Avenger of the Week | Quirina Geary, Indigenous Language Advocate

When Californian Quirina Geary, member of the Indigenous Amah Mutsun tribe, was in 4th grade, a classmate asked her to say something in the tribe’s language, Mutsun.  She couldn’t then, and she says at that moment she felt “less Indian”.

Her family followed many Indigenous traditions such as gathering mushrooms and acorns, her father hunted deer for the family table, and multiple generations lived together, but she did not know a single word of the language.

That little girl grew up to become a professor of linguistics at the University of California at Davis. Although the last native speaker of Mutsun died in 1930, she was able to learn to speak the language while working with Dr. Natasha Warner at the University of Arizona. Geary became a leading advocate of preserving her tribal language, as well as providing encouragement for members of other tribes to do the same.

“There is something about language that is so deeply rooted in identity. It’s how you see the world, and how the world sees you.”
—Quirina Geary

The Amah Mutsun tribe lived in central California when Spanish conquerors arrived. As Indigenous tribes were overtaken, their children were sent to boarding schools where they were not permitted to speak their language. Only the written word and other features of the culture were passed down.

Geary, along with Dr. Warner, published an online Mutsun-English dictionary, and she wrote several children’s books in Mutsun. She has also organized language workshops attended by as many as 80 Mutsun descendants that focused on the meaning and pronunciation of the words.

Geary is one of many Native American women across the United States working to keep their tribes’ languages alive by studying, teaching, and advocating for their continued preservation and use. Women are seen as key to this effort, especially in teaching children about ancestral language.

She is a board member of the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) at the University of California at Berkeley. The Advocates helped form a national Breath of Life Institute for Indigenous Languages in Washington, D.C. to provide resources and encouragement of native language preservation.

For her determination to save her tribe’s language as a key component of the Amah Mutsun tribal culture and her efforts on behalf of all Native American languages, Quirina Geary is our Avenger of the Week.

The @GenderAvenger #AvengerOfTheWeek is Indigenous language advocate Quirina Geary (@Tamien_Nation). “There is something about language that is so deeply rooted in identity. It’s how you see the world, and how the world sees you.” #GenderAvenger https://www.genderavenger.com/blog/avenger-of-the-week-quirina-geary