BRATTLEBORO — The Wampanoag Indians of southeastern Massachusetts inhabited the lush seacoast areas known today as Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and environs, some of most desirable real estate in the U.S. These native peoples helped the Pilgrims survive and in return were systematically denied their land, culture, and very lives.
In time, their distinctive language, like so many other native languages, died too.
But then someone did something new. A Native daughter - inspired by dreams and blessed with intellect, vision, and perseverance - resurrected the mother tongue and in so doing renewed the hope and purpose of an entire community.
The story of this Wampanoag daughter - Jessie Little Doe Baird - unfolds in the award-winning and inspirational documentary We Still Live Here (Âs Nutayuneân in Wampanoag), directed by accomplished filmmaker Anne Makepeace.
Little Doe describes how back in 1993, she was working as a social worker in her Native community in Massachusetts, where, according to the 2010 U.S. Census, 2,336 Wampanoag still live. There, she began having dreams and visions of people trying to communicate to her in a language she couldn't understand.
At that point, no living speaker of Wampanaog had existed for more than a century.
“I began to wonder if the people were trying to talk to me in Wampanoag,” Little Doe said.
Like a match lighting a candle, Little Doe's epiphany ignites an idea that we see unfold over the course of the film.
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The film follows Little Doe Baird as she convinces tribal members to get behind the project. The camera lingers on each face we discover, allowing us a certain intimacy. We discover how and why each person is drawn to the idea of rediscovery through the difficult and sometimes esoteric study of language.
We see how Little Doe's unlikely relationship with an MIT professor gets off to a rocky start, then serendipitously leads to a fellowship there, where she eventually completes a master's degree in linguistics. We see the fledgling language group begin deciphering the centuries-old documents that the tribe had carefully preserved.
One of the most memorable moments in the film is when the old parchment comes alive as the group begins to translate their ancestors' accounts of the occupation of the settlers.
The poignancy of the moment is etched in each face: this is the first time they can actually hear the words of their long-gone family members describing the individual events that, we know in retrospect, led to the wholesale near-extermination of an entire culture.
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Makepeace has won several Emmys, an Academy Award nomination, and a long list of other accolades during her 25-year film career, and she has been traveling around the country with the film since it premiered on PBS's “Independent Lens” series last November.
The film is critically acclaimed, including winning the Moving Mountains Prize at Telluride's MountainFilm festival and the Full Frame Inspiration Award at that prestigious festival in Durham, N.C.
“The challenge of telling a story about language in a cinematic way appealed to me,” said Makepeace, who despite her name is a full-blood Yankee from New England living in Connecticut. “The passion of the people makes it come alive.”
One way the words come alive is through the gorgeous and sometimes haunting animation used throughout the film.
“The animation shows language going away and coming back again,” Makepeace said.
The images of words and animated figures enliven long shots of the lush coastal landscape. The black-penned figures float in like memories that linger near, then join with the living color of the Wampanaog today, dancing, sharing meals, celebrating the fact that the children of the community - like Little Doe's daughter Mae, who at 3 years old is the first native speaker in 150 years - are learning Wampanaog again, reclaiming something precious, something beyond words.