When I Was Small — I Wan Kwikws: A Grammatical Analysis of St'at'imc Oral Narratives

Joan Lovisek, Ph.D., is a consulting anthropologist and ethnohistorian
in British Columbia.

St’бt’imcets is one of 23 Salish languages, which like most Native
languages in Canada are on the decline due to the lack of speakers. The
language has two main dialect divisions: the Lower (Mount Currie)
dialect and the Upper (Fountain) dialect. Although the divisions are
considered by linguists to be “mutually intelligible,” there are
lexical, morphological, and syntactic differences between the two
dialects.

When I Was Small begins with a brief but unreferenced introduction to
the St’бt’imc or Lillooet. The rest of the book is devoted to three
narratives presented by three St’бt’imc female Elders who recount
their life histories in the 1930s and 1940s. The narratives are
primarily recollections about growing up in the era of residential
schools in the Lillooet area. The narratives are presented in
St’бt’imcets, followed by an English translation and a line-by-line
grammatical analysis. According to Matthewson, the transcriptions and
translations were verified for accuracy and content with minimal
editing.

From an oral history perspective, the life histories include such
eclectic subjects as hop picking in Agassiz, traditional activities such
as fishing, berry picking, time spent in residential school, illnesses,
place names, descriptions of rodeos, and the flooding of the Fraser
River. Some stories are cut short at a poignant moment in the
narrator’s life, such as the death of a child. Matthewson’s decision
to use personal memories and not myths as the content of the grammatical
study limits its value for comparative studies of oral traditions. None
of the subjects raised in the narratives are explored with the kinds of
ethnographic or historical references found in other volumes produced by
the First Nations Languages program. Although the study focuses
exclusively on grammar, it should be read in conjunction with van
Eijik’s Lillooet Language study.

Because Matthewson uses a practical orthography in her study, When I
Was Small will be accessible for comparative studies by more linguists.
The book will also be useful to those conversant in Salish languages and
will contribute to the development of language curriculums.