As you look out over the water along Eureka’s boardwalk at the foot of F Street, a small placard at your elbow might catch your eye, reading “DA’GURR, Known in English as Sea Otter,” above the illustration of a mustachioed specimen drifting on his back and waving a paw. Just a few inches below its whiskers is a QR code, a quick scan of which will take you to a site with audio of the correct pronunciation in Soulatluk, the language of the Wiyot people, as well as further language resources and related information about the landscape and Wiyot culture.
It’s one of 15 signs sharing words in Soulatluk for the plants, wildlife, landmarks and cultural practices around Wigi, which another sign will tell you is the original name for Humboldt Bay. The markers, part of the Speaking Soulatluk project, which is funded through an Our Town grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, are the result of a partnership between the Wiyot Tribe, the Ink People Center for Arts and Culture and the city of Eureka with the goal of promoting understanding of Wiyot language and culture on the tribe’s ancestral lands.
On the afternoon of Aug. 15, a small crowd gathered at the foot of F Street to celebrate the installation of the signs. Among those strolling along the railing to peruse the markers was Lynnike Butler, linguist for the Wiyot Tribe. “My role was to find the words … from recordings of elder speakers that were recorded in the ’50s,” she explained. Non-Native linguists — both professionally trained and amateur — made recordings of fully fluent speakers, meaning those who lived their daily lives speaking Soulatluk, like Nettie Rossig, Della Prince and Dandy Bill, all of whom had died by the 1960s or 1970s. As the Wiyot Tribe’s website, where you can hear some of these recordings, notes, “no one alive today grew up speaking Soulatluk as their first language,” and “Wiyot cultural practices and language were discouraged by official policies of ‘acculturation.'” These included a boarding school system that forbade Native languages.
Unlike current programs related to Soulatluk, Butler said the recordings from the 1950s were intended for cataloguing, preservation and study by white scholars, not for the Wiyot community or as a tool for the revival of their ancestral language. Since then, the field and the mission have shifted.
“This visibility is really important,” Butler said, noting that the signs serve as a reminder of the continuing presence and vibrancy of Wiyot people and culture in Humboldt. “This is not ancient history.”
Brian Raymond Meade Jr., a Wiyot tribal member and docent at the Da Gou Rou Lowi’ Cultural Center a few blocks away, has been learning Soulatluk partly through his job. Tapped by Butler to sound out and read Wiyot language stories for the Soulatluk YouTube channel, he found he had a knack for it. Use one of the QR codes on the signs along the waterfront and you may hear his voice demonstrating the pronunciation. (The glottal stops that produce the break in words like “uh-oh,” marked by an apostrophe, were a challenge, he said.)
“I love how it’s, like, with animals and wildlife you can see around the area,” Meade said, glancing across the water.
Some of the recorded voices he’s studied belong to relatives he never met in person, like Dandy Bill and Jerry James, both of whom were fully fluent speakers recorded by linguists. James, who is from Meade’s father’s side of the family, was an infant when he survived the massacre on Tuluwat Island in 1860, when white settlers murdered mostly Wiyot women, elders and children amid their World Renewal ceremony.
Meade’s parents, he said, are both proud of his contribution to the Soulatluk revival. He recalled his mother’s excitement when he recorded “Pitsou’laksh,” a story about an owl for an animated short that can be found on the YouTube channel. James had shared the traditional tale with an anthropologist in 1922. “It feels pretty cool to do,” Meade said.
More signs are planned for Humboldt Transit Authority buses, and the Da Gou Rou Louwi Cultural Center will soon be home to a Soulatluk listening station, where visitors can hear the language spoken and learn more about it.
Ink People Executive Director and Eureka City Councilmember Leslie Castellano greeted attendees during the sign installation celebration and handed out postcards with Soulatluk words. She marveled at the other public art projects, educational programs and Wiyot language classes also underway, saying, “It’s really great to be a part of this piece of it.”
Jennifer Fumiko Cahill (she/her) is the managing editor at the Journal. Reach her at (707) 442-1400 ext. 106, or jennifer@northcoastjournal.com. Follow her on Bluesky @jfumikocahill.bsky.social.
This article appears in ‘No Signs of Recovery’.
