World-Making Stories: Maidu Language and Community Renewal on a Shared California Landscape

Edited by Eleanor M. Nevins
University of Nebraska Press (2017)
229 pages

Review by Jurgita Antoine

World-Making Stories is a book on Maidu language revitalization in California, published as part of the Recovering Languages and Literacies of the Americas series at the University of Nebraska Press. Loosely organized as a collection of essays, Indigenous texts, and pedagogical materials, it contains the histories of Maidu community and language, bilingual creation stories, and a set of language lessons.

This book is important to Maidu community for several reasons. First, a survey of Maidu language documentation and revitalization in the book’s first part is a much-needed record. Further, the central piece of the book—the creation story told by Tom Young in the early twentieth century—defines the origins of the people, establishes their relationship to their homeland, and explains the ways humankind and Maidu society function. Publication of the story in Maidu is not only a valuable language resource, it also allows readers to appreciate the aesthetics of Indigenous literature. Finally, the Maidu language lessons, prepared by linguist William Shipley, are concise yet sufficient enough to develop a basic understanding of the language.

Although the stated purpose of the book is to adapt the Maidu stories for use in the community, an academic perspective still dominates the work. The writers never explain the significance of the stories to the community, nor their cultural and spiritual implications. For example, the creation story sets the life cycle of human beings, explaining how children are to be conceived and born, the moral norms and practices in the society, etc. These connections are important because in Indigenous communities, language revitalization does not focus solely on the language, but is a much larger process of decolonization involving the restoration of traditional values and identities, leadership models, and educational systems. While we assume that Indigenous audiences know these issues, unaware visitors to Maidu homelands and global audiences, for whom the book is also intended, are left on their own to extract the significance of the revitalization process and, especially, of Maidu texts.

The Maidu text and translation mechanics deserve a separate note. In Maidu text, discourse markers have different grammatical forms, but their lack of distinction in this translation makes the story confusing and hard to follow.

In sum, the book is a contribution to the expanding body of literature in North American Indigenous languages. However, the reader must be ready for an intellectual exercise and additional research to fully understand and appreciate the beauty and significance of the stories.

Jurgita Antoine, Ph.D., is a field linguist and anthropologist who has worked at Sinte Gleska University and Sisseton Wahpeton College.