Zachary Hanson: Hello, this is Zachary Hanson with 91.9 KVCR News talking to you from the University of California, Riverside with Dr. Sean Milanovich about indigenous language revitalization and the Cahuilla language at the university. Hi, Sean, could you go ahead and introduce yourself and tell us a little bit more about the program?
Sean Milanovich: Míyaxwe, míyaxwe. Néneteo Sean Milanovich. Néhen séxkinga, ne kúktashka ne háwema, ne tax’univash. So I introduced myself. And so I’m Sean Milanovic. I said I was a teacher of the Cahuilla language, and I am from the, um, Agua Caliente Reservation, I am an enrolled tribal member there, and that I was speaking in the Cahuilla language.
This language has been around since the very beginning of time, since time immemorial. That's what the Cahuilla people believe, and we follow our creation stories, and those stories tell us that. But through genocide, through the American invasion on our tribal lands, when California became a state in 1850, the Americans came in and forced us off our lands sometimes with, um, you know, with guns. Sometimes they would shoot first and then we were removed. We lost 95% of our lands. And so the lands that we have today, we have there are nine Cahuilla reservations all throughout Riverside County and a little bit in San Diego, a little bit in San Bernardino County.
I was born in 1969 and I never heard the language until it was in the in the 90s. I was at a gathering up at Morongo, up at Malki, and I heard these, um, two men talking behind me, and they were talking in a language I didn't understand. I don't ever remember hearing. And so I turned around and asked them what they were speaking. They said they were speaking in their Cahuilla language, and they said that their younger brother, Alvino Siva, he still spoke the language and he was looking to teach the class. And so I reached out to Alvino to see if he would teach the class to us. And so I'm continuing that practice today, and, um, started having language classes, offered language classes at Agua Caliente. And, um, now we have our own language program, which is great. I got the program going and developed an interest with the kids. They want to learn the language. They want to understand who they are and where they come from.
So teaching at the university was a little different from teaching the classes over at Agua Caliente. I follow, um, Chem’ivillu that's a language curriculum developed by UCLA students. with the help of Katherine Siva Saubel, who was from the Los Coyotes Cahuilla reservation, and she was a fluent speaker, that was her first language and she helped put this book together to teach the language in the schools. Most of the students are Native American and some of them are Cahuilla, some are Paiute, some are Luiseno. There's some Chemehuevi students. There's a Lakota student that we have, and then there's also non-Native students as well. But they live in the community as we are on land. So I encourage non-native people, non-tribal members, to take the class to learn about the Cahuilla people, because not only do we learn about Cahuilla language, we learn about the Cahuilla culture, we learn about the Cahuilla literature that's running. We learn about the reservations, who's in charge. We learn about ceremonies. We learn about different people, how to talk, how to be - relevant. How to be respectful to one another, respectful to the earth. There's no other indigenous languages that are taught here from the local indigenous communities, so to have the language is something phenomenal. So even just to have this class right here. So this class started in 2017 with the help of William Madrigal and Raymond Haute. They both know the language, and so they wanted to see the language here and so those two worked together with Wilcox and the school to try to get this going. And they were able to get it pushed through. And so we're very fortunate to be able to have Cahuilla language here. Áchema.
Zachary Hanson: Thank you so much for sharing that with us, Sean. With 91.9 KVCR news, I'm Zachary Hanson.
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Zachary Hanson, History
zhans004@ucr.edu