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Bible translation and medicine man talk: Missionaries, indexicality, and the “language expert” on the San Carlos Apache Reservation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2006

DAVID W. SAMUELS
DAVID W. SAMUELS
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, 215 Machmer Hall, Amherst, MA 01003 Samuels@anthro.umass.edu
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Abstract

This article sketches the effects of 100 years of missionary presence on how people in the San Carlos Apache community regard language and the idea of a “language expert.” Evangelical Christian practice demands an Apache language emptied of all indexical associations with non-Christian Apache cultural practices. The reservation is home to perhaps two dozen missions and churches, each of which takes a slightly different view of the role of Apache language and culture in religious practice. In an exploration of the translation practices of Phillip Goode, a San Carlos Apache interpreter, and of early Lutheran missionaries on the reservation, it is argued that Bible translation is a key factor in shifting ideas about language as a purely referential system on the reservation. This shifting language ideology has repercussions on how people in the community consider the prospects for language revitalization.This article was delivered in earlier versions to anthropology colloquia at Yale University, at Hamilton College, and at the University of Massachusetts. I thank Joseph Errington, Bernard Bate, Harold Conklin, Eleanor Nevins, Bonnie Urciuoli, Enoch Page, Jacqueline Urla, and Roy Wright, both for helping to arrange the presentations and for their generous critiques of the content. Willem de Reuse offered cogent comments and morphosyntactic advice. James Wilce gave careful comments on two versions of the manuscript. Thanks to Jane Hill and Barbara Johnstone, as well as the anonymous reviewers from this journal, for their splendid and productive advice. I also heartily thank the teachers and staff of the St. Charles Elementary School, Peridot Lutheran Day School, and Rice Elementary School for their insights and assistance in the preparation of this essay. As always I remain grateful to the Goode family for their continued friendship and encouragement. All errors and omissions remain my own.

Keywords

San Carlos Apachemissionarieslanguage ideologytranslation
Type
Research Article
Information
Language in Society , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , October 2006 , pp. 529 - 557
Copyright
© 2006 Cambridge University Press

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