NANA REGION VERNACULAR

“Your accent is starting to change,” a friend recently told me.

“Really?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“When you talk, it’s more sing-song, your intonation goes up and down. And the way you pronounce certain words...”

“Huh, I hadn’t even noticed.”

A long-time friend recently commented on my changing accent during one of our phone conversations. Apparently I am beginning to sound more like Kotzebue people! I was pleasantly surprised to hear this especially considering that I’m often told that I sound like a white person. After she had mentioned this, I began to consciously listen to myself and I found that I do say things a certain way and that I couldn’t really help it.

It’s funny how language works. Since I have been back in Kotzebue (for four years now), I have acquired, or rather, re-acquired, a number of habits and mannerisms that I had all but forgotten after living in the city. Many people in the NANA region often use body language to express themselves. Some examples: 1) the eyebrow raise 2) the face scrunch 3) the shrug.

The eyebrow raise occurs when someone asks you a question and you answer “yes” by simply raising both your eyebrows. A lot of nurses tell me that when they first started working in the region, they thought that patients were ignoring them when they asked them a question, only to find out later that they were indeed answering “yes,” but just with their eyebrows. I find that I do this a lot more, especially when I am in Kivalina. Why answer vocally when a simple eyebrow raise would suffice?

The face scrunch is something that is particular to this region, it would seem.The face scrunch, or nose scrunch, occurs when you answer a “no” by scrunching your nose. My aaqa did this a lot and it’s a very cute gesture. My little cousin takes it one step further and scrunches very quickly, so that she looks like a squirrel or bunny rabbit.

The shoulder shrug is self-explanatory - when you don’t know something, you shrug your shoulders. You also shrug your shoulders when you've stated something and you really don't have that much more to say about it.

I find that it is easy for me to transition from one form of communication style to another. When I am speaking to family, my accent comes out a bit but when I am speaking formally, i.e. to strangers or in formal situations, my city accent comes out. It’s not that I am trying to be two-faced, it’s just a way of adapting yourself to various situations. My mom has the same habit, when she is on the telephone with a stranger or formal acquaintance, she sounds professional and formal. When she is talking to family from home, her accent comes out, intonation and all. It’s actually funny to notice the huge change that occurs.  

I think it’s especially cute when non-Inupiaq kids pick up NANA region accent and vernacular. My Latina friend and her husband are originally from California and have been raising their children in Kotzebue for the last several years. I think it’s so adorable when their kids speak with an accent and use Inupiaq expressions like “arriii!” or “I want to follow!” Nurses will often mention how their kids are picking up the accent as well.

Here are some common NANA region expressions:

1. “Arriii” - an expression of displeasure, dislike. A very Inupiaq phrase - people, especially kids, say it when they are whining or complaining.
2. “To follow” - when you want to go with someone. Adult: “I’m going to the store.” Kid: “I wanna follow!”
3. “Yuh” (as in, yes, yeah, uh huh). This is one of my favorites lol, especially how Kivalina people say it.
4. “I never” as in “I didn’t” - “I never eat yet” etc.
5. “How many” instead of “several.” For example, “I haven’t been home in how many years.” I noticed that my brother-in-law started saying this after having been married to my sister for...how many years.

Some other common practices:

1. Speak in the present tense whenever possible. This is especially true when story-telling - a storyteller will recount a story in the present tense, as if in his/her mind he or she is reliving the story at that exact moment.
2. NANA region vernacular seems a bit passive, at least, from my perspective. For example, if you want someone to hand you something, some people will say “Try hand me that,” or “try move.” Perhaps it's a way of being more polite or wanting to seem less demanding. I prefer to be a little more direct and say “Can you hand me that please?”
3. Many English-first speakers will anglicize Inupiaq words, like adding English suffixes to Inupiaq words. For example, I heard someone once say “It’s alapaa-er there” (“alapaa” means “it’s cold”). When children are talking of someone who qivets (“qivet” means “to sulk”), they will call that person a “qiveter," or "so-and-so is qiveting."

NEW JOB, NEW SEMESTER, NEW LOCATION!

Hi there! I have been exceptionally busy these last two months. I have found a new job in Kotzebue and have relocated to Kotzebue and am now a permanent resident! I am in the process of looking for an affordable place to rent here which is no easy feat - an efficiency goes for nearly $1300 here. So, for the last month or so I have been packing and cleaning and getting ready for my move.

I also made a special trip to Arcata, California for a 3-day intensive for school. I am enrolled in a part-time MSW program at Humboldt State University and traveled to campus to meet the instructors and my cohort. I must say that, so far, I love the program, the curriculum and the instructors! The instructors are passionate and so far (in the 2 weeks since we started) the course materials are stimulating and challenging. I am enthralled to begin this new journey and am looking forward to the next 3 years.

While in Arcata I got to see one of my very good friends after four years and had the honor of meeting her 3 year-old son. I was happy to see my friend and her family again and am looking forward to our time together in the next 3 years, since I will have to make a yearly trip to campus. My friend and her family are awesome - they are very kind, gentle, funny people. I have learned a lot about what it means to be human in my interactions with her and her family. They are from the Hoopa Valley Tribe and I've had a glimpse of what it means to be Indigenous in California. I would like to share my experience today.

While in Arcata, my friend was going to show me some of their ceremonial grounds, where they held dances and such. We were driving along the highway and suddenly stopped - I thought that we were going to check out some tourist attraction, perhaps a pretty view of the ocean. As it turned out, we had arrived at the actual location. This kind of shocked me because their traditional land is located in the heart of State, public land. The highway is right there, where there is little to no privacy.

She showed me their houses they had built and I was taken aback that there were tourists walking around. She explained to me that their land was also on State land, so that they often had to contend with tourists walking in on some of their ceremonies and taking pictures. One time, they had built a ceremonial fire only to come back to see a white family roasting marshmallows and hot dogs in the fire. Regarding use of their traditional land, they must jump through several bureaucratic hoops with the State to use it. For example, when they want to have special events, they must plan ahead and start the approval process very early (in the meantime, it is okay for tourists to do whatever they want whenever they want).

I was speechless and this terrible feeling in my gut because our experience in Kotzebue is very different. For example, we have fish camps where we go to prepare traditional food. These camps are typically outside of town and so they are relatively isolated and we rarely see tourists or outsiders, save for the occasional State Park people doing research on birds or what-have-you. We certainly don't get tourists coming in and taking pictures whenever they want to (although I have had white strangers taking random, unsolicited photos of us at in Anchorage and Kotzebue).

That experience has stayed with me ever since and I understood oppression at a deeper level. Americans are very aware of personal space, we typically don't like people intruding upon our personal space. And yet to have tourists coming in when my friend was sharing with me some of their personal things made me think that it must be that much more worse for her family.

There is also that sense of entitlement on part of the tourists. I would never think to go to someone's church ceremonies and take random photos of the people and yet, many tourists feel that they are entitled to do this. I think that it is a prime example of privilege too, both white privilege and the fact that my family and I have special privileges that my Hoopa friends don't have. That experience made me realize that we take our land and privacy for granted.

I will talk a little bit more about white privilege sometimes soon (this was actually a topic in one of my classes and so it will be interesting to revisit it).