Gabrielle Tayac: preserving indigenous cultures

BY LISA MACKIE

"Like any immigrant family," explains Gabrielle Tayac, her family's native language and traditions slipped away when younger generations lost interest and parents failed to share all they knew. But they were not immigrants. Tayac's family members are descended from the Piscataway people who lived in the Chesapeake Bay region before the Spanish arrived in the 1500's.

Gabrielle Tayac is trying to reverse the trend of cultural loss through her work as a sociologist and Museum Program Specialist for the National Museum of the American Indian, where she conducts research for exhibitions. Tayac is currently working on "Our Lives," an exhibition for the opening of the museum's National Mall facility, scheduled for September 2004. The exhibition explores the contemporary identity of indigenous peoples across the Americas and Hawaii. While the gallery is organized so that each tribe can speak for itself, Tayac works on the historical and society-wide issues relevant to the exhibition.

Tayac originally came to the museumthrough her sociological work gathering information on native peoples of the Chesapeake region, a subject of personal significance. She is the granddaughter of Turkey Tayac, known as the last traditional Piscataway chief and medicine man. He began the revitalization effort that Gabrielle continues today.

But it was not always so certain that anyone would take up the vocation of her grandfather. Her father grew up in this region but left at the age of 16 to become a merchant marine.

Tayac says, "Maryland wasn't so progressive. When my father left, it was a harsh environment. A lot of people left because of racism or economics."

He served in WWII and Korea and, while based in New York City, met her mother, a young Jewish woman from upstate New York, in Washington Square Park.

The couple settled in New York City, where Gabrielle was born and grew up–"in the progressive environment in the Village in the 70's," she adds. "That's why I settled in Takoma Park. I feel very much at home [here]–raising my children with a sense of normalcy and community."

While attending college at Cornell, Tayac met her future husband, Daniel Medina, from Colombia. After a stint in Boston, where she earned a PhD. in Sociology from Harvard, she convinced him to settle in the Washington DC region so she could pursue her research on the Piscataway.

"I wanted to settle and connect with history, community, and family, but" she says jokingly, she had to compromise on one thing. Most of her extended family lives in Southern Maryland, but her husband wanted to live somewhere where he could find a mango.

There is very little information available on the Piscataway tribe, the people indigenous to this region who were among the first contacted by Spanish explorers. In the 1630's and 1640's many Piscataway converted to Catholicism and many more died from diseases brought by the colonists and missionaries. As a result, "the language was decimated" and much cultural knowledge was lost. While many people were dispersed among other tribes, a few remained.

About 100 years ago, Tayac's grandfather began the revitalization effort. "Grandad had a 3rd grade education–he held on to what he knew and tried to find out more. He hitchhiked up and down the coast to find people," Tayac explains. "If he had not held on [to traditional knowledge], we wouldn't know anything."

When Turkey Tayac was in his 70s, he became increasingly worried that the knowledge he possessed would not be passed on. He "started to write down [Piscataway] words on pieces of paper, on napkins, envelopes, in margins," and tried to teach the language to Gabrielle's uncle Billy (the current chief). For many years, the scraps of paper were kept in a drawer–"an important drawer," she adds, and "valued as a relic."

Then, when Tayac was starting her own research about 15 years ago, she made copies of the papers and took them to linguists knowledgeable about the Algonquian language family. They determined that the 70 words are indeed part of the Algonquian family, closely related to the Delaware Lenape language, but that the words are unique.

Tayac comments that people often say, "I can't believe you only have 70 words," but it gives her hope. "That's more than a lot of other people have. The status of [Native American] languages is highly threatened." At the current rate of language loss, she says, in 60 years there will be only three indigenous languages remaining in Canada and eleven in the United States. She says, "It's been nearly 400 years, you've got 70 words–it's ok. It makes us able to do some language reconstruction."

Other aspects of native culture are also in danger. Tayac explains that in the 1940's, very few people attended regular ceremonies–there was little interest. Now, hundreds attend.

"We're highly fortunate to have what we have. We have four ceremonies a year, not all the songs. But it shows how resilient people can be." She adds that revitalization is not unique to this area. Across the hemisphere, "there's an open interest in native culture and indigenous people." Tayac sees a progression in the revitalization movement. "People in my generation are feeling like it's time to take this to the next step, come back home and reconnect." The change with the past is evident at the museum, where "now native people are archeologists and sociologists," positions that used to be held by non-native "experts." The current phase is one of reflection and documentation. "We work intellectually, take an examining route. [We] write about it and produce books."

One of the projects Tayac proposed to the museum was a children's book to dispel the misinformation, stereotypes, and myths that many people have, especially children.

As an example, she tells this story: "I went to my son's 2nd grade class in Takoma Park and when I spoke to the class about the fact that our family is part Indian, I asked, ‘What kind of house do you think we live in?' They answered, a teepee. I asked my son's friends, ‘You've been to our house, what does it look like?' They were afraid to give the wrong answer."

The book project was picked up by Beyond Words Publishers who wanted to do a series. The first, published in 2003, was Tayac's Meet Naiche: A Native Boy from the Chesapeake Bay Area, which follows a weekend in the life of her young cousin Naiche (a real boy) who lives in Southern Maryland. Naiche shares details about his school day and also about the Awakening of Mother Earth ceremony he takes part in.

The series shows Native American children dealing with the same issues as other children but also incorporates elements of their unique culture. Tayac says, "Native Americans, like everybody, lead complicated lives. They carry these historical and cultural issues with them as well."

One of the problems that compels Tayac is that, "native people in the cities and in this region are very invisible. Most people don't think there are Indians, because we don't [fit the stereotypes]."

Through her work, Tayac confronts these stereotypes and offers alternatives. "You don't have to be far away to experience it–there is a native presence."

For more information about the National Museum of the American Indian, visit the website: http://www.nmai.si.edu. For information on the Piscataway, visit: http://www.piscatawaynation.org/