NC State University News ServicesCampus Box 7504Raleigh, NC 27695-7504919/515-3470[email protected]www.ncsu.edu/news
NEWS RELEASE
Media Contacts: Dr. Walt Wolfram, 919/515-4151 or [email protected]Tim Lucas, News Services, 919/515-3470 or [email protected]
Sept. 26, 2000
Documentary Shows Rich Language Heritage of State's Lumbee Indians
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Visit Pembroke, Prospect and the other communities of Robeson County, N.C., and listen closely. The 47,000 Lumbee Indians who live there and in the rest of Southeastern North Carolina speak English, but it is their distinct Lumbee dialect of English.
When they talk of living on the swamp, they're referring to the neighborhood. When they hear others say "I'm been there" or "She bes here," it sounds like their friends and family speaking. These variations in vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation can signal that the speaker is a fellow Lum, an active member of the Lumbee community.
Though the dialect is all they have left of a native language that disappeared over the last 200 years, the Lumbee are successfully preserving this part of their cultural heritage, says linguist Dr. Walt Wolfram of North Carolina State University.
Now, after six years of studying the Lumbee of North Carolina and their unique speech, Wolfram has produced a half-hour documentary, "Indian By Birth: The Lumbee Dialect." It will be shown this fall on UNC-TV, the public television network in North Carolina. A multimedia exhibit about the project was displayed earlier this month at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and will be permanently installed this week at the Museum of the Native American Resource Center in Pembroke, N.C.
The linguistic identity the Lumbee have carved out over the years is a key part of their cultural legacy, Wolfram says. Nobody knows for certain the ancestral roots of the Lumbees, and today, they live in a highly diverse community with large populations of Native, African and European Americans. But the Lumbees claim they can identify each other primarily by how they talk, even distinguishing fellow Lumbees from different parts of the county on the basis of speech.
Wolfram says the lack of a current tribal language may be one reason the Lumbees haven't received as much federal recognition as other Native American tribes. Though the Lumbees are recognized by the U.S. government as a Native American group, they don't receive entitlement money or land.
"If they had a native American language that they still spoke, such as a Cherokee, they would have no doubt convincing the federal government that they were an authentic Native American tribe," he explains. "But because they were one of the earliest Native American groups to interact with Europeans and lost their language relatively early, they were put in a precarious position."
With the documentary and museum display, Wolfram hopes to help the Lumbees confront the double jeopardy they've faced in preserving their dialect. First, Wolfram says, the Lumbee Indians abandoned their indigenous language when European settlers arrived in Eastern North Carolina. Wolfram speculates that any complete language spoken by the Lumbees probably faded by the mid-1800s. The English dialect spoken today likely preserves some of that language, he says.
Now, the English dialect is threatened by critics and teachers who label it improper English. Dr. Linda Oxendine of the Department of Native American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke says in the video, "Since 1887, there's been an attempt to standardize Lumbee English, and they haven't been successful." The dialect in embedded in the culture, she says.
Wolfram agrees. The dialect cannot be erased from the community, he says, because it's an important trait by which the Lumbees identify each other. "Culture is stronger then institutions from the outside," he says.
The Lumbees are immersed in a revitalization of traditional Lumbee culture, and that, Wolfram says, is keeping the dialect healthy. "A dialect like this is not in trouble unless there's cultural dissolution," he says. "But because the Lumbee are a large group, and are becoming increasingly culturally aware, and solidified, you would predict that the dialect would be quite healthy." In contrast, the dialect spoken on the Outer Banks is endangered by a dwindling population of residents and native speakers.
With distinct vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation, the Lumbee dialect is a mix of Appalachian English and of a similar dialect spoken by longtime residents of the N.C. Outer Banks. Though only Lumbees use ellick to refer to a cup of coffee with sugar, both Lumbees and Appalachian residents say chawed for embarrassed. Lumbee grammar uses the verb bes where standard English calls for am, is or are, and uses weren't in place of wasn't, as in I weren't there.
Not many of the pronunciation features of the Lumbee dialect are unique, Wolfram says. Still, he says, the dialect's variety of pronunciation traits set it apart. Both older Lumbees and Outer Banks residents say hoi toiders when referring to high-tiders. The pronunciation of both as bof is prevalent among the three main ethnic groups of Robeson County, and among residents of isolated Outer Banks and Appalachian communities.
Wolfram's linguistic analyses of the Lumbee dialect are based on interviews with more than 150 Lumbees and 50 other residents, conducted by Wolfram and graduate students for the N.C. Language and Life Project at NC State. In addition to creating the documentary video and museum exhibit, the researchers have published their work in academic journals and preparing a book on the Lumbee dialect. The video is produced by NC State, and UNC-P's Museum of the Native American Resource Center and Department of Native American Studies.
In his role as a linguist and academic observer, Wolfram tries to work with the communities he studies, and to offer them some benefit from participation. His previous studies of the dialect of the Outer Banks produced a video, book and school curriculum that Wolfram and his students teach each year at public schools in Ocracoke, N.C. He hopes his work on the Lumbee and other isolated dialects in North Carolina can become part of the curriculum in all public schools.
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