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Some give by going to the Missions Some go by giving to the Missions Without both there are no Missions

CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NORTHERN ALASKA1312 PEGER ROAD FAIRBANKS, ALASKA 99709

Phone: 907-374-9532 www.dioceseoffairbanks.org

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Jesuit Priest Helped Preserve Language for Alaska Natives

Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ ~1864-1927

Volume 55 Number 2 Spring 2017

On March 2nd, Diocesan Coordinator for Library and Archives, David Schienle, was invited to attend the Alaska Anthropological Association Conference, which took place in Fairbanks, Alaska. Julius Jetté, SJ, was featured during talks at this year’s AAAC. Fr. Jetté spent a total of 27 years in Alaska, arriving in 1898. While serving in Alaska, he learned the Koyukon Athabaskan language, and began writing a dictionary which was completed by Koyukon Scholar Eliza Jones in 2000, seventy three years after his death. David recalls that one of the conference highlights was when David Kingma, of the Jesuit Oregon Province Archive, presented a biographical profile on the late Fr. Jetté. Another conference presenter, Dr. James Kari, of the Arctic Native Language Center, and editor of the Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary, talked about ANLC’s project to produce a complete annotated Koyukon place name database, partly, by utilizing the Jetté map. The conference intention was to present the new findings but also to honor a legendary missionary in Catholic Alaska history—Fr. Julius Jetté, SJ. In Alaskana Catholica, Fr. Louis Renner, SJ, in 2000, wrote: The body of this great missionary and scholar—who 29 years earlier was granted permission to go to Alaska, “at least for a time, as an experiment, to see whether his health is able to bear the rigors of that region”—was laid to rest in the mission cemetery, where it lies buried in the frozen tundra to this day. The written legacy and the memory of the man, however, live on. His published works and his manuscripts still receive much attention, and older people along the Yukon still remember well and speak fondly of Julius Jetté, known to them as “Father Jetty.” The following article first appeared in the Catholic Anchor, in 2015. It provides a wonderful insight into one of our Alaskan pioneer missionaries-- Fr. Julius Jetté, SJ. I am indebted to Editor, Joel Davidson and to Author, Naomi Klouda for allowing me to share it with you. –Patty Walter

Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ, in Nulato, Alaska

The Alaskan Shepherd Newsletter Volume 55 Number 2 Spring

“Alaska is a thing of the future much more than a thing of the past,” Jesuit priest Jules Jetté wrote in the 1920s. “Even of the little that is known, a good part has been painted in fanciful colors or inaccurately recorded. To take all this for granted and strictly limit myself to the description of Catholic missionary work in the country would have been, it seems to me, as setting a real picture in an imaginary frame.” Father Jules Jetté (1864-1927) made good on his high standards. As a missionary priest coming to Alaska in 1898, his primary role meant conversions and baptisms among the Athabaskans, but as a scholar, he wanted to chronicle the multitudinous complexities of the Koyukon Athabaskan language and culture. As a humanitarian who loved the Ten’a people, the melding of those two vocations meant Father Jetté was uniquely able to bestow a lasting gift on Alaska’s unknown future: An encyclopedic dictionary on the Koyukon — the most widely spoken Athabascan language in Alaska. Spoken primarily in the western interior of Alaska, the language now has less than 300 speakers and the number is steadily falling. To preserve the language for posterity was no ordinary accomplishment. “The Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary is a great potlatch of language,” said Alaska anthropologist Richard Nelson who is perhaps most known as the host the popular public radio series called Encounters. Speaking to the Catholic Anchor, Nelson said Father Jetté’s dictionary is “arrayed with the gifts of words, each one as precious — and potentially as fleeting — as the breath it is borne on.” Father Jetté’s dictionary was not meant to be merely a work for academics, but aimed at relaying the heart of the Athabaskans. His love of the customs and words come through in his tidy calligraphy script. Yet time itself was against the man, the priest and the scholar. His dictionary wasn’t published until 102 years after he wrote his first Koyukon vocabulary notation. By then, he’d elicited a lot of help beyond the grave. The result is the Koyukon Athabaskan Language Dictionary, by Father Jules Jetté and native speaker Eliza Jones, edited by James Kari.

UNLIKELY ALASKAN

At the turn of the end of the 19th century, Alaska attracted Catholic priests who embraced the difficult missions outlined by their superiors. Jesuit Aloysius Robaut, who traveled up the Yukon River and founded the Holy Cross Mission in 1887, wrote a harrowing description of life in the Alaska mission lands. “Those winters of seven months with interminable nights in houses poorly lit and poorly heated were too much for those men that psychologically were not equal to it. It took a strong physical constitution, a nervous system firmly set on an even keel, a healthy sense of humor, a character impervious to moodiness and a zeal for the glory of God … To survive, one had to possess them all and in a heroic degree.” Father Jetté didn’t seem a likely candidate. Born in 1864 in Montreal, he entered a life of title and privilege. His father, Sir Louis-Amable Jetté, served as a judge and professor before becoming lieutenant governor of Quebec in 1898. His mother, Lady Jetté, founded the order Sisters of Charity of Montreal. At 18, Father Jetté entered the Jesuit novitiate, wrote his biographer, Jesuit Father Louis Renner, in Alaskana Catholica. At age 32, Father Jetté was ordained a priest in the Jesuit Order. His studies in the humanities and natural sciences included a three-year focus in advanced mathematics at the best schools in France and Canada. This was hardly typical training ground for spending seven months of winter’s interminable nights in houses poorly lit and poorly heated.

NATIVE AT HEART

Yet soon after arriving in the Yukon River village of Nulato in 1898, he identified with Interior Alaskans, called the Ten’a. “I am indeed very much like a native on the point of sensitiveness, and this gives me a wonderful facility to understand them,” he wrote in a 1899 letter to his superiors. “I have only to treat them as I would be treated myself.” Father Jetté set about learning the language. He visited families and accompanied the Ten’a men on fishing and hunting trips, keeping his notebook handy to record words and stories. In watching women prepare hides, he recorded minute details such as how many times they scraped skins for drying. He also undertook a census of

By NAOMI KLOUDAREPRINTED WITH PERMISSION FROMCATHOLIC ANCHOR, JOEL DAVIDSON, EDITOR


DOCUMENTING & LIVING A CULTURE

From 1908 to 1915, he worked on his 2,344-page Koyukon dictionary, despite limitations such as frozen ink and scarce sheets of paper. Yet, bent over his manuscripts in his 17-by-17 foot log cabin on the banks of the Yukon River, he found genuine satisfaction and peace in his labors, Renner wrote. During this time Father Jetté published “L’Organization sociale des Ten’as,” and an 85-page article “On Ten’a Folklore,” as well as “Riddles of the Ten’a Indians.” On July 18, 1916, he became a naturalized American citizen. His work and popularity among the Ten’a gave him a connection few failed to notice in a vast region. He obtained a camera and began to photograph people he served, documenting them for posterity. He processed the glass plates himself, then gave many photos to people to keep. He’d taken part in all the seasons of people’s lives.

FINAL YEARS

When an accident befell Father Jetté on Oct. 22, 1922, it didn’t seem fatal. On that day in the Yukon River village of Tanana, he lifted a large log he meant to saw into firewood. He suffered a hernia just at freeze up when travel was

1,300 names, birth dates and genealogy, as well as geographical names. An old sourdough’s stor y described Jetté as delicate and “five-feet and a little something. He had the appetite of a mouse and his face like a baby angel’s only tougher, you understand, and possessing a heart as big as his two feet.” A fellow priest described him as wearing the poorest clothes and claiming for himself the most uncomfortable room. “He had made up his mind to make himself Indian with the Indians,” wrote Jesuit Father Joseph Perrow. Within four years, Father Jetté was fluent in Koyukon, Renner wrote. An area the size of Minnesota encompasses this group of language speakers. Father Jetté took confessions in the language and celebrated Mass, impressing both the Ten’a and visiting outsiders. Episcopal Archdeacon Hudson Stuck stayed for a service presided by Father Jetté in 1906 in Nulato. Later he wrote, “Here for the first and only time, I listened to a white man so fluent and vigorous in the native tongue that he gave one the impression of eloquence.” Abruptly in 1903, after five fruitful years in Alaska, he was sent to leave what he called “this blessed soil” for a return to Canada by his Jesuit superiors. “He was perplexed by the summons, all the more because his health was good,” Renner wrote. Obediently, he left Nulato for the Jesuit college of St. Boniface in Winnipeg where he “taught mathematics, wore Indian moccasins and smoked his pipe in class,” Renner records. As time allowed, he began to compile a short grammar of Koyukon. By 1904 he was back in Alaska in time to accompany his beloved Koyukon for their fall hunt. “As I arrived in Nulato after a full one year’s absence from my flock, having lost one half of my Indian language and my muscles softened by quiet college life, I felt bound to plunge into Indian life again, renew old acquaintances, pick up some strength of limb and some fluency of speech, and above all keep company with the native and remind them there’s a God to serve and a religion to practice,” Father Jetté wrote.

Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ, in Nulato, Alaska

nearly impossible. Trails lacked snow. Eleven days passed before friends could get Father Jetté to doctors in Nenana, transporting him by boat and dogsled. He was nearly dead when he arrived, Renner wrote, his hernia found to be strangulated. Already gangrene had set in. Recuperation meant a year in a Fairbanks hospital and an operation in Seattle, then more recuperation at Seattle University. Teaching French, acting as spiritual father to the Jesuit community, and writing a partial history of the Alaska mission kept him from returning to Alaska until 1926. When he finally made it back to Alaska, he planned to assist in St. Joseph’s Mission along the Akulurak River. He died eight months later in the now-abandoned village of Akulurak on Feb. 4, 1927. He is buried there on the frozen tundra, in a grave marked and visited by his Jesuit descendants.

DICTIONARY’S SURVIVAL

Father Jetté didn’t publish his seven-volume dictionary during his lifetime partly due to his perfectionist nature. He didn’t consider it finished as he sought deeper understanding of a certain sound or additional meaning. When he died, the manuscripts may have been with him. By 1936, they were certainly in Nulato though, and the Rev. Joseph McElmeel, superior there, placed the manuscript at the disposal of Jesuit Father Robert Sullivan who was at Nulato doing research for his doctoral dissertation, called “The Ten’a Food Question.” Father Sullivan told Renner in 1996 that he was given the manuscript with an aim of publishing it. In 1943 — seven years later — the manuscript was mailed to Spokane at the request of the Jesuit’s Oregon Province archivist Father William Lyle Davis. Many years later, Father Wilfrid Schoenberg, an archivist of Jesuit papers at Gonzaga University, rescued the rest of Father Jetté’s papers from an old shed in Nulato in June 1958. “I heard since, that flooding waters swept the shed and contents down the river,” he told Renner. Fortunately, the dictionary was not in it.

A REDISCOVERED TREASURE

Alaska Native languages themselves were faced with destruction from 1920-1960 when the American education system imposed on villages demanded only English be learned and spoken. But an ambitious revival


began at the University of Alaska Fairbanks when the Alaska Native Language Center was founded. Linguist Michael Krauss arrived at UAF and began the research program for the languages in the 1960s. Eliza Jones, a Koyukon who had already worked extensively with written translations, began working with the dictionary in 1972. “Many years ago, I got this bright idea that I could make a dictionary of our language and I figured I could have it done in two years,” Jones wrote in her introduction to the Koyukon dictionary. When Krauss introduced her to Father Jetté’s dictionary manuscript, it was the first Koyukon writing she had seen that she wasn’t directly involved in producing. “I was so fascinated with this manuscript that had been written before my time. It was like listening to an elder telling me stories of the past. I wanted to re-transcribe and reorganize the material and combine it with my own knowledge of the language. I have worked with Father Jetté’s material for so long that it has become like working with a real live person. I find myself arguing with him on some things,” she wrote. Getting the dictionary prepared for publication would take 23 years. James Kari, who headed the Alaska Native Language Center for many years at UAF and edited the dictionary, like Krauss, became familiar with the full body of Father Jetté’s writings, illustrations and photos, stored in the Gonzaga University archives. The 1,118-page dictionary that made its way to print April 1, 2000, clearly was built on the body of Father Jetté’s work. Kari remains fascinated with the Jesuit priest’s organization and contributions. The result of nearly 30 years in Alaska left a tremendous trove of opportunities for future scholars, Kari said. In Gonzaga University’s archives his written works take up more than nine feet of space. In raw form, Father Jetté’s language manuscript contained 2,344 pages. The dictionary contains many drawings made by Jetté to illustrate concepts such as the various designs of Ten’a hunting traps, fish snares and snow goggles. One entry details the Hi’o stick dance and its 13 songs.

STORYTELLING SCHOLAR

Father Jetté’s intimate knowledge of the Koyukon language

Continued on page 7

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You are also invited to join us on the novena days (June 15-23) inclusive by praying the following prayer: O Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, you said: “Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.” With confidence in your loving, compassionate Heart, I come to you as the fountain of every blessing. I ask you to make my heart humble and holy like yours. Grant me to live a holy life and to die a happy death. During this novena I humbly ask also for certain spiritual and temporal favors:_____Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on me!

To the friends and benefactors of the Missionary Diocese of Fairbanks: On each of the eight days preceding the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and on the feast day itself, June 23rd, a Novena will be offered in honor of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and for our benefactors and their intentions. Additionally, a special Mass will be offered, at Sacred Heart Cathedral, on June 23rd. You are invited to submit petitions to be remembered during the novena (on the reverse side.) No offering is necessary. Any received will be used to support our ministries here in Northern Alaska.

NOVENA

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Mail to: The Shepherd Ladies1312 Peger Road

Fairbanks, AK 99709


Dear Bishop Zielinski, Date___________F01 S2017 02

I want to help you and the missionaries ministering in Northern Alaska to bring the Mass, the Sacraments, religious education, and training to the widely-scattered people of Christ, in Alaska. Please accept this donation to your General Fund and use it where most needed. AMOUNT OF GIFT: $25_______ $50_____ $100_____ $250_____ Other$_______________If donating by check, please make payable to: CATHOLIC BISHOP OF NORTHERN ALASKA or CBNA If donating by credit card: NAME AS IT APPEARS ON CREDIT CARD: ___________________________________________________TYPE OF CARD (Visa, Master Card or Discover Cards only): VISA___ MASTER CARD___ DISCOVER___ One Time Only:( ) Monthly:( ) Quarterly:( ) Twice A Year: ( ) Annually:( )*CREDIT CARD NUMBER: (Strictly confidential): _____________________________________________EXP DATE:_________PHONE:_____________________EMAIL:_______________________________________SIGNATURE: ___________________________________

Dear Bishop Zielinski, Date___________F179 S2017 02I also want to help you rebuild the St. Catherine of Siena in Chefornak, Alaska. Please accept this donation to your Church Renewal & Rebuilding Fund and if the project becomes fully funded, please use it where most needed. AMOUNT OF GIFT: $25_______ $50_____ $100_____ $250_____ Other$____________I have enclosed a check___OR ___Please use the credit card* information entered above.

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Editor’s Note from Spring 2016: The story of Chefornak’s twice-lost church, to fire, is indeed a sad one. The original church was built around 1952 and lost to fire in 1972. A second St. Catherine of Siena was erected by the people, without any outside funding, in the fall of 1975. In 2004, a devastating fire once more laid claim to the church. The Diocese has been unable to fund an effort to rebuild these past twelve years. The people of Chefornak are eager to begin. Sister Kathy Radich, OSF, tells us: “Chefornak is a 100% Catholic community of about 400 people. The village of Chefornak has generously allowed the parishioners of St. Catherine’s to use their Community Hall. The Hall overflows when used for parish events and meanwhile village events are postponed or halted because parishioners occupy the space. In order to have both--valuable community events and a sacred worship place--we must rebuild the church in Chefornak.” 2017 Update: As of May 2017, we have raised $208,527.00 toward the building of the new St. Catherine of Siena church. Our Diocesan Engineer, Cindy Jacobson, writes: “The Chefornak Tribal Council has donated pilings and with the ongoing fundraising efforts by the village parishioners and the generosity of Alaskan Shepherd donors, I believe we can install the foundation. As we continue to raise funds we can begin to purchase and ship materials.”

Thank YouFor your continued prayers and support while we begin

to build the new church.--Bishop Zielinski

St. Catherine of Siena, Building Update


clearly came from his relationship with the people, Kari said, coupled with his academic abilities. “He took confessions and so he was intimately aware and yet treated people with profound respect,” he said. “Jetté was a great genius of his time. Probably the greatest linguistic scholar of any person in his career and the richest of anyone since him.” The most visible revelation about Father Jetté’s character is handed down through his handwriting — tidy, tiny, flowing lines. Among the difficulties of being a scholar in the far north were a shortage of paper and the difficulty of frozen ink. Father Jetté maximized each page with his miniscule handwriting. Perhaps the root of his life’s work was a love for conversation and stories, like the Ten’a he found. One December day in 1901, he traveled by dog team with Koyukon companions, Nelorotemel and Tlitsona. Father Jetté thought to stop and have a meal, perhaps visit for a while. “And what are you thinking about?” Nelorotemel asked him. “Do you think the days are long enough at this time of year for us to spare one hour of daylight for cooking a meal?” Nelorotemel softened that by adding he thought of Father Jetté as more Ten’a than white man. “And there is no Indian who would think of taking his meal now.” Father Jetté got his point and they traveled on. When they finally quit for the day, they fixed a fire and ate. Then it was time to talk, time for stories. “After supper a long and interesting conversation ensued, for a life without talking is not life to a Ten’a, and we had kept a forced silence the whole day long,” Father Jetté wrote. --Naomi Klouda

Fr. Jules Jetté, SJ, in Holy Cross Alaska

Where In The World Is Bishop Chad Zielinski?

July 8 & 9: Nativity Parish Rancho Sante Fe, CA

July 15 & 16: St. Joseph Church Fremont, CA

September 23 & 24: Our Lady of Mercy Point Richmond, CA

Bishop Chad Zielinski will visit the listed parishes--this summer and fall--to speak about the great challenges of ministering within the most northern Diocese of the United States. He will speak particularly about having only 15 priests and the areas they must cover. Because of the vast size of the state, people in the village/bush communities sometimes do not see a priest for weeks at a time. Our villages have no connecting road system and can only be reached by plane. The Catholic Diocese of Fairbanks is the largest in the country in geographical terms. It stretches from Tok, near the Canadian border, all the way across the state to Little Diomede near the border with Russia; from Barrow on the coast of the Arctic Ocean to Chefornak south of Nelson Island it encompasses 409,849 square miles. Within its boundaries the diocese is home to 11,000 Catholics, 4,000 families, out of a general population of 165,500. Fairbanks is also the country’s only fully missionary Catholic diocese, falling under the “Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples” the Church’s international missionary wing. The diocese is among the poorest in the nation. Only eight of its 46 parishes and missions are self-supporting. The viability of these parishes depends in large measure on donors from across the country and around the world.


Dr. Eliza Jones naturally frames a discussion about her native language with a story. In her Athabaskan culture, she says, to know a name of a place is often to know the story behind it. A hill named “Pelvic Bone Point” carries a tale about a man who climbed it to test himself against a bear with a spear; some time later, the only remains were a human pelvic bone at the point of the hill. Eliza Jones is a respected elder and Parish Administrator at St. Patrick in the village of Koyukuk, situated at the confluence of the Yukon and Koyukuk rivers. To her region, which embraces eight village parishes in the Central Yukon, she is an active member of the regional and diocesan pastoral councils, where her insightful observations and suggestions help guide diocesan policies in the area. However, it is her work as the co-author of Koyukon Athabaskan Dictionary that has elevated her name to a wider community. The hefty 11 hundred-plus-page tome is a celebrated work of scholarship. Its foundation lies in the journals of Jesuit missionary priest and scholar Jules Jetté. Eliza updated and expanded his writings. Her many years of work on the dictionary and her service in the Alaska Native Languages Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks led the university to award her an honorary Ph.D in 1990. Robert Ruzicka, a brother in the Order of Franciscan Friars, coordinates the Central Yukon’s eight Catholic parishes. He says Eliza bridges generations and cultures. Eliza’s lived example offers villagers a model of how to negotiate modern life with village ways, “Eliza’s service to her home village has been so special,” Bro. Bob says, “it can be expressed in ‘Not me Lord, but You come to Your people.’” El iza f irst encountered the

challenges of translation in 1963 when Wycliffe Bible missionaries sought her help in translating scripture into Athabaskan. One of the fruits from Eliza and others’ work are the prayers in her Native language used in the parishes in her region. She says she feels an intimacy with the Lord when she prays in her Native tongue. “There is a difference in how you feel when you pray in Denaakk’e. It is closer to your heart somehow. It is speaking from your soul to God. For me it is more meaningful.” She isn’t alone. Several years ago, Eliza was the lector at a special Mass in honor of Alaska Natives that was celebrated in Fairbanks. She read her passage in Athabaskan. At the reception following Mass a respected leader from another village approached her to tell her how happy her reading had made him. He said it was beautiful. “A lot of people today don’t speak the native language, but they like to hear it prayed. They like to hear us pray in our native language because there is something spiritual when they hear it.” She says she’s fortunate to bridge cultures. “I always feel fortunate that I’m rooted in my Native spirituality and the Church. Somehow, I can combine it together. For me there isn’t a conflict between Native belief and the Catholic Faith.”

Speak Lord, Your Servant is ListeningDr. Eliza Jones

By ROBERT HANNONREPRINTED FROM ALASKA CATHOLICSUMMER 2013 ISSUE

Photo By: David Schienle

some give by going to the missions some go by giving to ...€¦ · of the past,” jesuit priest...

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