Nuu-da'-ye' xaa-maa naa-daa-ghitlh-nvsh;
Nuu-waa-tr’vslh-a~ shu'-nee-ghitlh-'i~;
Nuu-hii-du’-waa-te 'aa-ghitlh-sri.
Honoring Our Past;
Serving Our Tribal Family;
And Controlling Our Future.
The Wee-ya' Program aims to restore the Tolowa Dee-ni' language to a thriving, viable, spoken language through the creation and expansion of speech communities for the assurance of its future and continual use in all aspects of our community's daily life.
In order to achieve the goal of creating and expanding speech communities the Wee-ya’ Staff have a number of activities and programs aimed at reaching this goal, including:
In order to promote language use, the themes of our curriculum often focuses on language that can be used everyday. By focusing on language that can be used in the kitchen, dining room, living room or other areas of the home, we intend to give language learners the skills and abilities to use the language outside of the classroom environment. Other themes we focus on include: cultural activities, stories, geographical locations and cultural awareness.
The Wee-ya’ Committee consists of 7 Tribal Citizens working together to advise the Wee-ya’ Program on its vision, planning and implementation of our Wee-ya’ programs and activities.
Loren Me’-lash-ne Bommelyn, Committee Chair
Nicol Nik-la Aubrey, Committee Member
Pyuwa Bommelyn, Committee Member
Mendy Hinshaw, Committee Member
Andromeda Na'lh-nii-tr'e'-sdvm Lopez, Committee Member
Kyle Hinshaw
Wee-ya' Mee-xwvtlh-yaa~-ne (Language Teacher)
kyle.hinshaw@tolowa.com