Dak júus Rob Yates on teaching and learning the Haida language

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond. 

Dak júus Rob Yates teaches the language of the Haida people, X̱aad Kíl. 

According to the most recent statewide report, there is only one person alive who has spoken X̱aad Kíl since birth. There are two other highly proficient speakers. Yates says he isn’t one of them yet, but he’s still working to breathe life into the language.

Yates has moved several times to do this work. Now, he lives in Craig and has been concurrently learning and teaching the language for nearly a decade.  

Listen:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Dak júus Rob Yates: I think it’s a really rewarding journey. I think it’s a healing journey. For me. It never gets boring, because there’s so much to learn. So I get excited each time I find out something new. It’s kind of like Christmas, getting something new. 

Rob Yates hín uu díi kya’áang. My name is Rob Yates. Dak júus hín uu X̱aad Kíl díi kya’áang. My Haida name is Dak júus. It literally means small shrimp.

I think in 2014 when I got the dictionary of Alaskan Haida and then the Alaskan Haida phrase book came out. And then some of us started teaching ourselves. Then in 2016 I started UAS college courses. 

I became homeless for a short time. Along came this Our Language Pathways Program by [Sealaska Heritage Institute] where they wanted Lingit Haidas and Tsimshian to learn their languages and become teachers. One of my distant relatives in Juneau, I reached out to her, and she’s like, “This program is, it’s like it’s tailor made for you.” So I took it serious, and that summer, I started building up curriculum. The requirement was that you had to live in Juneau on the [University of Alaska Southeast] campus.

I remember it was a Friday, and I was supposed to have gone to a meeting in the evening to discuss who was gonna teach X̱aad Kíl at UAS as a fill in, and I forgot, and I lay down and took a nap, and then I woke up to all these texts messages that I was the new teacher.

And the class was three hours long, so it was quite the challenge, and I was a full time student as well. I am back at UAS teaching Beginning Haida, Intermediate Haida and Advanced Haida curriculum development. 

Here again, I find myself transitioning from teacher to student. No, I don’t get the college credit of the Intermediate Haida class that I was taking because I’m now the teacher, and so I don’t get those credits at all. But one of my colleagues said, “You’re going to be so busy teaching that you may not ever get a bachelor’s degree.” It rings more true now, two and a half years later.

The phrase is X̱íinaag ‘láa uu íijang, “life is good,” but it also goes deeper than that, like “life is precious.” “Live your life to the fullest,” type of thing. Whenever I say that phrase, it’s like I could feel the positivity and that they are not empty words, that the words ring true. 

You can sign up for Yates’ ongoing December X̱aad Kíl class here.