and the federal government I wonder why😂

[@likeableperson2090]

Great video! Shared this with the Chinook Jargon/Wawa language revitalization discord server :) also at 11:30, yes, that’s correct as far as I’m aware. For someone who is from England, it would be Kinchotshman, or “English man” I think?

[@austinwild6723]

Good video, though another vital reason how the Chinook Jargon language was reduced was due to disease. The 1862 Smallpox and 1918 Influenza pandemics heavily reduced indigenous populations, so it wasn't just a matter of "not needing" to speak this language due to population exchange, but also due to a traumatic decrease of total speakers from disease related death

[@mavros4213]

I always think of it as “Cascadian” as it was mainly spoken in Cascadia.

[@look8766]

I enjoy the PNW Native art, this video was well done and interesting. Cheers!

[@devonrobertson8533]

Dude!! This is amazing! I have only a few native American ancestors in my family. I wish to know so much more about. Sadly there isn't much information out there. My ancestor George Gay married a native woman at fort Vancouver WA. Built the first brick house in Oregon. Very little is written about his wife because all of the text is in English. not translated for her.

[@georgecuyler7563]

We don't say that our languages extinct, we say they're asleep, and we need to reawaken them.

[@lukemaher1062]

Such a fascinating language! I would love to see a video covering the history of Quebec and it's dialect

[@DillonHartwigPersonalChannel]

Great to see you back, the wait was well worth it (:

[@avivlamech-kalambi519]

Researching this language must have been difficult. Thank you for this video! Keep it up! I'm so glad you brought this language to my attention!

[@alexpopov3871]

Wow! Now that's what we call a great recommendation! Subscribed, please do more of such language videos

[@christinamatic5137]

Thank you!! I am over the moon with the information you have here. As someone who grew up in Washington I've been interested in the native language(s) and doing my best to research what little has survived the past century and a half. I've been trying to pick up Lushootseed (spoken by Puyallup, Duwamish, and Snohomish tribes) in the meantime, but it can be discouraging with the scarcity of speakers and resources. Another part of the reason it's hard might be because the area is so diverse, so it's hard to find any one language defines a large area...except Chinook Wawa, as I've come to learn. Hearing how common it used to be and how it was spoken by indigenous peoples and settlers alike is extremely encouraging in a landscape overwhelmed with English. I'm also delighted to find out that I did already know some of the words (like skookum) just from growing up here. Thank you again for putting this video together and providing links for further research.

[@philpaine3068]

I've known about Chinook Jargon for most of my life. In this video, the word "chinook" is pronounced in the way of the American Pacific coast, with the "ch" representing "tsh." But anywhere east of the Rockies, in northern British Columbia and the Yukon, it's pronounced "sh", which is probably the original pronunciation. This is because "sh" is the normal pronunciation of "ch" in French, which was the principle European language in most of this area until quite late times. The term Chinook is well known in western Canada, because a "chinook wind" refers to the Föhn winds that frequently blow down from the Rockies. In Alberta, these winds are usually just called "chinooks" and constantly come up in conversation --- always with the French "sh" pronunciation assumed for the "ch" spelling. Many Canadian place names, and some American place names that start with "ch" are like this. For example, the city of Chicago is properly pronounced "Shicago." Europeans almost always get this wrong.

[@donkeysaurusrex7881]

I cannot imagine how tsh and sh would sound different. It’s about like the Portuguese nasal vowels. I can tell when I am trying to say them nasally, but I cannot hear a difference even when native speakers are doing it.

[@gustavovillegas5909]

Amazing video! Thank you for posting this!!

[@Sara88890]

I'd love to see a video on Michif, my maternal g--great grandma was from a Métis family going back into the late 1500s, she was from Green Bay, Wisconsin when it was still called Baye Verte, and they were Voyageurs for the fur trade. I don't know much a bout that culture and language, she moved with her non-Métis husband to California, but I'd like to learn more about that part of my ancestry, and the language.

[@derzeitpunkt124]

Glad you're back

[@ruileite4579]

Thank you for this awesome video! I'm doing research on pidgins for my linguistics course and this helped me out a lot!

[@readisgooddewaterkant7890]

please keep doing what you’re doing. i like your channel

[@drbjbpog9956]

This is rlly high quality and cool!

[@skoookum]

There's some recordings of Duane Pasco singing in Chinuk Wawa. "Naika Nanitch Klosh Klootzman Kopa Wayhut" is one lol

[@jonasbrown1]

i was born and raised in Portland, oregon, and we learn about the chinook a bit in school, but i wish we learned more! this is so fascinating to me about the area i’m from

[@sporkbot]

It might sound unlikely, but as someone who was born in Vancouver, Wa, there is a chance that Ulysses S. Grant did speak at least some Chinook Jargon. If I'm not mistaken, he was a quartermaster of the barracks at Ft. Vancouver before the civil war. You can visit the house he lived in. If he was serving as the quartermaster (and not just placed in the quartermaster's house since that's what was open) then there's a good chance he'dve spoken at least some of the language. He served as quartermaster in the Mexican-American war, before he was stationed at Ft. Vancouver, but I can't find anything that says exactly what he did at Ft. Vancouver in the time I have to spare right this second. Anecdotally, when I was growing up in the late 80's~early 90's, we called a potluck dinner a "potlatch" which is a chinook jargon word. I didn't know this until very recently!

[@alexanderbaretich2939]

Very nicely done. Thank you.

[@Sara88890]

Love the Cascadia flag!

[@alexanderbaretich2939]

@@Sara88890 Thank you. I designed it in 1995.

[@Sara88890]

@@alexanderbaretich2939 Wow, I knew of the flag but not of who created it. Congrats for making such a beautiful flag that represents our home!

[@jimholton7870]

I enjoyed the video. It is well made and covers the subject very well. I just discovered it. One small correction. I am the author of the titled book. My full name is Raymond James Holton, not Robert. I go by the name Jim.

[@Jastrilli]

the map you used at 2:27 was for the range of the plant Frangula purshiana, which was used as medicine by the natives and I think that's why it shows up when you google chinuk wawa range. In reality it looks way more contained to the Columbia river area

[@EcceHumanitatis]

Who are the idiots who downvote these videos? This channel is a treasure.

[@avivlamech-kalambi519]

Too long? I say this was too short I would never have expected some of the facts in this video!

[@anngenewa]

Excellent video! I grew up in Seattle area, so know some basic words, which my parents used (skookum, hooch, chuck, …). (My family in not native, BTW.) I had not heard the explanation of ‘Tolo’ until a comment below! In 1971 a friend and I hitch-hiked up Vancouver Island. We stayed with a native family in Coal Harbour for a couple nights; a remote area. The husband spoke English, Chinook, and a native language - probably Kwakʼwala. The wife only spoke Chinook and Kwak’wala . They were probably in their 40s or 50s. Fascinating!

[@ajrollo1437]

Mi parolas esperanton.....do.....Mi acxetu tiun libron pri la chinuka interlingo.... I speak Esperanto.....so....I should buy that book on the Chinook language.....

[@telperion3]

hah bonŝancon al vi... ĝi probable estas unu el la plej maloftaj libroj ĉie

[@POSSUM_chowg]

Wake nika kumtuks Esperanto lalang... but kloshe weght nika makook okoke book spose chako kumtuks Chinook lalang... I don't speak Esperanto, but I should also get that book for learning the Chinook language.

[@douglasgrant8315]

Thanks for the video I live here WA state. Grew up in LaConner the swinomish speak or used to speak lushootseed as well as the other tribes but I don't if they do any longer. Oh plz next video you do turn up your microphone volume higher it's very hard to hear well. Thanks.

[@Sara88890]

I from that area too, they have their language in local college classes now. I want to learn it soon.

[@lp88088]

I can think of two Chinook words that might've oozed into American English. The first might be heard at construction sites where one carpenter might yell out "Is that wall plumb?" and the other puts a level on it and replies, "Yeah it's skookum", meaning right or good. The second might be more familiar. When referring to someone who tends to throw their weight around (i.e.; land owners or business owners but more commonly, bureaucrats) one may hear the term "Muckity-muck" or more Chinuk wawa, "Mucky-Muck".

[@readisgooddewaterkant7890]

yay new vid

[@huali3645]

excellent!

[@coreyanderson1457]

I am part Chinook from Canada I guess. So this is different. Thank you.

[@charlesr.wallace5597]

00:04:20 - happy thanksgiving

[@readisgooddewaterkant7890]

i hope low saxon will come soon

[@dr2926]

Grand ronde restoration happened in 1983

[@krisaguilar6699]

The great pow wow celebration of the federal recognition of the Grande Ronde was in the fall of 1984 at the high school in Grande Ronde. I was there. I am White, but my best friend's aunt was Kathryn Harrison, a tribal leader who did the most to get the tribe recognized again. His mother (Kathryn's sister) LOVED Chemawa school in Salem, OR. She died in 2006, and a room at the school was named for her. Recently I stopped at a Walmart in Winslow AZ, and talking to the checker, I found out he was an alum of Chemawa...and he had very fond memories of Chemawa, which, by the way is still going strong. I'm getting really tired of this revisionist history by people who know nothing about the subject they claim to be authorities on.

[@mathiaslist6705]

12:59 well, looking at language enthusiasts speaking Esperanto it is obviously no miracle that it appeared (probably they were easier to connect with the internet) .... I just wonder why it wasn't TokiPona as well but anyway

[@beam_0f_lovee]

Is there a Chinook Wawa translation of The Little Prince book though?

[@alairefaye4619]

As for the question you posed regarding "King George" Wawa, We here in America Dont speak what used to be called the "Queens English" so.... Maybe itd be Naika Wawa Boston Wawa! lol

[@mathiaslist6705]

12:40 so like in your fifties you want to make people aware of the language of probably your grandparents and all you know about are your childhood memories etc.

[@Louisianish]

Great video. "No grammar," though? Even pidgin languages (lowercase 'p'...many languages called "Pidgin" are technically creoles) have grammar.

[@rateeightx]

Would anyone happen to have a reference for _Chinuk Pipa_, or Duployan as used to write Chinook Jargon, Preferably with IPA characters for pronunciation? I'm finding a few sources online, But most of them have honestly very confusing phonetics given for the letters, Especially the vowels.

[@seanminder5583]

Northumbria

[@dickdock-zx3ty]

csónak = boat in magyar csángó=come and go folks of hungary (ocean go) csónak csángó change boat comengo- change

[@mathiaslist6705]

I just thought that maybe it could be connected with TokiPona ....

[@georgecuyler7563]

Michif is a mix of French and native American

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

It's not wrong to say there are languages with no cases, tenses etc. That's absolutely true.

[@citrusblast4372]

I think chinese is tenseless

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

@@citrusblast4372 In a way: morphologically it doesn't mark tense. But actually it still kind of does by separate particle. However there are Native American languages which semantically have no tenses at all, instead other time factors such as aspect.

[@RoyalKnightVIII]

Why diss Esperanto? It's still a highly spoken language and kudos to the person who wrote it

[@POSSUM_chowg]

Zamenhof ftw

[@mathiaslist6705]

7:40 so basically the Chinook Wawa speakers where overrun by floods of immigrants

[@robertkentta1497]

floods of immigrants yes - but for a time in early days - and he may have said this - non-English speaking immigrants often picked-up Chinook Jargon before they became proficient in English here in the PNW - especially if living/working near a Native community or having frequent contact. When our Rogue River Treaty was signed in 1853, that 3-4 language translation process was used, but even the U.S. Reps at the treaty "negotiations", said: The Indian people of the Rogue Valley have an imperfect knowledge of the Chinook Trade Language - so it was hard for them to tell how well things translated, or how well they were understood back and forth - but by 1855-56, there are numerous quotes of our leaders chiding the U.S. and Volunteer troops in battles, hurling insults and threats in Chinook trade language. and a correction from above - Grant and Sheridan, CC Augur, Buchanon, Ord and many other military figures spoke pretty good Chinook Jargon... and the Tribal peoples of SW Oregon were mostly removed to the Siletz Reservation - just a portion went to Grand Ronde. Reservation.

[@OnwardsUpwards]

What is interesting to understand is that modern British Columbians are the inheritors of Chinook Wawa, (and some in Washington state) growing up on Vancouver Island I heard people around me saying Muk (to eat), salt chuck (ocean), skookum, and so on. Many people speaking it involved in the fur trade didn't want to live in the US, and moved up to the remaining territory, to Victoria on Vancouver island. My grandmother who grew up in Fort Chipewyan said people up their even said Skookum.

[@St0ckwell]

Residential schools were not a "sad" part of history. They were quite necessary, and in fact should be brought back. Look at the unbelievably horrific abuse that happens in indigenous communities. Such things are not modern phenomena, as they were well known at the time the residential schools were established. Such horrendous treatment of children was even witnessed as far back as Cortés. It was never going to stop unless somebody made it stop. Thanks to the sacrifice and hard work of my ancestors, those children were given a fair chance in life. They were allowed to be kids. Had they just been left in insular native communities, they would have been subject to unmentionable abuse from early childhood, as well as groomed into being warriors rather than writers and scientists. And as for the mandatory usage of English in those schools, how is that different from any other school in the world right now? To have a functioning classroom, every student and teacher must be communicating in a single language. Imagine if every time a teacher gave a lesson, they then had to repeat it in French and then in German and then in Chinese. It would be criminally inefficient. China is extremely linguistically diverse, and yet in their schools, there is a very strict Mandarin only policy.

[@scottyboy9883]

Chinook. Ch makes sh sound in chinook wawa.