This story was originally published by MPR News.
Melissa Olson
MPR News
In early August, Cindi Martin gave a talk at a national conference in downtown Minneapolis. Hosted by the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf, the conference is one of the largest convenings for interpreters across the country.
Martin, a deaf Ojibwe woman, began by introducing herself with her sign name. She also introduced herself using her Ojibwe name, which she interpreted for approximately 75 people who attended her session.
As the managing director of Indigenous Interpreters Organization, Martin was there to educate conference attendees about the need for more Indigenous Interpreters.
“We want to take our skills as interpreters and integrate our cultural knowledge into the ways that we interpret throughout our community, and be able to support our Native deaf community,” Martin said.
Martin and the IIO team are meeting a need for Indigenous interpreters by adapting American Sign Language for deaf Indigenous people, and educating the interpreting community about the need for culturally informed interpreting.
Martin began her presentation at the conference by relating a story from her own childhood.
Martin said she was an adolescent when her father died. In the days after he passed, Martin asked if she might invite an interpreter to her father’s wake. Up until then, Martin’s siblings interpreted for her outside of school at family events and community gatherings.
The ceremonial leader refused, telling her it was inappropriate to invite someone from outside their community into the ceremony. Martin recalled how she pleaded with him to allow a non-Native interpreter to attend. The ceremonial leader eventually granted her request, and Martin asked a teacher from her high school to attend.
It was then Martin said that she realized that her teacher — no matter how skilled otherwise —didn’t possess the necessary cultural knowledge to interpret during the ceremony accurately.
Martin’s story underscored the idea that “Indigenous” is not a monolithic category. For Martin and her team, interpreting requires specific knowledge of distinct tribal nations and cultures.
During her presentation to the conference, Martin’s position was clear: Indigenous Interpreters are not only fluent in American Sign Language, known as ASL, but their knowledge of Indigenous culture and history is critical for improving access for deaf Indigenous people.
The organization started after a post from Sarah Young Bear-Brown, a deaf Meskwaki woman, went viral. In the photo, Young Bear-Brown’s grade school-age daughter, who is also deaf, walked away from a powwow after experiencing a sense of isolation — she says the powwow organizers had failed to answer Young Bear-Brown’s request for an interpreter.
Young Bear-Brown had shared the photo to call on others to help motivate the deaf community to speak up for themselves.
After a series of meetings with Young Bear-Brown and about 30 others, Martin and fellow interpreters Angela Blackdeer and Sequoia Hauck formed the Indigenous Interpreters Organization as an answer to that call.
Now in their second year, Martin and her team interpret at a variety of cultural events. Martin estimates they have interpreted for about a dozen large scale events during their first year.
‘Mother-hearted woman’
On weekdays, Blackdeer works from a library on the east side of St. Paul. Her son attends grade school nearby. She’s opted to work from the library to save on gas.
Blackdeer says it’s her can-do attitude and her calm approach to problem-solving that led colleagues Martin and Young Bear-Brown to give her the sign name, “Mother-hearted woman.”
The name draws from Plains Indian Sign Language, a sign language once commonly used by tribal nations to communicate with one another. She says she is honored by the name.
“I’m a fixer,” said Blackdeer. “I say that in a positive way. I see problems and issues, and I have intentions to try to just make the world a better place.”
It was an experience within her own family that led her to choose interpreting as a career path. Blackdeer grew up in a small town in rural Wisconsin alongside a cousin who was deaf and blind. She remembered the challenges her aunt and uncle faced trying to enroll him in school.
Blackdeer said it wasn’t until her cousin was in his 20s that he was finally accepted into a school in Oshkosh. She said he later attended a deaf school and learned to sign. Blackdeer recalled how access to language transformed her cousin’s life.
“The difference between him having no language and having sign language was incredible,” Blackdeer said.
Early in her college career she was required to take a second language. To honor her cousin, she decided to take sign language.
After college, Blackdeer worked toward becoming a certified ASL interpreter. After the birth of her first child, she worked for years as a video relay interpreter, the phone services that connect deaf, deaf-blind and hard-of-hearing people to video phone services. The company Blackdeer worked for helped her earn her ASL certification.
Blackdeer says she grew frustrated with companies she believed often left deaf people without access to reliable interpreting services. Restricted by a code of conduct that didn’t allow her to speak out, Blackdeer turned to working in education. Another year passed before burnout set in and Blackdeer stopped working as an interpreter.
Blackdeer is not alone in experiencing burnout. A survey published in 2021 by the Minnesota Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf found interpreters often leave the profession due to the stressors of the job. The survey found fewer than 500 interpreters working in Minnesota and identified as few as seven Native Americans working as interpreters across the state.
After a year away, Blackdeer said she wanted to return to interpreting.
For the past several years, Blackdeer has helped start up Verto, a company she described as using “several bits of technology” to support interpreters. The company is currently focused on developing a new application, a scheduling platform that also allows interpreters to connect with potential clients. Interpreters use a series of tags as a part of their profiles to identify their specific skill sets.
Blackdeer flexes her Gen X sensibilities, comparing the app to one of the early social media sites.
“It’s almost like MySpace for interpreters, where they can add their social media,” Blackdeer said.
Blackdeer says challenges remain as she, Martin and Hauck work to help communities understand the specific needs of deaf Indigenous people.
A first for the Shakopee Wacipi
For three days in August, hundreds of dancers, singers and vendors from around the United States and Canada gathered at the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community Wacipi, an annual powwow that takes place near Prior Lake.
They were joined by thousands of guests who arrived to pitch camp chairs or smooth out a blanket to save themselves a spot in the bleachers that encircled the outdoor dance arena.
This year for the first time in the event’s history, the SMSC Wacipi designated a section of the bleachers for ASL interpreting.
Young Bear-Brown arrived on a Saturday afternoon with her two grade-school age children in tow. She was one of the founders of the Indigenous Interpreters Association. Young Bear-Brown doesn’t work with them full-time but helps out when she can at cultural events and gatherings.
She lauded the powwow for creating a place for ASL interpreting. She said access to what’s happening inside the dance arena helped to foster a sense of belonging for her and others. Blackdeer interpreted for Young Bear-Brown during an MPR News interview at the gathering.
“I’ve never once seen an interpreter until I was here,” Young Bear-Brown said. “I think all powwows need to follow this protocol of having access. It would be nice to be able to set that up and have a safe space for deaf people, to be able to be a part of things. Where we can sit and enjoy and watch and be able to see the interpreter and have the information that everybody else is getting.”
Young Bear-Brown says last year was the first time she and her daughter Maya had access to an interpreter at the event. Her grade-school age daughter competed at the powwow as a fancy shawl dancer.
Young Bear-Brown says watching her daughter walk into the dance arena wearing her dance regalia “is everything.”
Blackdeer and Hauck took turns interpreting the instructions from the emcee as Maya entered the dance arena and stood alongside her peers in the junior category.
“My aunts and uncles dance, my nieces and nephews dance, my cousins dance and now my daughter is dancing in the powwow as well. So, it means a lot to us,” Young Bear-Brown said.
Young Bear-Brown and others looked on as the grade schooler, accompanied by an interpreter, made her way into the dance arena wearing a royal blue shawl.
Indigenizing ASL
As the powwow shifted into high gear on Saturday night, Young Bear-Brown stood atop a milk crate to raise herself above the stream of people passing by. Within minutes, her fellow interpreters had found a pair of safety cones and blocked off the walkway where Young Bear-Brown stood so she could be seen more easily by the dozen or so people who had arrived for the evening session.
Blackdeer says a powwow is among the most challenging cultural spaces an interpreter can work in — and one of the most satisfying. She says they are also working to Indigenize ASL signs, many of which she and others have learned traveling to different powwows. Blackdeer says they’ve started to use signs for powwow dance styles that move beyond spelling out the words.
“We’re going to different places, saying, how do you sign this in your tribe? How do the deaf people in those places sign different things?” Blackdeer said.
She says they’ve started to use the signs for fancy dancing and jingle dress dancing that have been developed by deaf Native people within their own families and shared with them.
Another aspect of Indigenizing ASL is to train and mentor Indigenous people interested in learning to interpret.
Hauck says they have learned something at each of the community events where they have worked.
“I’m kind of doing it in the grassroots way of, like, getting involved in the community first,” said Hauck. “I’m learning from the community, from the elders we’ve interpreted for at events, sweats, and ceremonies and powwows. So, I’m sort of learning that way. It feels like the right way to learn for me.”
In her mid-20s, Hauck is the youngest member of the IIO team. They’ve taken on a lot of the group’s administrative duties. They also work as a theater artist. Last year, they directed a play that employed deaf Indigenous actors.
Still, Hauck describes themself as “a baby interpreter,” who is just taking their first big steps. To grow, they say they’ve spent a lot of time learning from Martin, Blackdeer, Young Bear-Brown and others.
“It’s not just about the interpreting and being that person to go between people and have the language skills, it’s also about supporting and holding our community together and being there for each other.”
All in a sign
Inside the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf conference room in Minneapolis, Martin shared an example of how Indigenous interpretation differs from signs commonly used in ASL.
She explained to those who attended the session that she and her team use signs that reflect Indigenous experiences. She said the approach moves beyond a standard, universal ASL.
In an interview with MPR News, Martin illustrated her point by offering the sign for “boarding school” as an example of how certain signs are more appropriate when working within Indigenous communities. Hauck interpreted for Martin during the interview.
“For example, in ASL, you would sign boarding school, the concept of like the ‘b’ handshape on your chest, like ‘board’, and then you’d sign the word ‘school’, tapping your hands together,” Martin said.
She explained that for many deaf and hard-of-hearing people, deaf schools, often boarding schools, offer learning and lasting friendship. That’s very different from the experiences of other Indigenous people with boarding schools.
Martin said the sign she uses acknowledges a history of family separation, violence and forced assimilation. She said she and her team use a sign that acknowledges child removal and a loss of cultural identity.
She demonstrated the sign as “taking your hand out from you and putting it away, because something is taken away from you.” As a concept, the “something” can take on several layers of meaning — culture, children, language, land.
“So that’s what I mean by decolonizing sign language. It’s having these signs that really describe the event or the topic or the situation, and not just words that someone believes is ASL,” Martin said. “Our culture, our tradition, our language, our love, our focus on each other, our generations, is all within that sign.”
Melissa Olson is a reporter for the MPR News Native News Initiative and a contributor to the North Star Journey series. She is also an essayist and community archivist.