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While Halloween is not a traditional holiday, we chose to create Nisenan and Miwok language Halloween resources this year to capture some of the interest that learners, especially Tribal Youth, aleady have - Halloween is another space where we can use the Nisenan & Miwok languages. Moreover, Halloween is an opportune space for us to share certain language that youth learners ask for, like names for spiders and frogs.
That said, we intentionally chose to avoid sharing language for talking about certain Halloween topics like skeletons and ghosts, which are more culturally sensitive. If you would like to learn more about these or other topics, please feel free to contact us at language@ssband.org.
About the language: The Nisenan language that we share is from speakers of the Valley dialect of Nisenan like SSBMI Matriarch Pamela Cleanso Adams and her brother Tom Cleanso as well as speakers of the Southern Hill dialect like William Joseph, Ida Hill Starkey, and Charlie Hunchup.
Valley Nisenan and Southern Hill Nisenan are very similar to one another in terms of their words and grammar. To the best of our knowledge, all of the words and phrases that we share here are shared by or would be understood by the speakers of both of these dialects.
The Northern Sierra Miwok language that we share is from C. Hart Merriam's fieldwork from the early 1900s and linguist Catherine Callaghan's Northern Sierra Miwok dictionary (1987). Callaghan worked with several speakers including Queenie Miller, Elena McCauley, & Nicolas Villa Sr.
About the materials: The pins, stickers, and activity sheets were designed by Language Department staff.
The Black Widow and California Toad pin designs; and the Bat, Candy, Mushroom, California Red-Legged Frog, and Sierran Treefrog sticker art were drawn by Skye Anderson (© Shingle Springs Band of Miwok Indians). The Cat, Moon, Pumpkin, and Tarantula sticker art are adapted from public domain or open source-licensed clipart provided by Creazilla.
About the website: This website is maintained by SSBMI Language Department staff in order to share Nisenan and Miwok language learning resources with the Tribal Membership and other learners. Our current team consists of: Jonathan Geary, Richenda Ervin, and Skye Anderson. Unless otherwise specified, the Nisenan and Miwok audio recordings that you will find on this website are of Jonathan, Richenda, and Skye.
We are all learners of the Nisenan and Miwok languages, and we hope that you will join us in learning Nisenan and Miwok too!
If you have any questions, please contact us at language@ssband.org.
