Autry National Center

WE STILL LIVE HERE

AMERICAN INDIAN CULTURE FAMILY DAY

A Community Cinema Screening of a Film by Anne Makepeace

GENERAL INFO

Date / Time:

Sunday, Dec 4, 2011, 12:30 pm - 2:30 pm

Location:

Wells Fargo Theater, Griffith Park

Appropriate For:

13+

Admission:

Free Admission

Join us for a free screening of We Still Live Here, which tells the story of Jessie Little Doe Baird, a social worker and linguist who almost single-handedly revived the language of the Wampanoag of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard more than a century after the last native speaker of the language had died. The Wampanoag famously make up the tribe that traded with the Pilgrims when they first arrived in the early 1600s in what would become New England, helping them to survive their first winters in North America.

In the film, Little Doe Baird speaks of how she began having recurring visions and dreams of familiar-looking people from another time, addressing her in a language she did not understand. Eventually, she realized they were speaking Wampanoag, a language that had been dead for generations. With colleagues at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology and members of the Wampanoag community, Little Doe Baird achieved something that had never been done before — bringing an American Indian language back to life. Through this process of relearning their language, the Wampanoag have also rediscovered their history and culture. Now a new generation of children are becoming Wampanoag native speakers.

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