‘We are still here’ - Valley Native Americans on the challenges of keeping their culture alive
Update: 2021-11-15
Description
Jennifer Malone mostly goes by her English name but she has another name in Wukchumni. “My Indian name is Haiyelihx,” she says, adding that the word s ummer in Wukchumni is haiyel . “So my great grandma named me Haiyelihx because that means summer. I was born July 31st.” She can’t remember where the name Jennifer even came from. Her mom mainly called her Haiyelihx . “Especially when she wanted to get my attention. ‘ Haiyelihx!’ she would say. “When I was in trouble I guess,” Malone says laughing. Her mom, Marie Wilcox, was at one time the last fluent speaker of Wukchumni. But she taught relatives the language and for years pecked away at a computer one letter at a time to write a Wukchumni dictionary. “Her grandma passed away when my mom was 7 years old and that's why, to me, it amazes me how she remembered all of these words, you know, and to be able to put them into a dictionary because she was just 7,” Malone says. Wilcox died last month at the age of 87. Now Malone teaches the
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