From a StoryCorps Interview with Julian Lang
Lyn Risling ( Karuk / Yurok / Hupa ) and Julian Lang ( Karuk ), photo courtesy of Brandi Easter .
From a StoryCorps Interview with Julian Lang
Writtten by LIndsie Bear
love is at the center of this story but [ also ] kind of the end result of the story , because in the beginning it was just me and my friends , my cousins and all , and we were traveling around . I had gone to college and then I dropped out of college for a while , and then came back to my home country and ended up in the Eureka-Arcata area . During that time , I was wondering what I was going to do with college . Then I started doing this whole theater arts thing . That seemed to be the way to weave together all of these , the history that was so important to me and literature and the arts and everything . It all seemed to make sense that the theater was a place where you could tell all the stories at once . You could weave stories that involved everything that I was really involved in at the time in terms of study .
I started that but then had a little baby . […] Finished out that year and then moved to Santa Rosa and slowly got a job and all of that , and started the family thing down there . […] That was probably in the early 70s , probably 71 or something around in there , 72 . Got to meet a few people and then in Santa Rosa I kept moving — not kept moving but I had a really good job and then was encouraged to apply for another job , which I didn ’ t do . Then this other job did come open as the executive director for the Santa Rosa Indian Center , Urban Indian Center . I decided to apply for that and got the job . A friend of mine came to also apply , and that was David Tripp . I ’ d never really met him before but we ’ re relations and so we ended up getting to know each really well after that .
Fast forward to 1980 , I had left Santa Rosa and was now working as the chief administrator for the Cahto tribe . And they were in their interim process of creating a full council and a dopting a constitution and all of that . Then there ’ s a whole — that ’ s a whole other branch of story which we won ’ t get into , but I ended up leaving the Cahto tribe employment and deciding at that point that I ’ m never going to work again . […] I said , “ Forget it .” I jumped off that path and pursued my path as a Karuk Indian person , cultural person , and never looked back , and decided that that ’ s what I was going to do .
That ’ s when I moved back . I was talked into being a fatawe ’ na , the prayer person for this important ceremony that we have in the World Renewal . I spoke the language relatively good by then . I had studied it on my own . I had this experience in the home , language in the home and language amongst all the kind of elders and community , language community , and then I was also understanding the grammar that I had learned . I was gifted with languages so I learned German and Spanish and Japanese , all these different languages . It was easy for me to organize the Karuk language into some understandable grammar . […] It ’ s just this whole idea of creating myself as a Karuk person that was totally immersed in culture .
During the 70s , during that late 79 – 80 period , there were three of us that used to run around , Glen Davis and David Tripp and I . We did everything that summer together . Young guys , go to all the ceremonies and singing , dancing , just total immersion into that part of it as well , just the social dynamic of ceremonies and going to every one , constantly . Either we were resting up from the last one or getting ready for the next ceremony and we would just spend that whole time
SPRING 2016 ▼ 11