Shoshone woman preserves native language

FORT WASHAKIE, Wyo. (AP) — Although she spoke Shoshone until the age of 6, it has taken years for Reba Teran, now 50, to feel fluent again.

Now that she does, she will teach an introductory Eastern Shoshone language course at the University of Wyoming beginning this fall.

As the language coordinator for the Shoshone Tribal Cultural Center on the Wind River Indian Reservation, Teran has been working with tribal elders for almost six years to produce a written and digital-audio dictionary of the Eastern Shoshone language.

In that time she has reconnected with her first tongue, and she has again begun dreaming in Shoshone _ a language that is more descriptive, colorful and emotional than English is, she said.

In addition to the dictionary project, which has been a huge undertaking for her and three tribal elders, Teran has also developed an eight-CD audio book for basic Shoshone-language instruction.

The Shoshone language class will be part of UW’s American Indian studies program, and co-sponsored by the modern and classical languages department.

The university has offered instruction in Northern Arapaho since 2005, taught by Wayne C’Hair, and now with Teran’s class, both tribal languages from the Wind River reservation will be taught at the school.

Students can fulfill UW’s language requirement with two semesters of the Eastern Shoshone language, just as they can with two semesters of the Northern Arapaho language and others.

Teran left Wyoming when she was 14 to go to boarding school in South Dakota, and when she was a sophomore in high school she started the Upward Bound program at the University of Wyoming. She went on to get both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree at Utah State University.

Teran said she wanted to return to the Wind River reservation immediately after college, but she had to wait several years before that became a possibility.

“I came home looking for a job and I could not find anything, so I had to leave,” Teran said. “I finally came back in 2002 and was hired to work here at the cultural center, and that’s when I began working with (the elders). I was hired in July, and by August we were already working with our language.”

Before returning home, Teran had already started her dictionary project while working temporarily at an oil refinery. She started by writing down all of the animals she knew in Shoshone _ starting with “bear,” which she wrote, phonetically, like this: “ah.gwy.”

“On breaks, I had this little notebook, and I would write all the words that I knew,” she said. “I still have this little notebook that’s all greasy and oily.”

The Eastern Shoshone language class will be held on weekends at UW, so once a week Teran will have to make the drive from Fremont County to Laramie and back again, just as C’Hair does.

“I talked to Wayne C’Hair, and he said it’s manageable,” she said. “I’m just a little concerned about making the trip in the winter.”