Upper Chinook language

Upper Chinook
Kiksht
Native to	United States
Region	Columbia River
Extinct	2012[1] with the death of Gladys Thompson
Language family	Chinookan Upper Chinook
Language codes
ISO 639-3	wac
Glottolog	wasc1239[2]

Upper Chinook, also known as Kiksht, Columbia Chinook, and Wasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the US Pacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco^[3] and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.^[4]

The last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht, Gladys Thompson, died in 2012.^[1] She had been honored for her work by the Oregon Legislature in 2007.^[5][6][7] Two new speakers were teaching Kiksht at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in 2006.^[8] The Northwest Indian Language Institute of the University of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Kiksht and Numu in the Warm Springs schools.^[9][10] Audio and video files of Kiksht are available at the Endangered Languages Archive.^[11]

Dialects

• Multnomah, once spoken on Sauvie Island and in the Portland area in northwestern Oregon
• Kiksht
  • Cascades, also known as Watlalla or Watlala, now extinct
  • Hood River, now extinct
  • White Salmon, now extinct
  • Wasco-Wishram
  • Clackamas, now extinct, was spoken in northwestern Oregon along the Clackamas and Sandy rivers.

Kathlamet has been classified as an additional dialect; it was not mutually intelligible.

References

1. Kristian Foden-Vencil (2012-07-17). "Last Fluent Speaker Of Oregon Tribal Language 'Kiksht' Dies". Oregon Public Broadcasting. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
2. Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Wasco-Wishram". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
3. Culture: Language. The Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon. 2009 (retrieved 9 April 2009)
4. "Lewis & Clark—Tribes—Wasco Indians". National Geographic. Retrieved 2013-02-25.
5. Last Fluent Speaker of Kiksht Dies
6. "Honors Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs elder Gladys Miller Thompson for her contribution to preserving Native languages of Oregon.". 74th OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2007 Regular Session. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
7. "Zelma Smith, 1926-2010". Spilyay Tymoo, Coyote News, the Newspaper of the Warm Springs Reservation. Retrieved 2013-02-25.
8. Keith Chu (2006-07-30). "New speakers try to save language". The Bulletin (Bend, OR). Retrieved 2013-02-25.
9. Joanne B. Mulcahy (2005). "Warm Springs: A Convergence of Cultures" (Oregon History Project). Retrieved 2013-02-26.
10. Aaron Clark. "USA: Tribes Strive to Save Native Tongues". GALDU, Resource Centre for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Retrieved 2013-02-26.
11. Nariyo Kono. "Conversational Kiksht". Endangered Languages Archive. Retrieved 2013-02-25.

Bibliography

• Sapir, Edward; Curtin, Jeremiah (1909). Wishram texts, together with Wasco tales and myths. E.J. Brill. ASIN: B000855RIW.

External links

• Nariyo Kono. "Conversational Kiksht". Endangered Languages Archive. Retrieved 2013-02-25.
• Kiksht - Washco Wishram - Upper Chinook videos, YouTube
• Wasco-Wishram Indian Language (Upper Chinook, Kiksht, Clackamas) at native-languages.org
• Digital Kiksht, video about digitizing Kiksht language materials
• Audio of spoken Kiksht