Ojibwemowin: A Nation Lives Through Its Language.

"Life is plurality,

death is uniformity."

Multidimensional efforts are underway in Minnesota to preserve Ojibwemowin. (The Ojibwe language)

We infer the spirit of the nation in great measure from the language, which is a sort of monument to which each forcible individual in a course of many hundred years has contributed a stone. ~

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Scottish Gaelic

Am fear a chailleas a chanain caillidh e a shaoghal.

He who loses his language loses his world.

Dr. Anton Treuer reads from his book "Ojibwe in Minnesota" at the public library.

Loss of language and culture is a main concern of Ojibwe people today. According to Dr. Anton Treuer, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in his book entitled Ojibwe in Minnesota, there are fewer than 1000 Ojibwe speakers in the United States with nearly all of them residing in Minnesota, and a majority of them from Red Lake. Treuer estimates that fewer than 100 speakers are left in Michigan, Wisconsin and North Dakota combined.

Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Spanish

Con cada lengua que se extingue se borra una imagen del hombre.

For every language that becomes extinct, an image of man disappears. ~Octavio Paz

Dr. Anton Treuer is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University. He is the Editor of Oshkaabewis Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language. His published books include Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories and Omaa Akiing.

Although their are thousands of speakers in Canada, language revitalization is becoming a concern there as well. Even within reservations speakers tend to be concentrated. “Almost all the speakers from Red Lake are from the community of Ponemah”, says Treuer. He estimates 675 speakers in Minnesota, 400 of them from Red Lake. “Language and culture go hand in hand”, adds Treuer, and points out that there are only a handful of Ojibwe speakers who conduct all traditional funerals in Ojibwe country.

Absolutely nothing is so important for a nation's culture as its language. ~Wilhelm von Humboldt

The Tribal Chairs of Minnesota's three largest Indian Nations are active in language revitalization. From left to right; Archie LaRose of Leech Lake, Floyd Jourdain, Jr. of Red Lake and Irma Vizenor of White Earth

The Red Lake Tribal Council recently voted unanimously to declare Ojibwe as the official language of the Red Lake Band of Chippewa Indians, and declared that it is important that the State of Minnesota officially recognize Ojibwe (and Dakota) language as the first languages of the State.

It is important to differentiate this type of effort as an official language from say French as an official language of Canada, or the controversy of Spanish speakers in the southwest. Ojibwe and other Indigenous languages are the original languages of the land and not imported tongues as are French, Spanish, or English.

Spanish

Una lengua natural es el archivo adonde han ido a parar las experiencias, saberes y creencias de una comunidad.

A natural language is the archive where the experiences, knowledge and beliefs of a community are stored. ~ Fernando Lázaro Carreter

Bill May of the Ojibwe Language Culture Preservation Department. Bill sends out 4-5,000 texts per month to teach Ojibwe phrases that may be related to the day, season or events.

Minnesota Ojibwe have begun a multifaceted approach to preserve the language. Red Lake sponsored a two-day language summit in June 2008, immersion schools are being funded, and several other approaches are being conducted to garner renewed interest in language and culture, not only among Indians, but non-Indians as well.

There is no such thing as an ugly language. Today I hear every language as if it were the only one, and when I hear of one that is dying, it overwhelms me as though it were the death of the Earth. ~Elias Canetti

Dr. Anton Treuer and Dr. Don Day of the American Indian Resource Center at BSU, teach Indian and Non-Indian alike about language and culture at an event entitled, “Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians, but Were Afraid to Ask.”

MINNESOTA GETS INVOLVED

During the 2009 legislative session, the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council was appropriated $550,000 in fiscal year 2010 and $700.000 in fiscal year 2011 to, "preserve Dakota and Ojibwe Indian languages and to foster educational programs in Dakota and Ojibwe languages." This money is coming from a tax increase voted on in 2008 which began on July 1st, 2009.

Language is the armory of the human mind, and at once contains the trophies of its past and the weapons of its future conquests. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge

State Senator Mary Olson has been a champion for Ojibwe/Dakota language revitalization at the State Capitol

Minnesota legislation established a volunteer working group to develop a unified strategy to revitalize indigenous languages of the 11 American Indian tribes in Minnesota. The legislation also states that the revitalization of American Indian languages is of vital importance to preserving the American Indian culture. The efforts in Minnesota are designed to develop programs to teach the Dakota and Ojibwe languages to students and to create fluent speakers at both the kindergarten through grade 12 level and at the postsecondary level.

Portuguese

Minha pátria é a língua portuguesa.

My homeland is the portuguese language. ~Fernando Pessoa

Perhaps of all the creations of man language is the most astonishing. ~Giles Lytton Strachey

The Dakota and Ojibwe Language Revitalization Group met at 7 Clans Event Center in Red Lake

The volunteer working group shall, among other duties, inventory these efforts and make recommendations regarding how to further revitalize and preserve Dakota and Ojibwe languages.

There have been a series of meetings held throughout Minnesota on this topic. the most recent being held June 16-17 at the Seven Clans Casino/Event Center. Topics included the economic benefits of speaking Dakota or Ojibwe and how they might benefit the global economy, the long-range plans for language revitalization, and examples from the revitalization efforts such as the native Hawaiian language. Hawaii several years ago had only 500 fluent speakers, and now boasts over 15,000.

Hawaiian

I ka '?lelo no ke ola; i ka '?lelo no ka make

In the language there is life; in the language there is death

"Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life." ~"

Octavio Paz

Laurie May is the manager of the Administration for Native Americans (ANA). She was a major organizer of the Red Lake Language Summit.

The Maori language of New Zealand, and Gaelic in Ireland are having great success in revival. In 2009 efforts in Bemidji successfully convinced over 100 businesses to write many signage bilingually in English and Ojibwe from bathrooms to produce.

Irish (Gaelic)

Tír gan teanga, tír gan anam.

A country without a language is a country without a soul.

Is fearr Gaeilge bhriste, ná Béarla cliste.

Broken Irish is better than clever English.

Annamarie Hill, Executive Director of the Minnesota Indian Affairs Council

The working group must file a report to the Minnesota legislature in February 2011. The report will include: an inventory of what is now available regarding language revitalization; curriculum needs for immersion programs and barriers; determine how needs will be met; identify private, tribal, state etc. efforts in the Nation that have money being used for the effort; identify state or federal policy that may interfere with the effort and should be repealed; how to get our elder speakers in the classroom; and finally to assess the level of interest.

The working group includes representatives from the 11 Minnesota Native American tribes, as well as other interested parties. I am honored to be among them.

The loss of languages is tragic precisely because they are not interchangeable, precisely because they represent the distillation of the thoughts and communication of people over their entire history. ~Marianne Mithun

BSU will be posting Ojibwe/English signage throughout the University over the next year

THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE

CHIPPEWA - CHIPPEWAY - OTCHIPWAY - OJIBWAY - OJIBWA - OJIBWE

The Ojibwe language has different sounds than many may be unfamiliar with. This is because Ojibwemowin does not lend itself to the 26 letter English alphabet. Rules then for pronunciation are being developed using the English alphabet as a base. As one can see demonstrated above, Ojibwe and Chippewa are actually the same word heard and then written differently. There is always discussion on the correct spelling of Ojibwe words. In preserving the language, work is being done to get an accepted or standard spelling of Ojibwe words. It is felt by many, that the double vowel system (see below) seems to be the way to go.

Manx

Çheer gyn çhengey, çheer gyn ennym.

A country without language is a country without an identity.

By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. ~Unknown

Helma Cloud Erle is a tireless advocate of Ojibwe language preservation, working in many ways to that end

DOUBLE VOWEL ORTHOGRAPHY AND OTHER WRITING SYSTEMS

For thousands of years, the Anishinaabeg passed on their knowledge and culture orally through Anishinaabemowin. Recently in the language's history, people have begun to write it. You may see it written phonetically using the English alphabet or in the special characters of syllabics, which is used primarily in Canada. The newest writing system is the Double Vowel system, devised by Charles Fiero.

(As an aside, I have a close friend who is a fluent speaker, English being a second language. When reading Ojibwe he must sound the word out to hear what it sounds like. When the new system becomes familiar, fluent speakers would soon be able to read the language.)

Indonesian

Bahasa jiwa bangsa.

Language is the soul of a nation.

Language is the spiritual exhalation of the nation. ~

Wilhelm von Humboldt

Jan Dechampeau and Mary Guardipee have posted Ojibwe language at the Beaver Bookstore.

There is no standard orthography, however the Double Vowel system is gaining popularity among language teachers and learners in the United Stated and Canada (including the seven Ojibwe Tribes of Minnesota) because of its ease of use. And many materials are being produced using this orthography.

Hungarian

Nyelvében él a nemzet.

The nation lives through its language. ~Gróf Széchenyi István

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. ~Unknown

Michael Meuers and Rachelle Houle of Shared Vision and Bemidji’s Ojibwe language project making a presentation to the Bemidji City Council. There are now 110 businesses in Bemidji with bilingual Ojibwe/English signage.

The Double Vowel system is based on the idea that the letters and letter combinations represent Ojibwe sounds, not English sounds even though they are taken from the English alphabet. Each letter or letter combination in the Double Vowel system has only one possible pronunciation, unlike English were the word "read" can be pronounced two different ways with two different meanings.

The system takes its name from its treatment of vowels. There are short vowels and long vowels. The short vowels are formed using one letter, and the long vowels are formed by two letters, or a doubling of the letter, and thus the name "double vowel."

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart. ~Nelson Mandela

The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. ~Unknown

Eugene Stillday, Ojibwe elder from Ponemah, is active in language teaching and curriculum development, and is a major contributor to the digital Ojibwe Library. Stillday has been working with John Nichols from the U of M for more than four years to write down and clarify the Red Lake dialect of the Ojibwe language. Nichols is the co-author of “A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe” along with Earl Nyholm.

THE OJIBWE DICTIONARY PROJECT

The Endangered Languages Program of the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities is funding the development of a new dictionary of Anishinaabemowin, the Ojibwe language, through the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities.

Building out from the widely-used Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe, the new bilingual dictionary will contain words contributed by elders through their recorded stories, conversations, and discussions about words. The completed reference dictionary is expected to have entries for between 30,000-40,000 main Ojibwe words, each illustrated with a variety of inflected forms and example sentences, related to other members of its word family, and analyzed into its meaningful word parts.

Spanish

Yo nunca me he quedado sin patria. Mi patria es el idioma.

I've never been without a country. My language is my country. ~María Zambrano

Has a nation anything more precious than the language of its fathers? ~Johann Herder

Red Lake member Collins Oakgrove, a fluent speaker is a member of the group

Smaller specialized dictionaries for student use at different levels will be derived from the reference dictionary. An electronic dictionary will feature recordings of the pronunciations of words by the speaker contributors. Classification of words by word class and by meaning will allow users of the on-line dictionary to choose and display words according to their topic, form, or level of difficulty.

Breton

Hep brezhoneg, breizh ebet

Without Breton there is no Brittany

The world is a mosaic of visions. With each language that disappears, a piece of that mosaic is lost. ~

François Grosjean

Twin Cities Public Television, a national producer of Public television programming is doing a special on Ojibwe language revitalization. The production crew spent a good share of time at Red Lake, here they film Larry Stillday at his teaching lodge in Ponemah.

Spanish

Para ser lexicógrafo hay que tener una veta de locura idealista, porque la foto del lenguaje es imposible hacerla.

You need to have a streak of idealistic lunacy in you to be a lexicographer, as it is impossible to take a photo of language. ~Manuel Seco

Ishkwaata. (The end of an activity) Nawaj baanimaa. (More later) Giga-waabamin miinawaa, (I'll see you again)

Mitigo-omakakii (Wood Frog) [he who calls himself]