March 5th, 2009

word for "community" in first nation (salish) language


I am trying to find a word for "community" (if there is one, and there's gotta be!) in a Pacific Northwest aboriginal language, preferably Coast Salish.

It's for a story about a modern-day new age commune, which has named itself this word. I was going to go with Ujumaa (Swahili) or Ubuntu (Zulu) but wanted to find a more local word since this takes place in British Columbia.

I have googled combinations of "Coast Salish words" "Salish words" "Coast/Salish language" "Coast/Salish dictionary" etc. I can find a lot of information *about* these languages, but besides like 1-10 and the words for man, woman, sun and moon I can't find many other actual words.

But other suggestions of any First Nations/Native American languages would be cool too! This commune is made up of mostly privileged white people and I don't think they would choose a word they can't easily pronounce. ;-) I'm looking for words that mean "community" or "family". (For instance, Ujumaa literally means "extended family" but was used to describe Nyerere's vision of socialism. And if I can't find anything I'll probably use that for my commune because of that.)