Description:
The Gift of Knowledge / Ttnuwit Atawish Nch'inch'imamí is a treasure trove of material for those interested in Native American culture. Author Virginia Beavert grew up in a traditional, Indian-speaking household. Both her parents and her maternal grandmother were shamans, and her childhood was populated by people who spoke tribal dialects and languages: Nez Perce, Umatilla, Klikatat, and Yakima Ichishkíin. Her work on Native languages began at age twelve, when she met linguist Melville Jacobs while working for his student, Margaret Kendell. When Jacobs realized that Beavert was a fluent speaker of the Klikatat language, he taught her to read and write the orthography he had developed to record Klikatat myths.
After a stint in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, Beavert went on to earn graduate degrees in education and linguistics, and she has contributed to numerous projects for the preservation of Native language and teachings.
Beavert narrates highlights from her own life and presents cultural teachings, oral history, and stories (many in bilingual Ishishkíin-English format) about family life, religion, ceremonies, food gathering, and other aspects of traditional culture.
Brief description: Virginia Beavert, PhD, a member of the Yakama Nation and native speaker of Sahaptin, is a 2006 recipient of the Washington Governor's Heritage Award; 2007 Central Washington University Alumna of the Year; 2008 recipient of the Ken Hale prize of the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas; and 2008 recipient of a Distinguished Service Award, University of Oregon. She has been a professor, director of the Sahaptin Language Program, and scholar-in-residence at Heritage University in Toppenish, Washington, on the Yakama Indian Reservation, since 1991. She is coauthor of Ichishkíin Sinwit Yakama / Yakima Sahaptin Dictionary (University of Washington Press, 2009).
Review Quotes:
"Inspiring and informative. . . . Born in a bear cave in the Blue Mountains of Oregon, raised in a traditional Indian-only speaking household by parents who were shamans, and having served as an Air Force wireless radio operator at a B-29 bomber base during the Second World War, Beavert has spent her adult life tirelessly retrieving, preserving, and sharing Sahaptin knowledge. . . . She began working in her Native language at the age of 12 after meeting linguist Melville Jacobs. Since then she has collaborated with some of the most accomplished linguists and anthropologists. . . . Her passion for and interest in the welfare of her younger readers reverberates throughout every page of The Gift of Knowledge, in which her stated purpose is to record the lifeways taught to her by her family."
-- "Journal of the West"