Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington

Chasing Voices: The Story of John Peabody Harrington (2021) is a documentary film directed by Daniel Golding.

For 50 years, controversial ethnographer John Peabody Harrington crisscrossed the United States, frantically searching and documenting dying Native American languages. Harrington amassed over a million pages of notes on over 150 different tribal languages. Some of these languages were considered dead until his notes were discovered. Today tribes are accessing the notes, reviving their once dormant languages, and bringing together a new generation of language learners in the hope of saving Native languages.

Cast

Jack Marr

Self - John P. Harrington's assistant

Kathryn Klar

Self - Harrington biographer, UC Berkeley

Ernestine DeSoto

Self - Barbareño Chumash, daughter of last native speaker

Gertrude Van Fleet-Dash

Self - Mojave Elder

David Oechsner

Self - Fort Mojave Tribe

Leanne Hinton

Self - Prof Emeritus of Linguistics UC Berkeley

Richard Applegate

Self - Linguist

Nora McDowell

Self - Fort Mojave Tribe

Nakia Zavala

Self - Santa Ynez Band of Chumash

Frank Dominguez

Self - Santa Ynez Band of Chumash

Kathleen Marshall

Self - Santa Ynez Band of Chumash

Carmen Sandoval

Self - Santa Ynez Band of Chumash