Here.
NYTs on Gaming Revenue and Language Preservation
Here.
Language
News Coverage of Univ. of Minnesota Online Ojibwemowin Language Dictionary
New Book on Cherokee Syllabary
ICT has two articles on Ellen Cushman’s new book, The Cherokee Syllabary: Writing the People’s Perseverance.
Here is the interview with the author, and here is the review of the book.
Cushman, a Cherokee Nation citizen, writes in her preface about the questions generated by a poster of the Cherokee syllabary chart that hangs in her office. Visitors ask, “Why so many characters? How is this learned? Why these shapes? Where can I find samples of writing in Sequoyan? Is it even still used? What does it all mean?”
Cushman, wondering herself, set out to answer these and other queries. Her first few chapters detail the story of Sequoyah and how the writing system evolved from handwritten script to the printing press. Then the author delves into the deeper meaning of the syllabary itself. In theorizing about how the original handwritten script may have had many linguistic meanings built into its very shapes, she actually strips down the syllables digitally to their core shapes and creates a table comparing them. All this makes for a fascinating discussion.
The narrative then flows into how the script was later adapted to the printing press. Cushman notes that despite the influence of missionary groups, the final product was not informed by the English alphabet, even though some Cherokee syllables ended up resembling English alphabetic shapes. It was a Cherokee product from start to finish.
Past Repeating Itself? Menominee Girl Suspended for Speaking Language
Here.
Mayor Bernero Uses Offensive Language When Referring to Opponents of Lansing Casino Proposal
From the LSJ:
LANSING — Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero is under fire this morning from a pair of Michigan Indian tribes and a tribal lobbyist who said the mayor made a series of racially insensitive remarks about Native Americans at a fundraiser last week.
The Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi and Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribes, who have come out in strong opposition to a proposed Indian casino in Lansing, said Bernero “repeatedly used profanity and racial slurs in describing the (casino) controversy.”
New Census Figures Allow South Dakota to Avoid Offering Language Support Services to Indian Voters
Here:
Here is a news article on the issue. An excerpt:
State Rep. Kevin Killer, whose district represents the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, said people do use the language services.
“We do have fluent Lakota speakers that do vote, and their preference is to have an interpreter there,” said Killer, D-Pine Ridge. “It’s better to err on the side of caution rather than make an assumption that nobody speaks Lakota.”
Fewer than 6,000 of the 120,000 members of Sioux tribes, who often identify themselves as Lakota, speak the language or its less common but closely related Dakota dialects. The average age of a Lakota speaker is 60, according to the Lakota Language Consortium.
But tribal schools such as Oglala Lakota College, Sinte Gleska University and Sitting Bull College have been reintroducing Lakota to a new generation through the schools’ language immersion programs, Killer said.
“So they’re going to be, at some point, hopefully fluent speakers,” he said.
Poll workers on Todd County’s Rosebud Indian Reservation have had to publish ballots in both English and Lakota and reprogram the AutoMark voting machines for each election, said Tripp County Auditor Kathleen Flakus, who also supervises the neighboring county.
Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/news/2011/10/election-language-help-waived-sd-counties#ixzz1bKYV4wKo
Pigott v. Nochasak: Providing Language and Culture to an Inuit Child
Here’s a very interesting child custody case out of the Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court that might rankle some ICWA aficionados.
Pigott v. Nochasak involves a non-Inuit father and an Inuit mother. However, both parents speak Inukitut fluently and the non-Inuit father has a Master’s degree focusing on the language. He also engaged in writing an Inukitut dictionary. After the parents were separated and joint custody was awarded, the mother left home and attended school in Halifax and Ottawa and often spoke to the child in English, while the (non-Inuit) father remained in Newfoundland and spoke to her solely in Inukitut.
Both parents claimed they would be a better provider of Inuit cultural interests. The judge granted sole custody to the…
Witness List in Tomorrow’s Senate Committee Hearing on the UN Declaration
From the SCIA website:
OVERSIGHT HEARING on Setting the Standard: Domestic Policy Implications of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
Thursday, June 9 2011
2:15PM
Dirksen Senate Office Building 628Description:
The hearing will explore the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) as an international policy goal to which the United States is signatory, the current ways existing domestic policy achieves the UNDRIP goals, and additional domestic policy considerations to make the United States a world leader in indigenous rights and implementation of the UNDRIP.
WITNESS LIST
Panel I
MR. DONALD “DEL” LAVERDURE, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs, U.S. Department of the Interior, Washington, DC
Panel II
MR. ROBERT T. COULTER, Executive Director, Indian Law Resource Center, Helena, MT
MR. JAMES ANAYA, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, United Nations, Tucson, AZ
MR. LINDSAY G. ROBERTSON, Professor of Law / Faculty Director of the American Indian Law and Policy Center / Judge Haskell A. Holloman Professor / and Sam K. Viersen Presidential Professor, University of Oklahoma College of Law, Norman, Oklahoma
MR. RYAN RED CORN, Filmmaker / Member, 1491s, Pawhuska, OK
Panel III
THE HONORABLE FAWN SHARP, President, Quinault Indian Nation, Taholah, WA
MR. FRANK ETTAWAGESHIK, Executive Director, United Tribes of Michigan, Harbor Springs, MI
MR. DUANE YAZZIE, Chairperson, Navajo Nation Human Rights Commission, Window Rock, AZ
MS. MELANIE KNIGHT, Secretary of State, Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, Tahlequah, OK
Anishinaabemowin at Suttons Bay Public Schools
From Interlochen Public Radio. You can listen to the report here:
By Linda Stephan
Learning a second language is not always about learning foreign language. It can also be about preserving what’s been right here for generations, language at risk of being lost.
In addition to offerings, such as French or Spanish, more northern Michigan public schools and colleges are offering students the chance to learn Anishinaabemowin, or Ojibwa.
Suttons Bay Public Schools is a regional leader in offering native languages for second-language credit. The program is now three years old. In tough budget times, Suttons Bay had held tight to its native language offerings.
Ojibwe Language Preservation Documentary Available Online
Available from Twin Cities Public Television here. The entire show is available and about an hour long.
h/t E.P.
Here’s the description:
About First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language
As recent as World War II, the Ojibwe language (referred to as ojibwemowin in Ojibwe) was the language of everyday life for the Anishinaabe and historically the language of the Great Lakes fur trade. Now this indigenous language from where place names like Biwabik, Sheboygan and Nemadji State Forest received their names is endangered.
The loss of land and political autonomy, combined with the damaging effects of U.S. government policies aimed at assimilating Native Americans through government run boarding schools, have led to the steep decline in the use of the language. Anton Treuer, historian, author and professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and featured in First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language, estimates there are fewer than one thousand fluent Ojibwe speakers left in the United States, mostly older and concentrated in small pockets in northern Minnesota with fewer than one hundred speakers in Wisconsin, Michigan and North Dakota combined.
Treuer is a part of a new generation of Ojibwe scholars and educators who are now racing against time to save the language and the well-being of their communities. Narrated by acclaimed Ojibwe writer, Louise Erdrich, First Speakers tells their contemporary and inspirational story. Working with the remaining fluent Ojibwe speaking elders, the hope is to pass the language on to the next generation. As told through Ojibwe elders, scholars, writers, historians and teachers, this tpt original production reveals some of the current strategies and challenges that are involved in trying to carry forward the language.
First Speakers takes viewers inside two Ojibwe immersion schools: Niigaane Ojibwemowin Immersion School on the Leech Lake Reservation near Bena, Minnesota and the Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Immersion Charter School on the Lac Courte Oreilles Reservation near Hayward, Wisconsin. In both programs, students are taught their academic content from music to math entirely in the Ojibwe language and within the values and traditional practices of the Ojibwe culture. Unique to the schools is the collaboration between fluent speaking elders and the teachers who have learned Ojibwe as their second language.
First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language provides a window into their innovative and intergenerational learning experience and the language they are determined to save.
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