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November 30, 2018

The Linguist

Sam Broncho is helping revive the Shoshone language one student at a time.

 
November 30, 2018
Sam Broncho teaches a class of Western Shoshone youth at Great Basin College as part of the Shoshone Cultural and Language Initiative.

Sam Broncho teaches a class of Western Shoshone youth at Great Basin College as part of the Shoshone Cultural and Language Initiative.

Lavere Broncho’s first language growing up in Idaho was Shoshone. But around 1958, when he was six years old, he was removed from his home, placed in a boarding school, and told to speak only English. Shoshone was strictly forbidden, and if he or his fellow students lapsed, corporal punishment was often used to ensure it didn’t happen again.

“He had that horrible experience early on,” says Sam Broncho, Lavere’s son. “He knew the Shoshone language, but he was very apprehensive about speaking it, and he actually forced me and my sisters to speak only in English when we were growing up.”

Lavere’s experience wasn’t unique. Starting early in the 19th century and continuing deep into the 20th, thousands of Native American children were placed in boarding schools and robbed of their language and culture. The fallout from this forced assimilation persists today. Many Native American languages, including Shoshone, have all but disappeared. Proud cultures have withered, supplanted by trauma, shame, and anger, which fuels the drug and alcohol abuse that plague many Native American communities.

“They destroyed who we were,” says Felix Ike, a Shoshone elder from the Elko Indian Colony, one of eight Shoshone communities in Nevada that have partnered with Barrick.

Today, only a handful of elders speak Shoshone, Ike adds. “That’s a sad thing. Our young people don’t understand or even know their own language.”

That is why language and cultural preservation are key focus areas of Barrick’s partnership with the Shoshone. It’s about reclaiming their heritage, embracing it, and ensuring it’s passed down to future generations, says Rebecca Darling, Barrick’s Director of Corporate Social Responsibility for the USA.

One of the first language initiatives that Barrick supported was the Shoshone Youth Language Apprenticeship Program (SYLAP). Hosted at the University of Utah’s Center for American Indian Languages, SYLAP introduced Shoshone youth to college life through a for-credit Shoshone language study course. The program launched in the summer of 2009 and ran until 2016. One of the first students was Sam Broncho.

Sam Broncho with his students. Broncho hopes his classes help the students build a sense of identity for themselves.

From student to teacher

Sam, who is now 27, has a warm, engaging manner. His round face is often punctuated by a smile, and he has a calm voice that puts people at ease. While his father, who died in 2009, discouraged the use of Shoshone, the language was always there in the background when Sam was growing up in Owyhee, Nevada. He’d hear his mother speak it to relatives, catch snippets in conversations between elders, and listen to Shoshone songs at community ceremonies and festivals.

“Learning Shoshone was always something I wanted to do,” he says. “When you talk to other elders and you pray in the language, it has a deeper meaning—a spiritual connection to the culture that you just don’t get with English.”

In his senior year of high school, Sam enrolled in a Shoshone language course at Great Basin College taught by Norm Cavanaugh, a Shoshone elder. In addition to giving him a grounding in the language and oral tradition of the Shoshone, Cavanaugh taught Sam how to carry himself and take pride in who he was.

“He saw a lot of raw potential in me and helped me hone it,” Sam says.

Cavanaugh recommended Sam for SYLAP and Sam jumped at the chance. Once there, Sam found that he loved university life and connecting with Shoshone youth who shared his passion for their language and culture. He spent the following three summers as a residential advisor at SYLAP, helping shape the curriculum and eventually helping teach the course. Racheal Thacker was one of Sam’s students.

“He was a really good teacher,” she says. “And he was there for us even after the program. That’s who Sam is as a person.”

During this period, Sam became a full-time student at the University of Utah. His major, it should come as no surprise, was linguistics.

Students participate in traditional Shoshone hand games. “Our culture is connected to the language and sweat lodges,” says Anthony Maggio (pictured in bandana). “You can’t separate them.”
Students participate in traditional Shoshone hand games. “Our culture is connected to the language and sweat lodges,” says Anthony Maggio (pictured in bandana). “You can’t separate them.”

Students participate in traditional Shoshone hand games. “Our culture is connected to the language and sweat lodges,” says Anthony Maggio (pictured in bandana). “You can’t separate them.”

The Shoshone Cultural and Language Initiative

Last year, Barrick partnered with the Shoshone on a new language program, which replaced the SYLAP initiative. The new program takes place at Great Basin College in Elko, Nevada, which is closer to the Company’s partner communities—a change that the communities had requested. The Shoshone Cultural and Language Initiative, or SCLI, is a for-credit program that takes place over about four weeks during the summer. The program immerses students in Shoshone language and culture, teaching hand games, traditional songs, and sharing stories that have been passed down for generations. Cavanaugh and Sam were the teachers.

“My hope for these kids is that they are able to take what they learn here, whether it’s cultural-based, language-based, or even socially, and build a sense of identity for themselves,” Sam says.

He has reason for optimism judging by feedback from students.

“Our culture is connected to the language, like our hand games and sweat lodges,” says Anthony Maggio, who was part of the inaugural SCLI cohort. “You can’t separate them. That’s the beauty of SCLI, it gives you both sides.”

Maggio adds that one of the joys of learning Shoshone is the descriptive nature of the language. Even numbers are interesting, he says. “If I want to say I am 18 years old in Shoshone, I would say, ‘I have 18 winters.’”

Fellow SCLI student, Princess Mason, says the students in this summer’s class formed a strong bond with Sam. While he is an excellent teacher, he’s also not afraid to have fun, she says.

“I feel like our people, as a whole, are afraid to joke around, but it is easy with him,” she says. “It’s easy to learn from him.”

In addition to teaching for the SCLI program, Sam teaches a Shoshone language course at Great Basin College during the school year. Barrick covers course fees for members of its Shoshone partner communities. Community members unable to attend in person can take the course online, also at no charge. Shoshone language classes are also offered in four of Barrick’s partner communities—Elko, Owyhee, Ely, and Duckwater. Barrick covers all costs for these classes, which are taught by Shoshone elders. Unlike the SCLI program, which is targeted at high school students, these classes are open to all community members.

Barrick also provides funding for elders from its partner communities to attend the annual Shoshone Language Reunion. This four-day event brings together Shoshone speakers from around the country to consider ways to help preserve the language. This year’s reunion, the 19th, took place in Ignacio, Colorado. Barrick covered expenses for 127 elders to attend.

Norm Cavanaugh, Racheal Thacker, and Sam Broncho.

Partnering with mining makes sense

While some Native Americans question the wisdom of partnering with the mining industry, Sam sees things differently.

“I think we struggle internally with the same issues: are we selling out?” he says. “Are we really Native people if we utilize mining companies to enhance ourselves? I think if people want to look at it negatively, then they are also the people that aren’t doing much to push any project forward. If we don’t take advantage of these opportunities that we’re being presented with, then nobody will; it’ll just become stagnant. And that’s when outsiders come in and start to run our programs. So it’s about self-reliance and self-representation.”

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