MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
People on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming have lost a revered elder. Marian Scott was one of fewer than a hundred fluent speakers of the Arapaho language. She died last month. Scott spent her life preserving her tribe's language and culture as an elementary school teacher and a mainstay at powwows, community events and basketball games. Here's her colleague, Patricia Goggles.
PATRICIA GOGGLES: Everybody called her Neiwoo, which is grandma, which is my grandma, you know, when you're talking to your personal grandma.
MARTIN: Elena Singer directs the language and culture department at Wyoming Indian Schools. She and her colleagues remember Marian Scott in this story from Wyoming Public Radio.
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ELENA SINGER: She made our school a place where kids felt like they belonged because they had a Neiwoo, a grandma. Kids would go to her for a hug. They could see her in the hallway and just seeing her in the hallway brought comfort to a lot of our students, you know, because she was a loving person. We have monthly translation meetings where we invite them in, and they work with our teachers. It's just wonderful to hear them when they get together and they talk, and they're talking in Arapaho and they're laughing, and it's a beautiful sound. And we're all listening with our whole beings, trying to hang on to every word that they're saying so we can keep it going.
RAY YOUNG CHIEF: I'm Ray Young Chief. And when I became a teacher, it was real surprising because a couple weeks after I started in on my job, she seen me, and she said, hey, how come you didn't tell me you were teaching? And I said, oh, yeah, I am. She said, I know. My grandkids come home and tell me what you teach. She said, you're good. You know, that really made me feel good about myself because coming from a teacher like her, you know, that says a lot.
GOGGLES: My name is Patricia Goggles. I have known her for being a fluent speaker, for being a mom, a grandmother and just somebody that our community could depend on. She was a very powerful presence, and she will be missed. (Crying) I'm sorry. I can't hardly talk about her without - kind of left a big - a great big blow to our language. And I guess one of the best things that we can do to honor her memory is to encourage our young people to learn our language.
The work that she has done with her life is really, really important. And if we can do half of what she's done to impact our community, we would be in a good place, you know. She impacted so many lives. It's going to be felt for a really long time.
MARTIN: That was Patricia Goggles, Ray Young Chief and Elena Singer, voices gathered by Wyoming Public Radio's Hannah Habermann.
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