When HARUO AOKI arrived at UC Berkeley in 1958 as the university’s first linguistics student from Japan, he was asked by then-department chair Mary Haas, an advocate for the study of American Indian languages, if he was interested in studying Nez Perce. “Where is Nez Perce spoken, Miss Haas?” he asked. “In Idaho,” she replied. “Could I think it over a couple of days,” Aoki said, as he tried to figure out where exactly Idaho was, and how he was supposed to get there.

Sixty years later, Aoki, 87, a UC Berkeley professor emeritus of East Asian languages and literature, bears the unique distinction of having written the book, or at least lexicon, on Nez Perce, one of the languages spoken by indigenous people of the Columbia River Plateau of the Pacific Northwest. “I use his dictionary every single day. Every day I think of Haruo and I thank him,” said Angel Sobotta, an adjunct professor of Nez Perce at Lewis Clark State College in Idaho. Sobotta was among a group of Nez Perce scholars and tribal members honoring Aoki at a lunch ceremony in UC Berkeley’s linguistics department.

Speaking in Nez Perce and English, their voices at times choked with emotion, the group thanked Aoki for helping to connect them to the language of their ancestors. As part of the ceremony, they bestowed upon Aoki a heavy wool, brown, orange and green PENDLETON BLANKET and other gifts. Milton “Jewie” Davis, a member of the Colville Tribal Language Preservation Program in Washington state, referred to Aoki as a member of the family. “We call him our relative … because of the work he did for our people,” Davis said. Davis spoke of the need to preserve indigenous languages as tribal elders die out and their native languages become extinct. “At least we’re doing something,” he said. “We’re not letting our language go.”

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