CULTURAL HORIZONS OF WISCONSIN Program 5 Many Voices Closed Captioning Script January 3, 2002

 VIDEO AUDIO

 STANDARD OPEN I am a dreamer. I am one person no one else can be. I am from another country. I am of the Wolf clan. I am German. I am learning my past. I am the future. I am me. I am kind to others. I am part of my community. I am a soccer player. I am bilingual. I am talented. I am this and more.

 SCENE #1

 Gunna: sings in Oneida

 Katharine: Wow, that was great!

 Gunna: That's a traditional Oneida song called "Robin Dance", also known as 
(Oneida language word)
.

 Julia: It's so cool that you can sing in Oneida!

 Katharine: Wasn't there a time in history when the US government tried to force Native Americans to give up their own languages?

 Gunna: Yeah, our language was almost lost. Today, only a few elders speak Oneida fluently. Now they're training people to teach families the language.

 ONEIDA LANGUAGE SEGMENT

What we're going to learn is the "I'm doing it right now" form.

 · Atsyohale 
(Oneida language word)

 · It's important to learn the Oneida language because I want to learn more of my culture. Part of the teaching process of leaning Oneida was Carol's way. She teaches us how to play Bingo in the language.

 · Bingo!

 · No, you say 
(Oneida language word)
.

 · Our language is very descriptive, it's part of the Iroquois family of languages

 · Our word for deer for example is oskanu-tu, oskanu-tu. The root of that word is skana, which is peaceful. And it describing, describing that particular animal and it's peaceful exsistence.

 · Our language and culture gives them a sense of community , a sense of connectedness to creation, give them a sense of self.

 · We wouldn't be Oneidas without our language or our culture.

 · Usually when we get together for our class we start class with a meal. And the family unit, we're always together. My mother lives just down the road from us, and so she's the matriarch of our family. She's a very big part of our family and so we thought it was very important that she be a part of us learning the language together.

 · Well I think it's very important for all of our younger people to know the language because a lot of us older people were not taught this language.

 · Katnawilohalehe. 
(Oneida language word)

 · Gilo, you say it.

 · Katnawilohalehe. 
(Oneida language word)

 · Atnutsistohalehe 
(Oneida language word)

 · The words are hard because they're not like you would read them in English. They're harder to read in Oneida.

 · Desenatal. Desenatal. Kayla, desenatal. Desenatal. 
(Oneida language word)

 · I love to hear my grandchildren talk. They can say more than I can, and I'm really happy with that.

 · The loss of our language. Some of it is attributed to the boarding schools. And that was a deliberate act by the American government to assimilate the Indians. As a way to take care of the Indian problem.

 · With what I've learned for myself in learning this language is self esteem and identity. I've been looking for myself for a long time, and I found Carol.

 · I would like to become a fluent speaker. I think it would be cool.

 SCENE #2 Beng: It's scary to think that the Oneida language almost disappeared!

 Baron: Many people in our state's Native American communities are working to preserve their own languages.

 Gunna: Would you like me to teach you a few words in Oneida?

 Beng: Sure

 Gunna: The first one is she-kuk.

 Beng: She-kuk.

 Gunna: Kya-ta.

 Beng: Kya-ta. Shekuk kya-ta. 
(Oneida language word)

 Gunna: It means hello, friend.

 Baron: We're going to be talking today about different ways that people communicate, both verbally and non- verbally. See what you can discover.

 SCENE #3

 Skylar: Wow, that's really cool! Fei Yin: These are Chinese characters. Chinese people write with them, the same way English speakers write with letters. This means happiness.

 Baron: Since you're Chinese-American, Fei Yin, that kind of writing is part of your ethnic identity!

 Fei Yin: Yeah, Chinese people are also known for their beautiful paintings of nature.

 Baron: So those painters communicate through their art. Have you ever thought about all of the ways people communicate without words? I have an idea. I'd like you to dig up some examples, either from your own family or from an ethnic group that interests you.

 SCENE #4

 Baron: So, what did you guys find?

 Sanjiv: People in Peru make these little scenes of everyday life. They're called retalbos.

 Katharine: This is abomey cloth from the Republic of Benin, in West Africa. These symbols date back to an ancient kingdom.

 Alyssa: I learned that Scottish people have special plaid fabrics like this, called tartans. Each big family group, called a clan, has their own specific tartan.

 Katharine: OK, Skylar, we all know what you're trying to communicate!

 Baron: Those are wonderful examples of items that help people communicate something important without saying a word! If you were going to design a pattern to express yourself, what would it be?

 SCENE 5 Baron: Now, imagine if people of a certain ethnic group put together traditional language and clothes, and added music and dance! What could we learn from that?

 SERBIAN SEGMENT · Smile! Keep your heads up! Nice straight bodies, keep your hands down. Heads up! Keep your heads up!

 · Welcome to the Sumadija Folk Dance Ensemble of St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral!

 · It's about practice, practice, practice.

 · A group of parents and the parish priest from St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Cathedral, here in Milwaukee, formed the Sumadija Serbian Folk Dance Ensemble so that young adults here in the parish would learn more about their Serbian culture and heritage.

 · Serbia is part of the country of Yugoslavia. Sumadija is a region in central Serbia. I was born in Yugoslavia and when I was young me and my parents moved to Wisconsin.

 · My parents were born in Yugoslavia and I was born here in Milwaukee. Being a performer in this dance company just tells me a little bit of who I am and my Serbian culture and I am really proud of it.

 · We use our steps to communicate our dancing because every step has a certain meaning from each region in Yugoslavia.

 · The five major dances that we perform are Srem, Sumadija, Sopsko, Vlasko, and Timok.

 · This is all part of the Sumadija costume.

 · The hat is called a shakiga. The vest my mom made. The sash is called a poyass. The socks my grandma made but the shoes, called aponka were from Yugoslavia. The shoes are the most comfortable you will ever get. We never trip over the toes of our shoes. They're really comfortable.

 · We're off to Niagara Falls!

 · My favorite part about being in the group is just I'm with my friends doing something that I like. We go on various performances to various places and it's just fun.

 · I think that Wisconsin should know about this nationality is because Serbs are, you know we're not a very big population. There are many of us that just came from back home, but I mean we're not really known about.

 · I think people back here think that Serbians are bad people is because of the media and everything, you know just because there was a war going on and the, you always have to have an enemy, and we're the enemy. So we're bad people. Like in school, you hear kids like go up to you and everything and be like, they make bomb noises.

 · I turned around and I told them. Do you have any idea how it is to have your house blown up? All your stuff, all of your belongings, your personal stuff all gone, you know, what if your parents were home at that time?

 · The one thing my uncle told me that I remember the most is to never forget who you are, never be ashamed of who you are.

 · 
(In Serbian with subtitles)
 Serbia is part of my heart.

 SCENE #6

 Baron: Did you think about all the things those performers use to communicate with the audience?

 Candice: They use the music.

 Tony: What about the dance steps?

 Sanjiv: And the costumes too.

 Baron: And the different dances and costumes even communicate which region in Serbia they came from. All those things help express the kids' Serbian heritage.

 Tony: I didn't understand what the boy said about war.

 Baron: The region where Serbians come from has been troubled by terrible fighting. The only things most Americans know about Serbian people are what they've seen in news reports.

 Sanjiv: But I know people from Kosovo who had terrible experiences in that war because of things some Serbian people did.

 Baron: When people are involved in something as horrible as war, it's hard to get beyond anger and hatred. But things will never get better if both sides don't get to know each other, and respect their differences. By performing in the dance troupe, those kids are helping the rest of us understand another part of their culture.

 Candice: Music is a great way to get to know other people!

 Sanjiv: I think so too!

 Baron: Let's look at another example.

 Baron VO: This is the Ko-Thi. Dance Company. Ko-Thi means "to go black" in the Sherba language of Sierra Leone. The performers use music and dance to explore their heritage. They start with African traditions, but add their own ideas too.

 SCENE #7

 ALL: Yeah!

 Cezonne: That was awesome!

 Baron: It sure was! You know, sometimes people use music to express their ethnic heritage in a traditional way, like the Serbian performers. And sometimes people use music to explore their racial or ethnic identity, like the people in Ko-Thi.

 Joseph: People can also use music to share something personal.

 Cezonne: Wouldn't it be cool to actually compose some music?

 STUDENT COMPOSER SEGMENT · Hey there, I'm Davida, I'm eleven years old.

 · Hi, I'm John, and I'm ten years old.

 · Hi, I'm Geoff and I'm nine years old.

 · We're composing the music for this very show.

 · I like music a lot.

 · The first step of this composing was to actually get together and talk, seeing how we're actually going to do this, somehow create this with all our different personalities going into one thing.

 · We had to like, name five things that were the most important about all of us and we had to incorporate that in our music.

 · What do you think about like, your culture? Here, here's a good one. What are five things that best describe you? If you had to pick five things.

 · Well, that leaves a lot of stuff out.

 · The inspiration that I found for my music was that I love video games.

 · My inspiration was the game Mah- jongg. That's a game that comes from China. Mah-jongg is important to me because it's a game I learned with my mom, and we play it a lot.

 · A lot of things that I put into my music was really just the abstract ideas of what I do around the house. The next thing I was put all my ideas and what I did in my culture into a musical piece.

 · The game that's played with lots of different little tiles, and when you discard a tile, you click it, and that makes a sound that I really like, and I incorporated that in the music, and then we transferred it to the violin because the melody sounded good.

 · It did not come right away. I had to practice a lot. I tried to figure out which notes would sound the best. Like you can't expect to hit a grand slam on your first at bat.

 · After we finished out music, we went to the recording studio and recorded it. After we put it together and heard it, it was just kinda like, wow, we did that.

 · Music is a way where I can express myself, show how I'm feeling that day or just me, everything about me.

 · Music can help you express who you are, and have other people learn about you.

 · Besides talking, music is a way where I can tell people about myself.

 · In this project, three people came together with different cultures, different themes, and we came together and made a piece of one music.

 · Yes, we did it!

 SCENE #8

 Alyssa: I loved how they worked together to blend their melodies into a single piece of music.

 Baron: If you were creating music about your own cultural identity, what would each of you want to express?

 SCENE #9

 SCENE #10 Baron: Well, we've had an interesting day! We've seen that language is an important part of keeping a culture alive. Language is needed to pass along legends and history, as well as communicate everyday things.

 Andres: But there are lots of other ways you can communicate, too.

 CREDIT ROLL Giavanna: Yeah! You can express yourself through the clothes you wear, or artwork, or music.

 Katharine: Even the way you decorate your house, or the games you play, can tell people something about you.

 Giavanna: Hey, want to see something I've been working on?