Lushootseed ( / l ʌ ˈ ʃ uː t s iː d / luh- SHOOT -tseed ), historically known as Puget Salish, Puget Sound Salish , or Skagit-Nisqually , is a Central Coast Salish language of the Salishan language family. Lushootseed is the general name for the dialect continuum composed of two main dialects, Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed , which are further separated into smaller sub-dialects.
57-613: The Duwamish River ( Lushootseed : dxʷdəw ) is the name of the lower 12 miles (19 km) of Washington state's Green River . Its industrialized estuary is known as the Duwamish Waterway . Although heavily polluted, it is an important habitat for the wildlife. Important to the Duwamish people , the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center is on the west bank of the river and several parks have indigenous Lushootseed names . In
114-527: A morphophonemic writing system meaning that it is a phonemic alphabet which does not change to reflect the pronunciation such as when an affix is introduced. The chart below is based on the Lushootseed Dictionary. Typographic variations such as ⟨p'⟩ and ⟨pʼ⟩ do not indicate phonemic distinctions. Capital letters are not used in Lushootseed. Some older works based on
171-427: A change of position for its subject. It is commonly known as a "state of being": ʔəs ƛ̕ubil čəd. 'I am feeling fine.' or 'I am in good health.' If a verb does involve motion, the ʔəs - prefix is replaced with lə -: lə ƛ̕a čəd ʔálʔal. 'I'm going home.' Completed or telic actions use the prefix ʔu -. Most verbs without ʔəs - or lə - will use ʔu -. Some verbs also exhibit
228-484: A contrast in meaning between lə - and ʔu -, and only one of them is correct: ʔu saxʷəb čəxʷ. 'You jump(ed).' The verb saxʷəb literally means 'to jump, leap, or run, especially in a short burst of energy', and is correctly used with ʔu -. In contrast, the verb təlawil , which means 'to jump or run for an extended period of time', is used with lə -: lə təlawil čəxʷ. 'You are jumping.' There are five possessive affixes, derived from
285-467: A family experience. Wa He Lut Indian School teaches Lushootseed to Native elementary school children in their Native Language and Culture program. As of 2013 , an annual Lushootseed conference is held at Seattle University . A course in Lushootseed language and literature has been offered at Evergreen State College . Lushootseed has also been used as a part of environmental history courses at Pacific Lutheran University . It has been spoken during
342-629: A few recesses in the channel left to accommodate high water flows and turning ships. Parts of the Georgetown and South Park neighborhoods once on quiet riverbank found themselves inland; the Georgetown Steam Plant was now almost a mile from the river, and special water pumping facilities had to be installed. By 1920, 4½ miles of the Duwamish Waterway had been dredged to a depth of 50 feet, with 20 million cubic feet of mud and sand going into
399-512: A number of potential other meanings. They come before the object they reference, much like in English. Examples of this can be found in the following phrases: Lushootseed has four subject pronouns: čəd 'I' (first-person singular), čəɬ 'we' (first-person plural), čəxʷ 'you' (second-person singular), and čələp 'you' (second-person plural). It does not generally refer to the third person in any way. The subject pronoun always comes in
456-474: A plain-glottalic contrast, which is realized as laryngealized with sonorants , and ejective with voiceless stops or fricatives. It is one of only three known languages to possess all three types of glottalized consonant (ejectives, implosives, and resonants). Lushootseed has no phonemic nasals . However, the nasals [m] , [m̰] , [n] , and [n̰] may appear in some speech styles and words as variants of /b/ and /d/ . Lushootseed can be considered
513-678: A plan for a series of major public works projects in the Seattle area, including the straightening and dredging of the Duwamish River, both to open up the area to commercial use and to alleviate flooding. In 1909 the City of Seattle formed the Duwamish Waterway Commission to sell bonds and oversee the re-channelling of the river. Work began in October 1913, and the oxbows gradually disappeared, with
570-510: A plan for an "early action" or hotspot cleanup proposed to dredge contaminated sediment and dump the resulting sludge in Tacoma's Commencement Bay , 26 miles (42 km) to the southwest. Opposition to this plan in both Seattle and Tacoma forced the sludge to be shipped to Klickitat County in south central Washington instead of disposal in Puget Sound. EPA has identified responsible parties for
627-611: A relatively agglutinating language, given its high number of morphemes, including a large number of lexical suffixes. Word order is fairly flexible, although it is generally considered to be verb-subject-object (VSO). Lushootseed is capable of creating grammatically correct sentences that contain only a verb, with no subject or object. All information beyond the action is to be understood by context. This can be demonstrated in ʔuʔəy’dub '[someone] managed to find [someone/something]'. Sentences which contain no verb at all are also common, as Lushootseed has no copula . An example of such
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#1732837849687684-478: A sentence is stab əw̓ə tiʔiɫ 'What [is] that?'. Despite its general status as VSO, Lushootseed can be rearranged to be subject-verb-object (SVO) and verb-object-subject (VOS). Doing so does not modify the words themselves, but requires the particle ʔə to mark the change. The exact nature of this particle is the subject of some debate. Prepositions in Lushootseed are almost entirely handled by one word, ʔal, which can mean 'on, above, in, beside, around' among
741-442: A verb in Lushootseed (excluding the zero copula) carry a prefix indicating their tense and/or aspect . Below is a (non-exhaustive) list of these prefixes, along with their meanings and applications. The prefix ʔəs - is one of the most common. It indicates an imperfective aspect-present tense (similar to English '-ing') for verbs that do not involve motion. More specifically, a verb may use ʔəs - if it does not result in
798-422: Is constructed in two possible ways, one for negatives of existence, and one for negatives of identity. If taking the form of a negative of identity, a proclitic lə- must be added to the sentence on the next adverb. If there are no further adverbs in the sentence, the proclitic attaches to the head word of the predicate, as in the sentence xʷiʔ čəxʷ sixʷ ləbakʷɬ 'Don't get hurt again'. Almost all instances of
855-462: Is derived from dxʷləšucid . The prefix dxʷ- along with the suffix -ucid means "language." The root word , ləš , is an archaic word for the Puget Sound region. Some scholars, such as Wayne Suttles , believe it may be an old word for "people," possibly related to the word " Salish ." Lushootseed has a complex consonantal phonology and 4 vowel phonemes. Along with more common voicing and labialization contrasts, Lushootseed has
912-574: Is no longer the confluence of the Green and Black Rivers, though it has not changed location. The last year-round Duwamish residents on the river – an old man named Seetoowathl, and his wife – died of starvation in their float-house on Kellogg Island in the winter of 1920. In 2009, the Duwamish Longhouse and Cultural Center was opened on the west bank of the river as part of the Duwamish Tribal Organization's reassertion of its historic rights in
969-404: Is petroleum. Other common contamination occurs from farms, surface runoff , or failing septic tanks. With the spread of ecological concerns in the 1970s, various environmental, tribal, and community organizations became interested in the severely polluted Duwamish River and Waterway. Kellogg Island, the last remnant of the original river, was declared a wildlife preserve, and nearby terminal T-107
1026-505: Is placed on the penultimate syllable. Some words do not fit the pattern, but generally, pronunciation is consistent in those ways. Northern Lushootseed also was affected by progressive dissimilation targeting palatal fricatives and affricates, whereas Southern Lushootseed was not, leading to some words like čəgʷəš ("wife") being pronounced čəgʷas in Northern dialects. Different dialects often use completely different words. For example,
1083-706: Is scheduled to be offered in August 2019, with the instructors Danica Sterud Miller, Assistant Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington Tacoma , and Zalmai Zahir, a PhD student of theoretical linguistics at the University of Oregon . Lushootseed consists of two main dialect groups, Northern Lushootseed ( dxʷləšucid ) and Southern Lushootseed ( txʷəlšucid ~ xʷəlšucid ). Both of these dialects can then be broken down into subdialects: The Lower and Upper Skagit dialects have variously been categorized as being different from one another, or one in
1140-762: The First Avenue South Bridge , the South Park Bridge , the Spokane Street Bridge , and, directly above the latter, the West Seattle Bridge . Historically, the West Spokane Street Bridge also crossed the west fork of the Duwamish Waterway from 1924 until the 1970s and 1980s. 47°35′04″N 122°21′37″W / 47.58444°N 122.36028°W / 47.58444; -122.36028 Lushootseed language Lushootseed
1197-683: The General Electric Company between 1906 and 1917. Puget Sound Traction and Lighting Company (now Puget Sound Energy ) bought the Seattle Electric Company in 1912; the Georgetown Steam Plant powered the Seattle-to- Tacoma Interurban and Seattle streetcars; it also provided residential and industrial power to Georgetown. Originally an oil -fired plant, it converted to a coal in 1917. As hydropower
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#17328378496871254-588: The Lushootseed language, the name of the Duwamish River (and of the Cedar River) is dxʷdəw , meaning "inside." The Lushootseed name for the Duwamish people, who lived along the river and its tributaries, is dxʷdəwʔabš , meaning "people of the inside." For thousands of years, the Duwamish people have lived along the Duwamish River and its tributaries. The earliest archaeological evidence of human habitation along
1311-527: The Puyallup Tribe . By their definition, a "speaker" includes anyone who speaks in Lushootseed for at least an hour each day. As of 2013 , the Tulalip Tribes ' Lushootseed Language Department teaches classes in Lushootseed, and its website has Lushootseed phrases with audio. The Tulalip Montessori School also teaches Lushootseed to young children. Tulalip Lushootseed language teachers also teach at
1368-584: The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Georgetown Steam Plant The Georgetown Steam Plant , located in the Georgetown neighborhood of Seattle, Washington , was constructed in 1906 for the Seattle Electric Company to provide power for Seattle, notably for streetcars . The plant was originally built by Stone and Webster in 1906. One of the first reinforced concrete structures on
1425-733: The White and Green Rivers combined at Auburn , and joined the Black River at Tukwila to form the Duwamish. In 1906, however, the White River changed course following a major flood and emptied into the Puyallup River as it does today. The lower portion of the historic White River—from the historic confluence of the White and Green Rivers to the confluence with the Black River—is now considered part of
1482-528: The Dictionary of Puget Salish distinguishes between schwas that are part of the root word and those inserted through agglutination which are written in superscript. The Tulalip Tribes of Washington's Lushootseed Language Department created a display with nearly all the letters in the Lushootseed alphabet , sans the letter b̓, which is a rare sound which no words begin with. See the external links below for resources. The Lushootseed language originates from
1539-469: The Duwamish River dates back to the 6th century CE. The Duwamish traditionally used the river to hunt ducks and geese, fish for salmon, cod, and halibut, harvest clams, and gather berries, camas, and other plants for food and medicinal purposes. When the first American settlers came to what is now the Seattle area in 1851, the Duwamish lived in more than 90 longhouses, in at least 17 villages. Native villages on
1596-535: The Duwamish river, it remains an important habitat for the wildlife in the area. Thousands of salmon and trout that visit the marshes and estuaries each year to spawn. The Duwamish supports chinook, coho, chum and steelhead, as well as the more rare sockeye, sea-run cutthroat trout and bull trout. Pink salmon run in the millions every odd-numbered years in recent history. Canada geese, great blue herons, starlings, cormorants, pigeons, buffleheads, Caspian terns, warblers, hawks, ospreys, bald eagles, and numerous waterfowl call
1653-423: The Duwamish were eventually supplanted by white settlements and commercial uses, and there was evidence of deliberate burning of Indian longhouses in 1893. Duwamish people continued to work and fish in the area, using man-made "Ballast Island" on the Seattle waterfront as a canoe haul-out and informal market, but by the early 20th Century, most remnants of traditional life along the river had disappeared. Until 1906,
1710-536: The Georgetown Steam Plant "marks the beginning of the end of the reciprocating steam engine " as the dominant mode of generating electricity on a large scale. Originally located along an oxbow of the Duwamish River to provide cooling water, the plant was left inland after the original river channel was straightened in 1917. Retired after nearly 75 years of operation, it remains "surprisingly complete and operable". The plant has three Curtis turbines , manufactured by
1767-638: The Green River. Later, in 1911 the Cedar River was diverted to empty into Lake Washington instead of into the Black River; at that time, the lake itself still emptied into the Black River. Then, with the opening of the Lake Washington Ship Canal in 1916, the lake's level dropped nearly nine feet and the Black River dried up. From that time forward, the point of the name change from Green to Duwamish
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1824-478: The Lower Duwamish River might be exposed to such high levels of PCBs that the growth or survival of their offspring may be reduced. The Port of Seattle owns several properties along the Duwamish River and industrial channels. In 2020, a set of six parks were renamed to use Indigenous Lushootseed names following consultation with local tribes. The Duwamish Waterway is spanned by four major, public bridges:
1881-636: The Tulalip Early Learning Academy, Quil Ceda-Tulalip Elementary in the Marysville School District, Totem Middle School, and Marysville-Getchell, Marysville-Pilchuck and Heritage High Schools. Since 1996, the Tulalip Lushootseed Department has hosted the annual dxʷləšucid sʔəsqaləkʷ ʔə ti wiw̓suʔ , a summer language camp for children. Teachers also offer family classes in the evening every year, making Lushootseed
1938-482: The U.S. West Coast, it originally provided power for the Interurban Railway between Seattle and Tacoma ; it also provided both direct current for Seattle's streetcars and alternating current for Georgetown, then an independent city. They purchased General Electric steam turbine technology, based on patents originally held by inventor Charles Gordon Curtis . At the time, this was cutting edge technology, and
1995-518: The World's Languages in Danger and classified as Reawakening by Ethnologue. Despite this, many Lushootseed-speaking tribes are attempting to revitalize their language in daily use, with several language programs and classes offered across the region. Lushootseed has been historically known as Niskwalli/Nisqually, Puget Sound Salish, Puget Salish, Pugué, Squaxon, Skagit, and Skagit-Nisqually. The name of
2052-576: The annual Tribal Canoe Journeys that takes place throughout the Salish Sea . There are also efforts within the Puyallup Tribe. Their website and social media, aimed at anyone interested in learning the language, are updated often. To facilitate the use of Lushootseed in electronic files, in 2008 the Tulalip Tribes contracted type designer Juliet Shen to create Unicode -compliant typefaces that met
2109-543: The area and its continuing struggle for federal recognition as the Duwamish Tribe. As of the present day, the Duwamish Waterway empties into Elliott Bay in Seattle . The waterway was completed after the completion of the man-made Harbor Island in 1909. The waterway is now divided into two channels, the East and West Waterways. In 1895, Eugene Semple , who had earlier served as Governor of Washington Territory , outlined
2166-433: The boundary between the northern and southern varieties). Some sources given for these figures, however, go back to the 1970s when the language was less critically endangered. Linguist Marianne Mithun has collected more recent data on the number of speakers of various Native American languages, and could document that by the end of the 1990s there were only a handful of elders left who spoke Lushootseed fluently. The language
2223-401: The city's public electric utility. Since 2014 it has opened to the general public once a month, from 10am to 2pm on the second Saturday of each month. The plant houses the last operable examples of early vertical Curtis steam generating turbines, as well as operational reciprocating steam engines, a collection of vintage machining tools, and several smaller steam engines. On July 12, 2021,
2280-609: The coastal region of Northwest Washington State and the Southwest coast of Canada. There are words in the Lushootseed language which are related to the environment and the fishing economy that surrounded the Salish tribes. The following tables show different words from different Lushootseed dialects relating to the salmon fishing and coastal economies. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Lushootseed: Article 1 of
2337-465: The expansion of Harbor Island. The shallow, meandering, nine-mile-long river became a five-mile engineered waterway capable of handling ocean-going vessels. The Duwamish basin soon became Seattle's industrial and commercial core area. Activities included cargo handling and storage, marine construction, ship and boat manufacturing, concrete manufacturing, paper and metals fabrication, food processing, and countless other industrial operations. Boeing Plant 1
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2394-508: The language in Lushootseed is pronounced (and spelled) variably across different dialects. In the northern dialects, the language is called dxʷləšucid . In most southern dialects, it is txʷəlšucid , whereas in the Muckleshoot dialect it is pronounced xʷəlšucid . The southern pronunciation txʷəlšucid is derived from the original by de-voicing d into t and switching the position of l and ə . The English name "Lushootseed"
2451-483: The needs of the language. Drawing upon traditional Lushootseed carvings and artwork, she developed two typefaces: Lushootseed School and Lushootseed Sulad. In the summer of 2016, the first ever adult immersion program in Lushootseed was offered at the University of Washington's Tacoma campus . It was sponsored by The Puyallup Tribal Language Program in partnership with University of Washington Tacoma and its School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences. A similar program
2508-548: The plant was the site of the last performance of the rock band Big Black . Paul Carosino and Lilly Tellefson founded the Georgetown PowerPlant Museum in 1995 to restore, maintain and operate the plant. However, the next year Carosino died of a heart attack at the age of 48, leaving Tellefson to run it without him. In this era, programs were established to use the facility to teach boiler firemen and steam engineers. The plant remains owned by Seattle City Light ,
2565-510: The pollution and in 2014 it published a final cleanup plan. By late 2015, 50 percent of the PCB-contaminated sediment had been removed. As of 2022, cleanup and restoration efforts are ongoing. The Duwamish River faces other types of pollution such as fecal coliform bacteria, caused by combined sewer overflows . If these overflows were to be cleaned up, the overall quality of the water would not improve much. The river's most common pollutant
2622-716: The pronouns: The third person singular -s is considered marginal and does not work with an actual lexical possessor. Lushootseed, like its neighbors Twana , Nooksack , Klallam , and the North Straits Salish languages , are in the Central Coast Salish subgroup of the Salishan family of languages. The language is spoken by many peoples in the Puget Sound region, including the Duwamish , Suquamish , Squaxin , Muckleshoot , Snoqualmie , Nisqually , and Puyallup in
2679-495: The river home and can be seen feeding in and around its waters. Many of the animal species found in or around the river contain an unhealthy amount of contaminants. For example, other than salmon, any type of fish or shellfish found in the river is unfit for human consumption. It was found that PCB levels in fish and crab that live in the waterway most of their lives are 35 to 110 times higher than in Puget Sound salmon. The Ecological Risk Assessment also found that river otters from
2736-567: The same, but are both recognized as being distinct from the Sauk dialect. There is no consensus on whether the Skykomish dialect should be grouped into Northern or Southern Lushootseed. Dialects differ in several ways. Pronunciation between dialects is different. In Northern dialects, the stress of the word generally falls on the first non-schwa of the root, whereas in the Southern dialects, stress usually
2793-417: The second position in the sentence: dxʷləbiʔ čəxʷ ʔu 'Are you Lummi?' xʷiʔ čəd lədxʷləbiʔ 'I am not Lummi.' Here, negation takes the first position, the subject pronoun takes the second, and 'Lummi' is pushed to the end of the sentence. Negation in Lushootseed takes the form of an adverb xʷiʔ 'no, none, nothing' which always comes at the beginning of the sentence that is to be negated. It
2850-654: The south and the Snohomish , Stillaguamish , Upper Skagit , and Swinomish in the north. Ethnologue quotes a source published in 1990 (and therefore presumably reflecting the situation in the late 1980s), according to which there were 60 fluent speakers of Lushootseed, evenly divided between the northern and southern dialects. On the other hand, the Ethnologue list of United States languages also lists, alongside Lushootseed's 60 speakers, 100 speakers for Skagit, 107 for Southern Puget Sound Salish, and 10 for Snohomish (a dialect on
2907-488: The time of its landmarking, it contained the "last operating examples of the world's first large scale, steam turbine". The building itself, "built by a fast-track construction process, was designed and supervised by Frank W. Gilbreth, later a nationally famous proponent of efficiency engineering." The building is also a Seattle City Landmark and is on the Washington State Register of Historic Places. In 1987,
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#17328378496872964-798: The word for "raccoon" is x̌aʔx̌əlus in Northern Lushootseed, whereas bəlups is used in Southern Lushootseed. Morphology also differs between Northern and Southern Lushootseed. Northern Lushootseed and Southern Lushootseed have related, but different determiner systems. There are also several differences in utilizing the prefix for marking "place where" or "reason for," in subordinate clauses, with Northern Lushootseed using dəxʷ- and Southern Lushootseed using sxʷ- . See Determiners for more information on this dialectical variation. According to work published by Vi Hilbert and other Lushootseed-language specialists, Lushootseed uses
3021-585: Was converted into a park, creating a substantial natural area near the mouth of the river. In 2001, the Duwamish River Cleanup Coalition (DRCC) was established as a community advisory group in response to the EPA declaring the Duwamish a Superfund site. As of 2023, the DRCC continues to organize cleanup events, provide community education, and campaign for environmental justice. Despite the industrialization of
3078-539: Was developed in the 1910s and 1920s the steam plant became uncompetitive and only used for emergencies. It last produced electricity in January 1953 when water levels at the dams were low. Decommissioning took place in 1972. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1984, and is also designated by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark . At
3135-492: Was established on the Lower Duwamish in 1916, and Boeing Plant 2 , further upriver, in 1936. Due to 20th century industrial contamination , the lower 5 miles (8.0 km) of the Duwamish Waterway was declared a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2001. The contaminants include PCBs , PAHs , arsenic , mercury , and phthalates , discharged from multiple industries. The cleanup included
3192-493: Was extensively documented and studied by linguists with the aid of tribal elder Vi Hilbert , d. 2008, who was the last speaker with a full native command of Lushootseed. There are efforts at reviving the language, and instructional materials have been published. In 2014, there were only five second-language speakers of Lushootseed. As of 2022, although there were not yet native speakers, there were approximately 472 second-language Lushootseed speakers, according to data collected by
3249-462: Was historically spoken across southern and western Puget Sound roughly between modern-day Bellingham and Olympia by a large number of Indigenous peoples , numbering 12,000 at its peak. Today, however, it is primarily a ceremonial language, spoken for heritage or symbolic purposes, and there are about 472 second-language speakers. It is classified as Critically Endangered by the UNESCO Atlas of
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