Growing up on a small Abenaki Indian reservation in Canada, Elie Joubert thought the language was something he shared with just a few members of a shrinking tribe.
In later years, with shame brought on by prejudice, he even denied knowing it.Then a friend overheard Joubert speaking to his mother in the tongue. Then he decided to instruct others, prepare a dictionary and grammar and rekindle the key to his ancient people's culture.
Joubert was nearly too late.
At 51, he has been declared the youngest Abenaki speaker by the Historical Society at the Abenaki's Odanak Reservation in Quebec near Trois-Rivieres.
"There's less than a dozen speakers," said George Broadwell, a professor in the University at Albany's anthropology department, which has recognized Joubert's work. "He is doing a lot of good work to pass it on to next generation and write it all down."
Recently, in a high-ceilinged living room on Elm Street in the Mansion Hill District, a dozen adults conjugate verbs. Some travel 60 miles or more for the weekly class, given without charge. Most are part Abenaki or other Native American tribe.
It was only as a teenager that Lonnie Breznak, from Earlton, N.Y., learned of her Abenaki heritage from a grandmother. Such late discoveries are common in a people long assimilated and who also suffered discrimination. Now she has embraced the language and is instructing her 8-year old daughter at home.
"Only now do I feel I am where I'm supposed to be," said Breznak. "And it's important for my daughter to learn Abenaki, because if nobody does, it will die out."
The class' host is Eloisa Perez-Suarez, a descendant of Mayans and native of Mexico, who cites an interest in preserving Native American culture.
"In my language are the secrets to our culture and our history," said Joubert. He offers an example, such as the word for bat that literally means, "a devil that flies."
And another: "Alnoda" originally signified an Indian man, and today means a man, he said.
"Sanoda," which first meant a "non-normal man," or someone other than an Abenaki, today is used for a "non-Indian person."
"It's not an insult, it just means you are not like us," said Joubert. He was born at Odonak, moved to Albany with his family as a youth, returned to Odonak and later spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy. He now works with disabled people at Liberty Enterprise in Amsterdam.
Over a red and black embroidered tunic, he wears a hare-bone and green glass choker and an eagle medallion made of a deer's thigh, both his own creations. In or out of class, he teaches with fervor.
Aside from his grammar text, Joubert is preparing a 6,000-word dictionary. Only a few others were compiled, the first in 1691 and the last in 1932.
Abenaki words have numerous meanings based on intonation, conjugation or declension. There is both a formal mode of speech, which Joubert teaches, and informal ones, often specific to a family and its household.
Though tribal headcounts can be uncertain, several thousand Abenakis are believed to live either scattered or in small pockets, notably in Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire and in Canada.
Sub-tribes include the Penobscots, the Passamaqoudie, the Webenaugs and Pennacooks. About 2,000 Abenakis live at Odanak, where Joubert's mother Cecele teaches as well. This week, he was hired to teach a third class, at the Dawn Land Center in Montpelier, Vt. The friend and fellow Abenaki who prompted Joubert to teach, Mariella Squire, is finishing a dissertation on the tribe's cultural revival.
Language instruction is a critical enterprise for many Native Americans.
There are about 87 native languages spoken in the United States, said Broadwell. But more than half are spoken only by elderly people.
"What we're facing, over the next 25 years, is that half of native languages will become extinct," he said. "Almost none is completely safe."