Northern Arapaho elder Marian Scott was one of fewer than a hundred fluent speakers of the language and spent her life working to keep it alive and flourishing. She taught at Wyoming Indian Elementary School for almost three decades and stayed involved in the schools and language preservation efforts long after her retirement.
Scott was affectionately referred to by many as “Neiwoo,” which means “my grandmother” in Arapaho. She was a regular at powwows, community events and basketball games, even winning the “fan of the year” award once for her courtside dedication.
Scott passed away at the age of 80 this spring. Her fellow educators at Wyoming Indian Schools talked with Wyoming Public Radio’s Hannah Habermann and shared their stories about Scott’s light and legacy.
Editor’s note: This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
Elena Singer, director of the Language and Culture Department at Wyoming Indian Schools: I was in the classroom as a kindergarten teacher for 17 years, and as a regular classroom teacher, I could always go to Marian and ask her to translate materials or whatever it was. She was always more than willing, and we were all really fortunate to have her right there in the building with us.
She made our school a place where kids felt like they belonged because they had a Neiwoo, a grandma. You'd see her talking to kids, kids would go to her for a hug.
They could see her in the hallway and just seeing her in the hallway brought comfort to a lot of our students, because she was a loving person. She was kind and she was graceful. If you ever were around her, you got that sense from her.
She'd come in, we have monthly translation meetings where we invite [elders] in and they work with our teachers. It's just wonderful to hear them when they get together, and they talk and they're talking in Arapaho and they're laughing. It's a beautiful sound and we're all listening with our whole beings, trying to hang on to every word that they're saying so we can keep it going.
Ava Glenmore, cultural instructional facilitator at the Wyoming Indian Language and Culture Department: I’ve known Marian most of my life, Aunt Marian. Growing up, she was always a presence in my life.
Her and my mom worked together. My mom, Gladys Moss, was also a language teacher up until her passing. In 2009, when my mom passed away, [Marian] was a big presence in mine and my sister’s lives. She came to be with us and she supported us throughout that time. She really took us under her wing.
After my mom passed, I was offered my mom's job, so I had the opportunity to teach alongside Marian. It was the most dream job, being able to work alongside somebody who was a fluent speaker. Even after she retired, she continued to work tirelessly for the Arapaho language.
She felt it was important for all of our kids and anybody who wants to learn, so she started helping other school districts around the reservation. They would get her as a consultant and when our school created the Language and Culture Department about four or five years ago, she came in and continued her work.
Ray Young Chief, Arapaho language teacher for Wyoming Indian Middle and High School: I knew Marian basically my whole life because my mom is Ava. She was like a grandma to me. She had so much wealth of our language, the knowledge of how the language was.
When I became a teacher, after I took over my mom's job, it was real surprising because a couple weeks after I started in on my job, she seen me and she said, ‘Hey, how come you didn't tell me you were teaching?’
And I said, ‘Oh yeah, I am.’
She said, ‘I know, my grandkids come home and tell me what you teach.’ She said, ‘You're good.’ She's like, ‘Keep it up,’ you know?
That really made me feel good about myself because coming from a teacher like her, that says a lot. It shows that I'm doing good at what I'm doing and I'm making her proud. That gives me good thoughts about what my grandparents would think too, because she was real close with my grandparents.
Patricia Goggles, dual language kindergarten teacher at Wyoming Indian Elementary: Marian and I were in a program called the Master Apprentice, and she was my master speaker and I was her apprentice. That was my most recent interaction with her.
But in the long term, she was a kind of a mentor at the school for me personally, because I started working in the school in 2000 and she was already there.
I have known her for being a fluent speaker, for being a mom, a grandmother and just somebody that our community could depend on, personally and in a ceremonial sense, especially when we needed to translate English to Arapaho.
She was a very powerful presence and she will be missed. I'm sorry, I can't hardly talk about her without, [long pause]. Kind of left a big, a great big blow to our language.
She meant a lot to our whole reservation, our whole community. I guess one of the best things that we can do to honor her memory is to encourage our young people to learn our language. The work that she has done with her life is really, really important, and if we can do half of what she's done to impact our community, we would be in a good place.
She impacted so many lives. It's gonna be felt for a really long time.
