Virginia Beavert

Linguist career

As early as the age of 12, Beavert began working with Melville Jacobs and other linguists and anthropologists as a liaison and interpreter. In the 1940s, Beavert served in the Women’s Army Corps in New Mexico during World War II for three years. As a result of her distance from Native speakers of Ichishkíin, she discovered it was a struggle to communicate as fluently during a phone call to her mother.

Her parents, Ellen Saluskin, and stepfather Alex Saluskin worked alongside linguist and anthropologist Bruce Rigsby from the University of Oregon. Their work to develop the Ichishkíin alphabet eventually transformed into the first Ichishkíin dictionary in 1975, which Beavert participated in with her stepfather and Dr. Bruce Rigsby.

When her stepfather Alexander Saluskin (also known as Chief Wi-ya-wikt) became ill in the 1970s, she set out to get a college education in anthropology and language studies. Her stepfather motivated and encouraged her to pursue her education and teach Ichishkíin, to anyone interested in learning.

Beavert cautions that Native languages, cultures, and traditions are not one and the same; while there may be similarities between practices and dialects, many anthropologists and ethnographers mistakenly use information on Native cultures interchangeably.