For tonight's movie night at the UUCiA, we saw "We Still Live Here - Âs Nutayuneân". What a wonderful documentary! All of us were quite moved.
The story is inspiring and amazing on multiple levels. It's just an hour long. Highly recommended!
According to the movie's Facebook page, the film "tells a remarkable story of cultural revival by the Wampanoag of
Southeastern Massachusetts. Their ancestors ensured the survival of the
first English settlers in America, and lived to regret it. Now they are
bringing their language home again."
According to the film's website, "The story begins in 1994 when Jessie Little Doe, an intrepid,
thirty-something Wampanoag social worker, began having recurring
dreams: familiar-looking people from another time addressing her in an
incomprehensible language. Jessie was perplexed and a little annoyed–
why couldn’t they speak English? Later, she realized they were speaking
Wampanoag, a language no one had used for more than a century. These
events sent her and members of the Aquinnah and Mashpee Wampanaog
communities on an odyssey that would uncover hundreds of documents
written in their language, lead Jessie to a Masters in Linguistics at
MIT, and result in something that had never been done before – bringing
a language alive again in an American Indian community after many
generations with no Native speakers."
It's not available on Netflix (at least not as of this writing), but you can learn more about the film (or order it) here.
