Yesterday, we had the privilege of listening again to Dr. Anton Treuer, who spoke to us about Ojibwe language and culture revitalization.
Language and land are the two critical elements to sustaining a culture, Dr. Treuer said. He illustrated with the example of the French, who are identified by the French language and the geographical boundaries they inhabit. He then gave the example of a descendent of German immigrants to America. If, over the course of five generations, the language and a sense of Germany as a place were lost, then that person would not consider herself German, but a descendant of Germans.
“Even if technologies and dwellings change, you still maintain a culture with language and place,” Dr. Treuer emphasized.
This is a huge struggle for the Ojibwe and many other indigenous peoples in America and around the world who have been forcibly stripped of their lands and languages. In Ojibwe country, two policies enforced by the American government stand out as particularly destructive: the Dawes Act, which allotted tribal lands to certain Indians and enabled the rest of it to be sold to non-Indians, and the boarding school era, in which Indian youths were compulsorily shipped off to schools that stripped them of their language, religion, and culture.
There are 183 tribal languages in the United States and Canada. Of those, 163 are likely to go extinct in our lifetimes.
If the Ojibwe language were to be lost, it would be a tragedy—not just because it is a beautiful language whose illustrative words conjure images and readily lend themselves to puns and humor. The Ojibwe believe that their language is the language that their souls understand, even if their minds don’t comprehend it. For this reason, the Ojibwe is the only language that’s used for religious ceremony.
Dr. Treuer explained that such ceremonies cannot merely be preserved by a written (or even recorded) record, for the Ojibwe believe that spiritual knowledge cannot be copied or learned from a book. Rather, it goes from one soul to another.
“To lose our language is to lose our ability to keep those ceremonies going,” Dr. Treuer said.
He is working as a professor of Ojibwe language to make sure this doesn’t happen. He wants his descents to be Ojibwe, not descendents of Ojibwe. He supports the idea of immersion schools, in which all subjects are taught in Ojibwe. In places where this has been practiced, students have had a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent passing rate on standardized exams in both math and English. He also believes that parents need to speak the language at home for the younger generation to learn it fluently—no simple task, as many parents never learned the language as a result of their parents’ deportation to boarding school.
Although there is a large and growing body of Ojibwe people who want to learn their language and access the spiritual teachings that accompany it, the body of people who possess that knowledge is shrinking.
Language and land are the two critical elements to sustaining a culture, Dr. Treuer said. He illustrated with the example of the French, who are identified by the French language and the geographical boundaries they inhabit. He then gave the example of a descendent of German immigrants to America. If, over the course of five generations, the language and a sense of Germany as a place were lost, then that person would not consider herself German, but a descendant of Germans.
“Even if technologies and dwellings change, you still maintain a culture with language and place,” Dr. Treuer emphasized.
This is a huge struggle for the Ojibwe and many other indigenous peoples in America and around the world who have been forcibly stripped of their lands and languages. In Ojibwe country, two policies enforced by the American government stand out as particularly destructive: the Dawes Act, which allotted tribal lands to certain Indians and enabled the rest of it to be sold to non-Indians, and the boarding school era, in which Indian youths were compulsorily shipped off to schools that stripped them of their language, religion, and culture.
There are 183 tribal languages in the United States and Canada. Of those, 163 are likely to go extinct in our lifetimes.
If the Ojibwe language were to be lost, it would be a tragedy—not just because it is a beautiful language whose illustrative words conjure images and readily lend themselves to puns and humor. The Ojibwe believe that their language is the language that their souls understand, even if their minds don’t comprehend it. For this reason, the Ojibwe is the only language that’s used for religious ceremony.
Dr. Treuer explained that such ceremonies cannot merely be preserved by a written (or even recorded) record, for the Ojibwe believe that spiritual knowledge cannot be copied or learned from a book. Rather, it goes from one soul to another.
“To lose our language is to lose our ability to keep those ceremonies going,” Dr. Treuer said.
He is working as a professor of Ojibwe language to make sure this doesn’t happen. He wants his descents to be Ojibwe, not descendents of Ojibwe. He supports the idea of immersion schools, in which all subjects are taught in Ojibwe. In places where this has been practiced, students have had a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent passing rate on standardized exams in both math and English. He also believes that parents need to speak the language at home for the younger generation to learn it fluently—no simple task, as many parents never learned the language as a result of their parents’ deportation to boarding school.
Although there is a large and growing body of Ojibwe people who want to learn their language and access the spiritual teachings that accompany it, the body of people who possess that knowledge is shrinking.
Last night we traveled to the home of Anne M. Dunn and her daughter Annie Jiminez on the Leech Lake Reservation. They live on a picturesque tract of land, a lovely green meadow surrounded by birch trees and pines. Immediately, we were captivated by their animals—dogs they had rescued, grazing horses, and newly hatched chicks.
It was soon clear that Anne, an Ojibwe elder and storyteller, has the gift of adding magic and sparkle to everything she touches. We admired her garden, which she had enclosed with bowed branches, ornamented by pieces of glass and colorful trinkets “too pretty to throw away.”
Annie, a nationally acclaimed musician and recording artist, enchanted us with her voice and her drum as she sang a ceremonial prayer before dinner. We then enjoyed the feast she had prepared for us, which included our first taste of wild rice—grains she had picked and prepared herself.
When the sun went down, we gathered around Anne, who introduced us to the wolf, the raccoon, a yellow dog, a brave Indian girl, and lessons learned by the tamarack and Norway pine. We sat transfixed, despite the cold, like the boy in her final story, who received the gift of story and forgot the snow and his hunger and then was able to give the same gift to his family.
The night concluded with a song by Annie and the gift of beaded bracelets for each of us. We left, blessed by the generosity of these women and delighted with the new stories that were dancing in our minds.
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