 Yo, n'o go'am glaquice an'au. Ik'in n'o kai lak'us, G'iawala k'g'ingin an'u. G'iachakus. Kus, m'n si'diots, kus, Iak'n da glu'n. K'n m'n si'diots, I see like I say, not very fluent. So I wanted to say, my name is Sophie Hanson, Native name is glaquice an'au, and my goal is to help children and what little I know of our language because I don't claim to be a fluent speaker, but my goal in life is to try and be more vocal in our language than I am now. But I came to this school here, not so much a school, it's called Liquid Family Life Society and it's an establishment where they help people and they have children's programs like day care and head start program, counseling and teen activities and anything that got to do with the community. They think of things to do for the community to help. And I hang out at the, I came here 21 years ago and I hang out at the head start and day care, they didn't have an elder to mingle with the children and teach the children the words of our people. So they were slighted, so they asked me if I would go there as well. So I finish that head start, then I go to day care. So it's nice to be wanted. And the kids range from age 3 to 5 and then when they turn, after they graduate from head start and 5 years old, they go to elementary school in the community which is a kindergarten and they proceed from there. We teach lessons to be learned in life, teach them the manners, how to be a good child and share, you know, different things like that. It's a perfect name for the class that they're in, head start, giving them a head start in life so they know how to act in society. But then I come in, I join the class and then I teach them what little I know of our language which is a fair amount and I don't really go into sentences with them because I feel that they're too young 3 to 4, 5, maybe not. Maybe I should experiment and try to make sentences. I don't think I've ever given it a thought. I just do what I do. I teach them language. The language that I teach them is called pauses. It's called kwapala. And I think it's a shame that we don't have just kwapala speaking people here. We have new channel, West Coast, Salish, maybe a handful of other speaking families in the neighborhood. But it's so hard to get other teachers to come in to speak to their children in their language. We've tried. We've tried to invite them, but nobody wants to. Nobody's as dedicated as me. When I first meet them in September, they're just rolling around playing on the floor. They don't listen to me and I have to go listen to Sophie. Sophie is only here for a little while. Sophie is going to teach you a new language. Eventually they start listening and at the end, sometimes I don't even have to say anything. They know how to count from 1 to 10 in the kwapala language. They know the body parts. They know what the weather is doing outside. And they can say them in kwapala, which is very rewarding. I don't even have to... After a while, I don't have to say the words to them. They just know it. Yeah. Very rewarding. So I always say, when they do that, they go through the class and show me how it's done. I just say, my job is done. I have some children that are in my class right now. They have parents that used to be my students. They're all grown up and had their own children and now their children are coming here because I've been here for 21 years. Yeah. We've always had culture incorporated into the the day-to-day schooling that they do here at Head Start and they have drumming and they have dancing that teaches children how to dance, paddle dance and stuff like that and teaches them how to use the drum correctly and... Yeah. And we invite community members to come in and show the kids what cultural things that they can bring to the program and the kids find those visits very enlightening and... But lately, it seems that we haven't done so much of the culture. So we're trying to brainstorm on what we can do to have more culture in the children's lives. Because I've been here such a long time that I just seem to do what I know how to do. I teach the children the body parts, our body parts, the counting and the weather and the animals tell them the names of the animals and I can't... There must be more that I do but I can't think of them very nervous. But... And they learn very quickly. The children learn very quickly. They're just like little sponges they want to know. They come and ask me what is this little squirrel called or whatever, there was a stuffed animal so I tell them them. I tell them what their little finger mean, how do you say it in our language and stuff like that. They ask me, so I tell them. I always hear people in the community they say, our language is disappearing the elders are all passing away they're taking the language with them and so there is a few classes that are in our community and they have classes where there's mentors and people that want to learn from the fluent speakers there's not very many of them. Maybe I would say at the most six or seven and it's just too bad that we never ever recorded the ones before they passed away and so there are people in the community that think it's very important it's a very important thing to learn so those that our language isn't completely disappeared and so so there is a little bit of things that people are doing to correct the situation but for here we have two teachers one is myself and one is my cousin Betty and she's about the same stage in the Kwakwala as I am that she just knows the basics and not very fluent in our language but we both go to a class of fluent speakers to listen to them and to try and better ourselves in the way we how we our knowledge in our talking about our language number one uppermost in my thoughts is the language I even wrote a story I write stories as well I'm a poetry I write poetry and my thoughts are that if only more people could come out and speak learn how to speak our language then we wouldn't be so scared if it disappearing and second of all the culture teach the children teach them who they are and how they can be much better for learning the culture for them to be feel good about themselves that they know something and be proud of it and not hesitate to learn the different dances the drumming, the singing the speaking of our language all of that is included in the culture more people are learning the language and I would love it if my family my grandchildren my great grandchildren would all follow my thoughts and thinking how important it is to learn the language and to be part of our culture in the communities I'll tell you a story of why I started writing I was driving in a car I was a passenger and the lady was driving and I was looking out the side of the window and things just popped into my head left and right coming into my head and somebody said to me it was time it was always in you but it was time for you to start writing it on paper so that's how I started writing stories stories that I've written about 12 15 maybe and all my stories have a lesson to be learned at the end of the story for the child to see what the story meant and how did it end the goodness that ended it for them to see how it ended it this was a good thing I have a this Liquid Dog Family Life Society had some extra funding one year so they asked me if I wanted to contribute one of my stories I hesitated and I didn't know because I'm not one to be bragging about what I do or whatever so I finally gave them one of my stories and they sent it to a publisher and it got published and it came back with big box full of all my books in there and it was Aboriginal Day downtown and they sent me in a chair with all these books and people were buying them for ten dollars each each book that I sold had to autograph it oh my fingers were sore at the end of the day signing autograph autograph it was quite an interesting process when I started writing stories I wasn't writing them for I could be famous and have these book full of my stories or whatever all I wanted children, my grandchildren great grandchildren to have something of me when I'm not here no more and hopefully I don't know how I can do it but if I can still put it on even tie tie holes and make all those stories and with a ribbon or whatever so they're all put together and this is for Mandy this is for Maya this is for Roger and so on to photocopy them that's what I meant, yeah so all my grandchildren can have one of all my stories I never wanted to be famous or nothing and because that book was sent and was published publishers calling me calling me calling me all the time come to this workshop on authors and where is it, Chicago New York wherever, Cleveland I said are you going to pay my way there no we can't do that and I said if I went could you pay for my helper to come with me then I'm not coming I said but they said oh think about how nice it would be for you to have your book for sale and for it to become well known and stuff like that I said oh no that's okay but they won't stop they keep calling me they keep calling me so that's my part of my life where I don't I haven't written any stories for the past I don't know two years maybe a year now I should start in again I think they got the ball rolling already that they're going to have full immersion classrooms in our community at one of the schools here down a little ways over there but that would be nice I think full immersion which means the children in elementary school will be learning how to speak our language and that like I said that's my goal that's what I want people to do whether it be a child grade 3 grade 12 young adults your children are just starting out in life grandmas and grandpas mums and dads everybody should be I know it's hard you know society out there you got to go to work you got to go to shopping you got to go take your time to go learn the language but even if it's just a handful let's say let's put a number on it and say 100 100 of us are really dedicated we're going to learn the language and that will maybe start the process of a lot of us more than 100 speaking of life I know I'm dreaming but