SKAGIT COUNTY, Wash. Jill La Pointe is carrying forward the legacy of her late grandmother, Vi Hilbert, one of the most influential champions of the Lushootseed language, KIRO 7 News reported.
Hilbert earned international recognition for her lifelong work preserving and revitalizing Lushootseed, counting linguist Dr. Thom Hess among her longtime collaborators. Today, La Pointe serves as executive director of the Indigenous Peoples Institute at Seattle University and as president of Lushootseed Research, an organization dedicated to protecting and promoting the language.
Lushootseed, written dxʷləšucid in the International Phonetic Alphabet, is the ancestral language of many Indigenous communities across Western Washington, stretching from the Skagit River south to the Nisqually Basin and from the Cascade Mountains to the Salish Sea. La Pointe, whose ancestral name is tsisqʷux̌ʷał, is Upper Skagit and a descendant of the Nooksack Tribe.
Walking the landscape that inspired the language with KIRO 7, La Pointe shared Lushootseed names for native plants, including Oregon grape, salal and western red cedar, and explained how many words mirror connections in nature. The word for salmonberry, she said, contains the word for butterfly, and the sight of butterflies once signaled to her ancestors that king salmon were running in the streams.
She also reflected on the devastation that followed European settlement, saying disease wiped out more than 90 percent of her people and nearly took the language with them. "If it were to disappear, it would be a great tragedy," she told the station, adding that it is vitally important for those who travel this land to know its language.
Her message was ultimately one of connection. In Lushootseed, she said, the term siʔab describes an honorable person, and her elders taught that all people should be addressed that way. And rather than goodbye, speakers say huy, meaning "until we meet again," often raising both hands in a Coast Salish expression of gratitude and welcome.