Chasing Voices- The Story of John P Harrington

As an enrolled member of the Quechan Nation in southern California, I have personally experienced the trauma associated with language loss. I had to learn my traditional language as a second language because my father, a fluent speaker of the Quechan language, never taught me to speak the language. For the longest time I held resentment towards my father for not teaching me the language. When I started to learn my Quechan language as an adult, I became aware that I wasn’t alone in my quest to learn my traditional language. I found others like me. Unfortunately, some of these other language learners had no traditional language speakers alive and are having to learn their language from only notes. How could this be? This is where I stumbled on to John Peabody Harrington. I found he published my tribe’s creation story in 1907 told to him by Quechan elder Joe Homer. Curious, I did a little research and was astonished to find out he had done all this work on many languages. I had never heard of Harrington. How could this man who has documented all these languages and played such a huge roll in Native American ethnography be lost to history? I felt it important to share his story and, in the process, reveal all the hard work tribes are doing today to keep their languages alive. I think people today need to know about the language crisis that is going on in Native America. When a language is lost, a whole world-view is lost. As many tribal communities deal with epidemic rates of suicide and depression, reviving cultural traditions and language could help in healing. There’s a sense of pride and hope with relearning your traditional language and there are dedicated people trying to empower our native communities through the revitalization of language and culture. This film is not just about Harrington, but it’s about the people that spoke to him. Today, the Smithsonian has made Harrington’s notes available online. This is a huge resource to Native Americans and scholars wanting to research tribal languages and culture. There’s a continued need to invest in saving Native American Languages today. In fact, the United Nations declared 2019 as the year of Indigenous languages and since then, the United Nations has declared an International Decade of Indigenous Languages, to begin in 2022. The resolution was adopted by the UN General Assembly Dec. 18 “to draw attention to the critical loss of Indigenous languages and the urgent need to preserve, revitalize, and promote Indigenous language” and to “take urgent steps at the national and international levels.” The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization will serve as the lead agency for the International Decade, in collaboration with the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the Secretariat. Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde welcomed the announcement, saying languages are identity, wisdom and worldview. The release of Chasing Voices will help bring awareness to the issue of Indigenous languages in the US and urgency surrounding saving Native American languages.