Arapaho Truths and Hinónoʼeitíít

Supernaturegirl
Aug 11
2 min read

Updated: Sep 13

Instead of a song this week, check out a resource of incredibly creative storytelling between Elders and youth! 🌬️🎨

This video is called Arapaho Truths and it's just under 30 minutes. It has been featured in at least 25 film festivals across the United States, Europe, and Asia, and won at least 8 awards, including the Most Inspirational Film Award. Part of the inspiration has to be the amazing bridge this film built between Elders and youth. The Northern Arapaho of the Wind River Reservation are known as storytellers, and this film shares 4 traditional stories brought to life with clay animation, shadow puppets, paintings, drawings, and performance. Students of St. Stephens school illustrated the stories, while each story is told by an Elder tribe member. Traditional music is also used. The film aired on Wyoming PBS in 2022 and below is a quote from the Director, George Giglio.

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“The objectives of this project were to educate the Northern Arapaho Students, through the process of filmmaking, about the history and content of their traditional stories, to enlist them, through art and performance to illustrate the stories and to use the film as a vehicle for showcasing the students work. It was also our goal to educate audiences about the importance and fragility of these stories, with the hope that this film might, in a small way, help to keep these stories alive.”

The Arapaho language (Hinónoʼeitíít) is a Plains Algonquian language. It is mainly spoken on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming (Northern Arapaho), but also in western Oklahoma (Southern Arapaho). There used to be more than 2 dialects. It is not precisely known how many speakers there are now, but estimates put it between 250 to 1000, with Northern Arapaho having the majority. The language has been in used in schools since the 1980s, likely thanks to Wind River’s passionate language advocacy and community involvement. There are an increasing number of exciting projects happening here like Arapaho language camps, a grade school immersion program at the Arapaho Language Lodge (Hinono'eitiino'oowu), and “The Arapaho Project", which is all about promoting and restoring traditional language and culture. You can also find several language learning resources online, with organizations such as the Cheyenne and Arapaho Productions or the Cheyenne Arapaho Language Department (links below).

Arapaho, unlike more than 98% of the world's languages, has no low vowels. It is also a pitch accent language with two phonemic tones, and its nouns in come in two classes: animated and inanimate. Fun facts learned is that the Arapaho word for computer translates as "it knows everything”, and "tonoowuneihinoo" is how to say “I am goofy”. Find more with the language resources, and enjoy this fantastic film!

** Information above was found by searching the internet and sources like Wikipedia.

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