Intervista a Whonoak: nativo americano del Canada

Come li immaginate i nativi americani del Canada, barricati negli igloo e vestiti di pelli di foca? Niente affatto: i membri della ‘First Nation’ vestono  e parlano come tutti gli altri canadesi. Grazie ad una collaborazione con Speak Up Italia abbiamo potuto ascoltare la storia di Dennis Thomas alias Whonoak: uno di loro. Pratica il tuo reading leggendo l'intervista e esercita il tuo listening cliccando sul link in fondo all'articolo!

Dennis Thomas (Canadian accent):
Hello, my traditional name is “Whonoak,” it’s spelled W-H-O-N-O-A-K, and my English given name is Dennis Thomas. I’m a community member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation, which means “People of the Inlet” here in North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I’ve been a project manager for Takaya Tours, which is an ecotourism, canoe and kayak business. I specifically manage the cultural canoe aspect of the company, that is owned and operated by the Nation.

SPIRIT
And he had more to say about the cultural aspect:

Dennis Thomas:
First Nation culture, along with any other culture around the world, has a spirit. So we believe that a canoe has a spirit. You treat it with respect, you treat it with dignity. You treat it like a loved one, like a relative because that is your means(1) of transportation, that’s the means of your survival. We’re all nomadic over here. We travel from different villages to different resources, to different rivers, to get that fish, to get that bird, to get that elk(2). You need that canoe in order to move it.

Natives
Dennis Thomas says that people tend to view First Nation Canadians as “primitive,” but he believes that Vancouver’s hosting of the Winter Olympics in 2010 may have helped change that image:

Dennis Thomas:
There’s stereotypes, that people always, you know, think of First Nations or natives in Canada; we all live in big igloos, or we all live in teepees, which is not true. There are over 600 different First Nations in Canada. In BC(3) alone, there’s 203. If you think about it, that’s a lot of different cultures. You know, there’s 13 different language families in all across Canada, and alone in BC, there is seven of them. And Coast Salish, which is where I’m from, is one of them. So, because of the opening ceremonies, it was on a world stage(4). They got to see all the different types of cultures, it broke a lot of stereotypes. People are starting to catch on(5), people are starting to want to get to know how it is. When I go to Europe, I go to all the ancient places ‘cause I want to learn history. And I figure(6), and I’d imagine people that travel here, they’d want to know our history.

1    means: mezzo
2    elk: alce
3    BC: British Columbia (lo stato canadese in cui si trova Vancouver)
4    world stage: palcoscenico mondiale
5    to catch on: v. Speak Up explains
6    I figure: penso, immagino

SPEAK UP EXPLAINS:

People are starting to catch on. To catch on è un phrasal verb con vari significati: qui vuol dire “rendersi conto, capire”. Si usa il verbo to catch on anche per parlare di una tendenza, oppure di una moda. Quando una tendenza ha successo si può dire it has really caught on (“è diventato popolare, è diventata una tendenza”).

BC. Queste lettera stanno per British Columbia, una regione occidentale del Canada. Ma attenzione: BC sta anche per Before Christ (AC, Avanti Cristo). Anche le città americane usano le lettere iniziali. Gli esempi più famosi sono LA (Los Angeles) e NYC (New York City).

I figure. Io penso. Il verbo to figure significa capire, calcolare, immaginare ecc. C’è anche il phrasal verb to figure out (calcolare, arrivare alla conclusione) e la frase go figure (che si sente spesso nei film e nelle soap opera americane): esprime solitamente una lieve indignazione ed equivale all’italiano “pensa te”, “guarda un po’!”

Per ascoltare l’audio dell articolo e praticare l'accento Canadese vai sul sito di Speak Up
(link: http://www.speakuponline.it/articolo/canoeing-canada

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