Upper Chinook | |
---|---|
Kiksht | |
Native to | United States |
Region | Columbia River |
Extinct | 11 July 2012, with the death of Gladys Thompson[1] |
Chinookan
| |
Language codes | |
ISO 639-3 | wac |
Glottolog | wasc1239 |
ELP | Wasco-Wishram |
Upper Chinook, endonym Kiksht,[2] also known as Columbia Chinook, and Wasco-Wishram after its last surviving dialect, is a recently extinct language of the US Pacific Northwest. It had 69 speakers in 1990, of whom 7 were monolingual: five Wasco[3] and two Wishram. In 2001, there were five remaining speakers of Wasco.[4]
The last fully fluent speaker of Kiksht, Gladys Thompson, died in July 2012.[1] She had been honored for her work by the Oregon Legislature in 2007.[5][6][7] Two new speakers were teaching Kiksht at the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in 2006.[8] The Northwest Indian Language Institute of the University of Oregon formed a partnership to teach Kiksht and Numu in the Warm Springs schools.[9][10] Audio and video files of Kiksht are available at the Endangered Languages Archive.[11]
The last fluent speaker of the Wasco-Wishram dialect was Madeline Brunoe McInturff, and she died on 11 July 2006 at the age of 91.[12]
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