This summer I began my courses in Masters of First Nations Studies through UNBC. The first two courses were based out of the regional campus in Terrace, where a group of us started discussing such things as appropriate research methodologies in First Nations communities. One of the first classes was offered by John Dunn, a linguist working with the Tsimshian people of the northwest coast of BC.

John is a quiet, introspective and attentive instructor, someone I consider to be a true 'teacher.' I believe he has formally retired from his professorship, yet he continues his passion: contemporary linguistic theory and how it relates to Sm'algyax (coastal Tsimshian).

On the afternoon of our last class together, John unveiled some of his own private research findings. He seemed reluctant at first, and hesitated many times in his use of words, as he outlined what he had discovered.

During many years of word study and comparing of languages, John said he had uncovered remarkable linguistic evidence that strongly suggests that the Tsimshian language is related to the Indo-European community of languages. More specifically, to Tocharin and Hittite, ancient languages spoken from China through to Siberia and Turkey some 5,000 years ago. An aid to his research is the fact that Hittite is not only an oral language - the oldest written records we have of an Indo-European language are in Hittite, from 3,700 years ago.

So what does that mean? Well, let's back up a bit. I am citing from John's paper, which he first shared with our class, and then went on to present formally at an international linguistics conference late last year in San Francisco. What he outlines is how two languages, from two distant continents, probably originate from the same family.

In contemporary linguistic theory, there is a strong emphases that there is a common 'genetic base' for all languages. Basically, all of the 6,000 human languages currently spoken in the world are profoundly and fundamentally similar. This means, at some point in our very remote past, there was one 'mother language' from which all languages have arisen.

"If these more specific similarities are too numerous to be due to chance resemblance (more than 5% of vocabulary) and are so systematic or patterned that they could not be borrowings… then we say they belong to the same language family," says John in his paper.

To our class, John outlined that he had discovered, based on the work of his 1978 dictionary, that about 18% of coast Tsimshian lexical roots appear to be similar to Indo-European roots. He firmly believes that none of these similar lexical roots could have been borrowed from English, Spanish, French or Russian, the contact languages of the colonial period.

John's paper presents a number of pages of examples of Pre-Coast Tsimshian roots to further reconstruct Proto-Sm'algyax roots. From this he goes on to illustrate how Proto-Sm'algyax corresponds to Pre-Indo-European words.

And here is where the language comparisons become strikingly similar, and when it becomes evident that there is indeed a 'genetic relationship', evidence that the languages being compared have arisen from a common mother language.

"At some point enough correspondence and enough cognates (sounds) will show beyond reasonable doubt that two languages belong to the same family. Not only do the individual sounds have systematic correspondence, the whole systems of sounds correspond," says John in his paper.

These systems of correspondence in Proto-Sm'algyax are almost identical to those found in the Tocharin and Hittite languages. Tocharin is an extinct language stemming from the northeastern most branch of the Indo-European family. It was spoken in northwest China, and speakers ranged even further north and east, all the way up to the Atlai Mountain Range of Siberia, some 5,000 years ago. The Hittite language is also a branch of the Indo-European family. It's spoken language is also extinct, but ancient written records exist. It was spoken in the area now considered to be Turkey.

In our classroom, John went on to identify specific word meanings, cognate pairs and the like. The presentation was very technical, but in looking around at other students I saw they were just as fascinated, attentively following his systematic linguistic analysis.

Over many years of debate, he said, there have been many, many claims about how old the Indo-European language is, and where it originated.

"The coast Tsimshian - hayets-k 'copper shield' and its cognate with Pre-Indo-European Hleios 'copper', the historical relationship between these languages must extend from the past up to at least 6,000 years before present time. We don't have evidence of the use of copper before this time, and Indo-European has a Tsimshian word for copper."

John went on to say that "if Proto-Sm'algyax is genetically related to Pre-Indo-European, speakers of Proto-Sm'algyax were still part of the mother community at least 6,000 years before present time."

This part I understand!
John said that we know that North Pacific coast culture has been stable and essentially the same for the past 5,000 years, and that the Adawx (sacred stories of hereditary chiefs' names) tell of events, confirmed in archaeological and geological records, that occurred as long as 9,000 years ago.

"The Tsimshian language family is related historically to the Indo-European community of languages. It cannot be explained by borrowings - from any time period recent or remote. It is likely that the mother tongue of the Tsimshian peoples is related genetically to Pre-Indo-European," he said.

In short, if this connection between ancient linguistic families is true, John's research is the first firm evidence relating the old and new worlds together, when these two language families / peoples were speaking similar languages some 6,000 years ago.

Although Tsimshian is considered to be an endangered language, it is not extinct, and is still spoken today.

Then, John added more heat to the language origin debate: is it possible that the origins might have been here, on our northwest coast, and not the other way around?

Now you can imagine the looks on the faces in our class when the light finally went on! Now we could understand why he was apprehensive and sensitive about sharing his research findings. Results that truly could turn our modern concepts on end. Amazing findings, but reflective of something our Elders have said many times: our Peoples have been here for a long time.

(Sandra Harris is the Office of the Wet'suwet'en policy and research manager. Harris grew up and is a lifetime resident of the Bulkley Valley. She is married with six children.)