05.02.01 Siepee’s Monastery
47th Clip - Title: Discovering the Deaf Girls - (04:26 m. - 4:22:46 h.)
This clip is posted with homage to Charles-Michel de l’Epee who created the first Deaf “sacred” space by establishing an educational institution critical in the nascence of sign languages, deaf culture, and deaf communities. It is important to note that he did NOT “invent” sign language or started a deaf community. He merely established a public school using sign language - probably the world’s first Deaf sacred communal space where deaf people can flourish in Gaia-God given ways - where deaf people could finally congregate as a community which resulted in the creation of sign language and deaf culture by themselves. The school Epee began in Paris spawned more deaf signing schools in Europe and ultimately in the United States through Laurent Clerc.
This clip is also posted with hands outstretched welcoming a Deaf artist into this story. She is an actress and a children’s book author I was re-acquainted with last night at the KodaWest benefit gala. She was not aware of this DC myth so I explained, in as few ASL signs as possible, my artistic/scholastic/spiritual work on this story. Her enthused responses were typical of very few people who understood the use of metaphors and archetypes in sacred and popular literature. When she exclaimed, “I love metaphors,” I knew that she was one of the rare kindred spirits. As I began describing the Tower Mountain, her hand rose up in front of me, telling me to stop. She want to dive into the myth with a blank state of mind. AA, I give you a warm welcome into a sacred story that does belongs to you as a Deaf person.
Dive into this video clip describing how VisMa FIRST discovered Abbe’ Siepee. Click away . . .
Click here for YouTube if above is undownloadable, too slow to download, or wanting a full screen. Thank you.
Deaf History Commentary: The historical background of the fifth chapter of the DC myth, Siepee Monastery, focuses on the birth of sign languages and deaf communities. The discussion on that history will be broken into parts that correspond to metaphors used the next 13 clips of this chapter. This clip discusses how VisMa first met Abbe Siepee as he met the two deaf girls who led him to begin a monastery (”school”) for the deaf which will be featured prominently in the SIepee’s Monastery chapter of the myth.
Abbe Charles-Michel de l’Epee is still revered today as the Father of manual education for the deaf. His legacy continues to shine as opposed to A. G. Bell whose legacy is now being tarnished based on the hearing public’s growing understanding of his role in degrading sign languages and the deaf community. For more information on Epee himself, please click on this link at Wikipedia, in New Advent - Catholica encyclopedia website, and at the answer.com site. We can find people all over naming their places after Epee. For example, Click here to learn a little more about a children playground named de l’ Epee Deaf Center in Mississippi or click here to look at a painting of a street in Paris named after him. Click here for a picture and some information on the gravesite of Epee in Paris. Click here for further information on Epee’s published works.
I asked Bernard Truffant, a deaf historian in Orleans, France in 1992 if he could sign this French Epee legend to me on videotape. Click here to go to my deaf history website where you can view him describing, in French Sign Language, the first encounter between Epee and the two deaf girls. It is also subtitled for those who could not understand his signing.
Also below here is one bronze plaque made by a deaf sculptor on the same event described in the myth. Click on the photo to enlarge.
