Visalia
- When Deyetta “Cassetta” Crowley-Gaytan stopped speaking
her Native American language during her teenage years, she never thought
some of the language would be forgotten. And when her long time family
friend, Darlene Franco, approached her this summer to ask if she would
become a Native language teacher for the Owens Valley Career Development
Center, Gaytan never thought that 60 years later, she would be speaking
“Choinumni” again.
“I didn't want to do it at first,” Gaytan said. “There were words that I had forgotten.”
Now 77 years old, Gaytan, who has resided in Visalia most of her life, has something else to look forward to other than her full-time job—remembering a language she once spoke fluently throughout her youth.
Gaytan grew up in Fresno and remembers
speaking to her grandparents and parents in Choinumni, which is part of
the Yokut Indian tribal language and native to central California. She
stopped speaking the language in the 1940s while attending school.
“The language got lost when I went to school,” she said. “There
just wasn't anyone to speak to.”
At the age of 17, she moved to Visalia and that's when the language became even more distant. Since most of her family members either got married or relocated, she was separated from them for many years. Still, she was able to keep in contact with her brother.
“We would say only a few words to each other. Especially when we didn't want the kids to know what we were saying,” she joked.
The passing of her brother, who died just this year, has left Gaytan to be the last known member of the Bird family and motivates her even more to keep her Native heritage alive.
(Editor's note: Deyetta Crowley-Gaytan is reporter's grandmother.)
Since she's been attending classes and studying as many words as she can with her eldest granddaughter, who is also learning Choinumni, Gaytan has remembered how to count and has learned numerous animal names.
An even bigger moment in her return to her roots was reuniting with her cousin, whom she hadn't seen in years. Even his children and grandchildren have become involved in learning the language.
The Owens Valley Career Development Center is a Tribal Organization headquartered in Bishop that provides career education, family literacy, language and temporary assistance services in five California counties: Fresno, Inyo, Kern, Kings and Tulare. There is an Owens Valley office located in Visalia at 2370 W. Whitendale.
OVCDC is governed by a seven-member Owens Valley Board of Trustees consisting of five members from the Bishop Paiute Tribal Council, one elected trustee representing the Big Pine Paiute Tribe and one elected trustee representing the Lone Pine Paiute Tribe.
“We offer language classes in all areas for our communities,” said Darlene Franco, director of the OVCDC Nüümü Yadoha Language Program. This includes; Owens Valley Paiute, Pakanapul, Kawaiisu, Kitanamuk, Wukchumni, Yowlumni, Lakota, Western Mono & Yaqui.
Classes are taught for families in the evenings and on the weekends. Language is also incorporated daily into the OVCDC Family Literacy programs through the Early Childhood Education program and the TANF Prevention programs.
“Without the program, many of our language teachers wouldn't have a place to have classes, or have the support to continue,” said Franco.
Now working in its second year of the program's two-year grant from ANA —Administration for Native Americans -- the program is going strong, with as many as 30 people attending classes at times.
Two main goals of the program are
to produce more language teachers through an immersion process called
“Master Apprentice” program and “Teacher Training,”
where the hope is that students will eventually become a new generation
of teachers.
“These programs are very important in order to carry on our culture
through language. Without our languages we become lost people,”
Franco said. “It is how we were taught to communicate to our Creator.”
As for Gaytan, she continues to remember words in the midst of her everyday activities. Even in her sleep or when she's just resting at home, she said, “The words just come to me…I feel very proud to be able to teach the language, not only to my kids, but to 'my-yee' meaning my people,” Gaytan said.
For more information on OVCDC or the language program, call Franco at 738-8248.
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of The Valley Voice Newspaper and may not be reprinted without explicit
permission in writing from the publisher.