{"id":1868,"date":"2019-07-10T20:59:56","date_gmt":"2019-07-10T20:59:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2019\/07\/10\/unearthing-l-a-through-a-tribal-tongue\/"},"modified":"2025-01-08T20:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-01-08T20:25:17","slug":"unearthing-l-a-through-a-tribal-tongue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/niemanstoryboard.org\/2019\/07\/10\/unearthing-l-a-through-a-tribal-tongue\/","title":{"rendered":"Unearthing L.A. through a tribal tongue"},"content":{"rendered":" \n
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In November 2017, Los Angeles Times staff writer Thomas Curwen noticed an email subject line that intrigued him: UCLA linguist seeking to awaken the sleeping language of the Tongva \u2013 LA’s indigenous people.<\/em> The email \u2014 a story pitch from a publicist \u2014 brought his attention to a project trying to keep an ancient language alive by teaching it to modern-day students.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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This got him thinking about the power of language. Curwen had always admired writers who write about language and linguistics: Among them The New Yorker’s Comma Queen<\/a>, Mary Norris; linguist Geoff Nunberg<\/a>; and novelist Walker Percy, author of The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language is, and What One Has to Do With the Other<\/a>. He drew on their work to inspire his thinking about how to tell a story about the Tongva language.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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First, he needed a good character with a good story. He found both in Pam Munro, the linguist who was teaching adults and children how to speak Tongva as part of a \u201c\u2018reclamation effort\u2019 to preserve a language no longer spoken.\u201d But the story still needed a narrative arc, something that would move it forward.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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\u201cThat was what I figured I\u2019d take the reader on,\u201d Curwen says. \u201cA journey of sorts that began with this strange world that you didn\u2019t know existed because it\u2019s so covered up by concrete, and ending with a nature walk where the world is revealed by the Tongva words themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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But it soon became clear that this story about words needed more than words to come alive. It needed images of the places, people, and things evoked by the words. It needed audio to capture the singular melody of the Tongva language. It needed video to marry voices and images in what LA Times photographer Katie Falkenberg calls \u201ca visual poem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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The result is \u201cFinding Tovaangar,\u201d<\/a> a multimedia story that seamlessly combines many layers and moving parts: a narrative embedded with images, audio, and video; an illustrated guide to Tongva (think digital flash cards); an interactive map of Los Angeles\u2019 evolving cultural landscape; a study guide for elementary school teachers; and a personal narrative by the lead writer. An example of multimedia storytelling at its most ambitious, it not only entertains, but teaches and engages on multiple levels.<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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Produced through a team effort, the story combined the efforts of no fewer than eight collaborators:<\/p>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n \n

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