Robert Dale Parker (Illinois) will be speaking here on Monday, January 26, 2009 at 11AM. The talk is at the Castle Board Room at the MSU College of Law. Lunch will be served at noon, and it is FREE!
Prof. Meg Noori (Michigan) and Prof. Pat LeBeau (MSU) will serve as commentators.
Prof. Parker will be speaking about his book “The Sound the Stars Make Rushing through the Sky: The Writings of Jane Johnston Schoolcraft” (Penn. Press). His website about the book and Jane Schoolcraft is here.
Kristen Carpenter has posted her paper, “Interpretative Sovereignty: A Research Agenda,” on SSRN. It is forthcoming from the American Indian Law Review. Here is the abstract:
In federal Indian law, the treaty operates as our foundational legal text. Reflecting centuries-old historical political arrangements between Indian nations and the United States, treaties remain vital legal instruments that decide dozens of legal cases each year. Yet, these treaties — originally drafted in English by the federal government, following negotiations with tribal representatives who usually spoke their own languages — present a number of ambiguities for contemporary courts. The dominant model of treaty interpretation is one in which judges interpret treaties in a manner they they believe to reflect Indians’ understanding of treaty terms and, more generally, to promote the interests of Indian nations. While this liberal approach to treaty interpretation has secured a number of important Indian rights in the courts, it does not necessarily reflect the ways in which Indians actually perceived treaty terms in their own languages and cultures.
Patricia Montemurri at The Freep profiles Meg Noori, a University of Michigan professor who teaches Anishinaabemowin. Click through for some nice photos and an audio clip of her class.
“Izhaadaa Giizhigowaande!
Catch Margaret (Meg) Noori at any University of Michigan event and that’s how she exhorts fellow Wolverines to “Let’s Go, Blue.”Meg, 43, is a professor of Ojibwe Language and Literature. In the classroom and at home, she seeks to celebrate and preserve a language of the American Indians who populated the Great Lakes region for several hundred years before European settlers arrived.
Using the language of her ancestors every day, says Meg, “is one of the most meaningful things I can do.”
Wanted: Fluent Anishinaabemowin Teacher for Suttons Bay Public Schools and the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. Teacher will be employed half time by Suttons Bay public Schools to instruct a Level 1 class at the high school level, a beginning class at the middle school level, as well as some foundation language experiences at the elementary level.
The ideal candidate will help develop the high school curriculum, which will grow in the following year into a two-year course sequence. The applicant must be a first speaker of the Odawa or Ojibwe dialects of Anishinaabemowin. The applicant must write in the double vowel system and speak the dialect of Manitoulin Island or the North Shore of Ontario. The applicant should have training in the Total Physical Response methodology of teaching the language, and should have a minimum of three years experience teaching Anishinaabemowin. The teacher must know the cultural aspects of the language and the worldview inherent in Anishinaabemowin.
From the NYTs:
RIVERTON, Wyo. — At 69, her eyes soft and creased with age, Alvena Oldman remembers how the teachers at St. Stephens boarding school on the Wind River Reservation would strike students with rulers if they dared to talk in their native Arapaho language.
“We were afraid to speak it,” she said. “We knew we would be punished.”
More than a half-century later, only about 200 Arapaho speakers are still alive, and tribal leaders at Wind River, Wyoming’s only Indian reservation, fear their language will not survive. As part of an intensifying effort to save that language, this tribe of 8,791, known as the Northern Arapaho, recently opened a new school where students will be taught in Arapaho. Elders and educators say they hope it will create a new generation of native speakers.
From The Morning Sun:
Tribe strives to preserve Ojibwe language
By PATRICIA ECKER
Sun Staff Writer
Many Native American communities are realizing that the languages of their ancestors and the unique dialect of their regions are disappearing.
In 2005, the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe did an assessment of the Ojibwe language use within its community and discovered that the number of fluent speakers was very low.
“There’s still hope,” Ojibwe language immersion specialist Bonnie Ekdahl said. “There are still ways we can preserve the language.”
In USA Today:
“I can walk down the street and hear someone yell ‘aanii!’ from across the street,” said the 20-year-old University of Michigan student, referring to a greeting in Ojibwe, or Anishinaabemowin. “Students aren’t afraid to use the language and learn about this language.”
Simon participates in the Ann Arbor university’s Program in Ojibwe Language and Literature, one of the largest of its kind in the nation. It seeks to teach and preserve the American Indian language spoken by about 10,000 in more than 200 communities across the Great Lakes region — but 80% of them are older than 60.
NPR’s Morning Edition is running a two-part piece on boarding schools.
For the government, it was a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of Indians who went to boarding schools, it’s largely remembered as a time of abuse and desecration of culture.
The government still operates a handful of off-reservation boarding schools, but funding is in decline. Now many Native Americans are fighting to keep the schools open.
‘Kill the Indian … Save the Man’
The late performer and Indian activist Floyd Red Crow Westerman was haunted by his memories of boarding school. As a child, he left his reservation in South Dakota for the Wahpeton Indian Boarding School in North Dakota. Sixty years later, he still remembers watching his mother through the window as he left.
At first, he thought he was on the bus because his mother didn’t want him anymore. But then he noticed she was crying.
“It was hurting her, too. It was hurting me to see that,” Westerman says. “I’ll never forget. All the mothers were crying.”
Read, or listen, to the rest here.
From the South Bend Tribune:
Language is among the most important symbols of a culture. And while there may be as many as 50,000 Potawatomi Indians living today in North America, as few as 60 speak their native language. Just five to seven are able to teach it.
The urgency to keep the language from dying away is at the heart of the Pokagon Band’s participation in a federally funded program that now involves between 25 and 30 adults in Lower Michigan.
The area group meets for two hours every Thursday, alternating between classrooms in Dowagiac and Mishawaka.
Their goal, says Matt Morsaw, language specialist, is to produce three semi-fluent speakers over the next three years.
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