Pictures of the word-collection groups for Thursday, Day 9

One of our word-collection groups was in a rut of sorts, so we decided to mix up the teams a bit. Father Randolph, the priest at the Catholic Mission where we're doing the word collection in Pryor, had been leading one of the word-collection groups, but his availability was limited to Days 2 through 7. Thus, we now have only three groups working. Here they are:

Pictures of the word-collection groups for Monday, Day 6

Here are pictures of the four word-collection groups in Pryor on Monday, Day 6 of the workshop:

Monday-Wednesday, July 23-25 - Crow RWC Workshop - Days 6, 7, & 8

I've been very busy at this particular workshop—so much so that I have not found the time to update my blog on a daily basis!! So this is my attempt to sum up what has happened the past three days.

The overhaul of the size and composition of the word-collection groups on Friday led to very positive results, so we continued with those same teams of participants the first three days of this week. Morale was high at the beginning of the week, but by Wednesday we were all feeling the fatigue of this intense effort to get through all 1800 topics in the two weeks of the workshop. This is a great group of people that I am privileged to work with here in Pryor, Montana. They have worked hard, and I'm very happy to have the opportunity to be here and get to know a few of them.

As far as our progress in collecting words, our total after Monday was approaching 9,000, and at the close of work on Tuesday, we had 10,543. So, at our 8:45 meeting on Wednesday (before starting the word collection at 9am), we had a round of applause to celebrate having already reached our goal of 10,000 words after only 7 days. I encouraged everyone to just continue doing what they had been doing for the past couple of days, and I was pretty sure that we'd get through all of the topics and end up with 13,000 or 14,000 words.

Wednesday's output was down a bit from the previous days, and this was due to at least two major factors: (1) We're now dealing with topics that tend to be less productive, where finding only one or two words related to a particular topic is a common occurrence, and (2) One of the individuals who was leading a group, writing the words down, and managing the audio recording for the group is unable to be present for the last three days of the workshop, so we have only 7 word-collection groups now, as of Wednesday. Thus, our output on Wednesday was just a bit over 1400, bringing the total to 11,988 after 8 days of collecting words.

I will try to upload some pictures of the participants for my next post.

Pictures of southeast Montana landscape

Wheat field just after harvest

Wheat field ready for harvest

Sunday, July 22 - A Weekend of Active Rest

This weekend, I didn't have to do a lot related to the word-collection workshop, so I filled my time with other things. I didn't spend a lot of time twiddling my thumbs, but doing things that were different than what I had done during the week helped to recharge me for the new week.

Saturday involved a relaxing start to the day as my colleagues slept a bit later than they had been able to do during the week. Then the three of us that are here representing SIL headed to the campground laundry to wash clothes, and from there, on to Billings. While waiting for the washer and dryer to run their cycles, I was able to talk to Anita, Rachelle, and Angela on the phone and exchange news.

In Billings, we had lunch with Wayne and Elena Leman, an SIL couple who have worked with the Cheyenne tribe for more than 30 years. Wayne and I had each heard of the other because of our roles in the organization, but this was the first time that we had the privilege of meeting each other in person.

After lunch, we took advantage of the fact that we were in the city to do a bit of shopping, then returned to the trailer and rested for the remainder of the day. I was tired, so I went to bed early.

I awoke refreshed on Sunday morning, feeling rested for the first time in several days. After attending church, we went out for lunch, and in the afternoon we visited the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument, where I learned much more about the context of General Custer's famous "last stand". We returned to our trailer around 7:30, exchanged news of the day's activities with our co-workers from The Language Conservancy, discussed plans for Monday's word collection, and then headed for bed.

Friday, July 20 - Crow RWC Workshop - Day 5

We ended the first week of this two-week workshop on a high note, collecting more than 1,800 words on Friday and thereby pushing our first-half total to just over 7,000. This was a tremendous encouragement to me, as it was to all of the TLC and SIL staff members when we shared the news with them, since we’ve encountered a significant number of obstacles along the way that we had to find creative ways to get past.

What was even more encouraging was the report I received second hand that the Crow tribal leaders were getting really excited about what is happening at this workshop. Apparently the leadership began the week feeling rather skeptical about the helpfulness or effectiveness of what was planned, but by the end of the week, they were fully supportive and enthusiastic about what was taking place. That places our workshop in a very good position for a successful conclusion next week.

I mentioned obstacles. Thursday was a difficult day because of having to tell so many people that they couldn’t come back on Friday. The previous days were challenging because we were adding a new group each day, which meant taking care of lots of logistic details and training/monitoring a new leader and a new scribe. The pace the first few days was too slow, and it was not easy to communicate the need for a faster treatment of the semantic domains in a way that the participants could connect with culturally. There were key people who had missed part or all of the training that I had given, and it took some time to help them all understand what was expected of them. But Friday, we began to experience the rhythm of a well-functioning word-collecting machine, which produced the kind of results we’ve been striving for all week.

In each of the two locations (Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, MT, and St. Charles Catholic Mission in Pryor, MT), our Friday morning report and pep talk highlighted three things: (1) the good (but not quite stellar) results from Thursday, (2) the fact that having 8 or 9 people in a group on Thursday had impeded progress rather than helping it, and (3) the need to move through the semantic domains more quickly. On this final point, I did the math for the participants who were there, demonstrating the need for each group to adopt the objective of treating 30 domains each day in order to help us reach the goal of getting through all 1800 of them.

Throughout the day, it was hard for me to judge whether my exhortations regarding the need for speed were having the desired effect. Sitting at the record-keeping table where groups came to turn in completed folders and check out a new one, it felt like things were moving rather slowly. However, I recognized that the folders the groups were working on that day contained more domains than the ones we did on Thursday when I was being kept busy almost continuously. So until the numbers were tallied at the end of the day, I wasn’t really sure how well we had done. (One group worked on one very large folder all day long, so I had no idea how many words they were coming up with until they turned in their folder at the end of the day—when I learned that they had gleaned more than 250 words.)

Thursday morning, I had given everyone at Pryor the challenge of coming up with 250 words and covering a minimum of 30 domains in a single day. No group even came close to reaching that objective that day, so I was curious to see what would happen on Friday, given the more reasonable group sizes. I kept a running tally on a piece of paper of the results for each group, so that I could quickly add in the figures for the last folder for each group and give them some idea of how they had done before they left for the weekend. When all the numbers were in, one of the groups had indeed achieved the double objective of 250 words and 30 domains; I congratulated each member of that group before they left. Another group surpassed the goal of treating 30 domains; yet another collected 255 words but fell short of the goal of 30 domains; the final group finished with 222 words in 17 domains, which was not quite as good as we had hoped for but was still acceptable, considering that those were our lowest data points in the overall group.

The four groups in Pryor finished with a total of 895 words in 107 domains on Friday. The groups at the college did even better, tallying 933 words in 129 domains, with two of the word-collection groups attaining the double objective. That gave us the excellent results of 1,828 words in 236 domains for the day. I was nearly euphoric, after having worked so hard all week to ensure the success of this workshop.

One final note: I had encouraged each group to treat at least 30 domains on Friday. If we had met that goal, we would have completed 240 domains in one day. Doing that same thing each day next week would actually mean that we’d get through all of the domains before the end of the week. So I didn’t really need them to move quite that quickly, but I wanted to give them a lofty goal in hopes that, even if we fell short, we’d still be able to get through all of the semantic domains by the end of next week. The combined efforts of all 8 groups was actually 236, just 4 shy of the goal, which is simply outstanding, and we will tell the participants so at our Monday-morning  pep rally, all the while encouraging them for a repeat performance.

Thursday, July 19 - Crow RWC Workshop - Day 4

Thursday could be described by any of the following words: exciting, frustrating, exhilarating, taxing, exhausting. We witnessed an unexpected level of enthusiasm about the workshop, but we were unprepared for and overwhelmed by the responsibilities that that enthusiasm brought about.

Unlike most RWC workshops, where things have settled into a routine by the fourth day, this one presented a set of fourth-day challenges I’d never faced before. Our three word-collection groups were too large on Wednesday, so we launched a fourth one today. (This stretched our personnel really thin, requiring Steve to run the recording equipment for the new group, which in turn meant that I had to take care of all of the administrative details—signing people in, registering new participants, recording which group took which folder, when they brought it back, and so on. All that would have been easily within my capabilities had we not experienced something totally unexpected.)

Word had apparently gotten out via the Crow grapevine overnight that an exciting event was taking place at the Catholic Mission in Pryor, and many more new participants showed up this morning. As the one handling the administrative side of things, I accepted the first 8 or 10 of them, but I finally had to turn the rest away, as our four groups were already well over the recommended size, and they were crowded into the rooms they were working in. In the end, we had two groups of 8 and two groups of 9 collecting words throughout the day. (I have never had to turn prospective participants away from a RWC workshop before, but the groups typically function best with 4-6 people; 8 or 9 usually results in slower progress and lower productivity.)

The TLC director arrived mid-morning with some necessary supplies, and I brought him up to speed on the situation. (He had to travel from Hardin to Billings to trade in his rental car, which was having mechanical problems, then do the shopping, then continue on to Pryor to drop off what we needed there, then continue on to Little Big Horn College to deliver the lunchmeat, cheese, etc. to feed the participants working there, so he was going non-stop all morning. There are locations out here where cell-phone service is unavailable, so my attempts to reach him by phone were unsuccessful, he being on the road somewhere in one of those dead spots.) On his arrival, however, he confirmed that I had done the right thing in turning people away—but maybe I should have made the decision to do that a bit earlier than I had.

Some time after the TLC director had left, but before we broke for lunch, I received a message from him, saying that he had decided that we needed to decrease the number of participants for Friday. His orders were to select 4 or 5 from each group and invite them to come back in the morning. The others were to leave their contact information so we could invite them to come in the event that one or more of those chosen to continue could not come on a particular day. So I met with the leader of each of the four groups, asking who they felt were the most helpful people to keep on for the days to come. That was hard for all of us, and it was decided that the most culturally appropriate way to communicate the news to each one was for them to check with me as they signed out for the day. So I found myself in the unenviable position of having to tell many of the participants that they had not been invited back for Friday. But I did ask each of them to leave a phone number where they could be reached, in case we needed them sometime next week. There was much disappointment, and I’m sorry to see them go—their enthusiasm was a wonderful thing. But at the same time, I do think our groups will function more effectively tomorrow.

As expected as a result of the overpopulated groups, productivity dropped off today—in spite of the fact that we had added a group—and we tallied about 1,550 words for the day, bringing our total to 5,235. That means that we’re already halfway to our goal of 10,000 words by the end of next week, so that will be a piece of good news to report to the groups in the morning. However, we’re still moving too slowly through all of the topics, and unless we find a way to increase our pace, we will leave a significant number of them untouched. This is a major concern to the TLC director, so I am doing my utmost to help the groups move more quickly.

Wednesday, July 18 - Crow RWC Workshop - Day 3

[NOTE: I have internet access only during the workday, and I’m kept quite busy during that time, so it’s rather challenging to find time to post to this blog. That’s why my entries are delayed. My apologies for that, but I’ll do my best to keep you updated.]

We’re doing this workshop at the invitation of The Language Conservancy (TLC), a non-profit organization that helps Native American groups to breathe life back into their language if it appears to be dying out because the children are no longer learning it from their parents. This is the same organization that Anita and I helped last year in New Mexico.

On Wednesday, the TLC director asked me to make the trip to Pryor (an hour in each direction) to help the groups working there to improve their productivity. Originally, it seemed that there was limited interest among the Crow community around Pryor, so there were only two word-collection groups there on Tuesday when we first met in that location. The actual turnout was significantly higher than expected, however, so the TLC director decided to add a third group on Wednesday, when he sent me. Traveling with me were two TLC linguists and Steve Echerd, a colleague who works with SIL’s Americas North branch and who is shadowing me at this workshop in order to be able to facilitate future workshops by himself.

After the morning status report and pep talk, which were my responsibility, I took care of a few administrative details and then spent most of the remainder of the day sitting in as an observer (making an occasional comment) with the group that had gotten off to a weak start the previous day, helping them to understand how best to work with the materials in the time allotted for this workshop. I had been asked by the TLC director to do the record-keeping as well, but that proved to be more than I was able to handle if I was to be the near-constant presence that the word-collection group needed. So I was glad that Steve had come along with me to Pryor, as he was able to monitor the other two groups on an intermittent basis and take care of the record-keeping.

The word collection seemed to progress slowly, with only a few of the 126 folders we hope to get through during the workshop being completed. However, when we tallied up the results in the evening, we discovered that the number of words being collected was more than adequate, bringing our total for the three days to 3,680.

Tuesday, July 17 - Crow RWC workshop - Day 2

Tuesday, we had six groups collecting words—four at Little Big Horn College and two at the Catholic Mission in Pryor, Montana, a bit over an hour away from the college. (This was the first day for us to work in two separate locations.) I was at the college, working with the four groups there, while Wil, The Language Conservancy leader, traveled to Pryor to launch and coordinate the work there.

At the college, we got off to what seemed like a bit of a slow start. Not all of the expected participants were present at the start of the day, so the composition of Monday’s groups couldn’t be maintained. Instead, we formed three word-collection groups, using the people who were present. That got the fun underway a bit after 9:15, but it gave our record-keeper, Raquel, a challenge, since folders that had been started on Monday were now in the hands of a different set of individuals. (It took us an extra hour at the end of the day, but she and I were able to get everything straightened out in the end.) A fourth word-collection group was formed once there were enough people to make it viable.

One of the word-collection groups seems to have caught on exceptionally well to the way we want the groups to work, and as a result they collected a 389 words on Tuesday, which may be more in a single day than any other group in any other workshop I’ve led. The other groups are making acceptable progress but seem to be moving a bit more slowly than is necessary if we are to get through all of the material in two weeks. In all, we collected 1,332 words on Tuesday, bringing our total for the first two days to 2,053.

The weather here has been warm and dry for the most part. It reminds me of Burkina Faso but 10-20 degrees cooler. Daytime highs have been in the low- to mid-90s, with relatively low humidity, so I’ve been comfortable in my African shirts. This causes my bedroom in the mobile home we’re living in to get very hot in the afternoon (because it faces west), and it holds that heat for the first part of the night, making it somewhat difficult to fall asleep some nights. About midnight, however, the temperature outside is in the 60s, and my room gets cool enough that I am grateful for the light blanket that was provided. (The air conditioning or heat in the trailer is either disconnected or non-functional for some other reason. We have only a swamp cooler running 24/7 in the hall at the middle of the trailer, and it has no impact whatsoever on the temperature in the bedroom where I’m sleeping.)

I am grateful for hot water for showers, a working fridge for storing milk and yogurt for breakfasts, the cot with a built-in air mattress that serves as my bed, and the provision of life-sustaining food at the important times of the day (sandwiches at lunch and grilled burgers, brats, or chicken in the evening).

Monday, July 16 - Crow RWC Workshop - Day 1

The workshop got off to a good start on Monday, in spite of the fact that we had to wait a bit past the official start time for everyone to arrive. (It seems that the Crow culture is similar to many African cultures in this regard: I learned that people talk about “Indian time” here, while in Africa we talked about “African time”. Events just rarely start at the time they are scheduled to begin.)

I was responsible for providing an abbreviated training session in the morning. (Instead of the usual two or three days, I had two or three hours.) Then shortly before noon, we broke into groups and began the actual word collection.

We had five groups working at Little Big Horn College. One of those groups was made up of women who had made the 1hr 15min drive over from Pryor, where they live. They came so that they could benefit from the training session Monday morning. Starting Tuesday, we plan to have four or five groups continuing at the college and two others in Pryor (including the one that was at the college on Monday).

This first day was typical in many respects, each participant adjusting to what they were being asked to do. I spent the afternoon checking in on various groups, answering the questions about the process, and doing my best to encourage everyone. By the end of the day, 721 words had been collected—a more-than-adequate beginning.

Saturday, July 14 Crow RWC: Preparing for departure

I am scheduled to leave tomorrow morning for southeastern Montana to lead a Rapid Word Collection (RWC) workshop for the Crow Nation, a Native American group located southeast of Billings, MT. I plan to leave for the airport at 4:40am, taking a neighbor with me who has a 7am flight. Rachelle has graciously agreed to get up much earlier than her usual time, in order to drive our car back home.

I'm looking forward to this opportunity to lead another word-collection workshop, as it's been a full year since I last did one. This will be my second time to visit Montana, the previous occasion being 40 years ago, when our family traveled together from our home in Pennsylvania, pulling a pop-up trailer and visiting lots of national parks west of the Mississippi River. That trip was full of great memories, and I expect this one will be too.

Like the workshop that Anita and I took part in last year in New Mexico, this one is being organized by The Language Conservancy (TLC). They are a non-profit organization that works with various Native American groups in the US, helping them revitalize their language by providing means for the children and young adults who've not learned it growing up to become competent speakers of it. SIL partners with TLC by leading word-collection workshops like this, so that they can then create written, audio, and online resources to facilitate the revitalization process.

Each workshop I lead is unique in some way. This particular workshop will be different from any other I've ever conducted because we'll be having word-collection groups working simultaneously in two locations a bit more than an hour apart. It will be interesting to see just how that works out.

There are 10 or 12 non-Crow individuals who will be helping at this workshop in one way or another. Those of us who are on site Sunday evening will meet to discuss some of the logistics, but several staff members won't arrive until late Sunday night, so a 6am meeting has been scheduled, mandatory for all staff, in order to prepare for the start of the event, scheduled for 8:00.