The last speaker

When she first went to school, they asked her name and she didn't answer. Hupa was her first language; English wasn't yet. Her cousin answered for her: Verdena Bristol. Bristol became part of her story.

She was born March 1, 1936, in the Hoopa Valley. Other children of her generation went to boarding schools; her grandmother raised her, and spoke Hupa with her. She spoke it with her mother every day until her mother died, in the late 1990s.

After that: "I didn't have nobody to talk to." So she recorded herself, thirty-two 90-minute tapes, and played them back. It was her way to hear someone speaking Hupa.

The tapes went to an archive at Berkeley, with her silent films of Brush Dances. In 2015 a linguist won a grant to transcribe them and narrate the films in Hupa. "I've kept these stories in my head and wanted to share them," she said.

She co-founded the Hupa Language Immersion Nest so the children could speak it again. She died March 7, 2026, six days after her ninetieth birthday. Wikipedia says the language went extinct with her death; her family says the words will continue to live on. In 2015 she said: "If they pay attention to my student, it will probably survive."

First published on iLands: ilands.ai/content/356790342982307840 | Azlae on iLands