Language

NPR Story on the Treuer Brothers

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From NPR:

Fresh Air from WHYY, April 23, 2008 · Brothers David and Anton Treuer are members of the Ojibwe nation from the Leech Lake Reservation in northern Minnesota. They are working to preserve the Ojibwe language, one of the few Native American languages in use.

Anton Treuer is a professor of Ojibwe language and oral tradition at Bemidji State University. He is editor of the Oshkaabewis Native Journal and Omaa Akiing, a collection of Ojibwe tales by Leech Lake elders. Anton is also the author of Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales and Oral Histories.

David Treuer is a professor of literature and creative writing at the University of Minnesota. He is author of a number of books, including the novel The Translation of Dr Apelles: A Love Story.

LA Times Article on the Chumash Language

Matthew L.M. Fletcher4 Comments

From the LA Times (thanks to Patrick O’Donnell for pointing this out):

SANTA YNEZ — A generation ago, the ancient Chumash tongue of Samala was all but dead, its songs and sagas buried in a university basement beneath mountains of yellowing research notes.

But now Samala is the talk of the reservation.

Thanks largely to a non-American Indian graduate student who was working for pocket money 40 years ago, the tribe has unveiled the first major Samala dictionary, a key moment in the language’s rebirth.

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NYTs: “Running from Despair” — Profile of Wings of America

Matthew L.M. Fletcher

From the NYTs:

SANTA FE, N.M. — On a cold Saturday morning last month, 16-year-old Chantel Hunt ran across a highway onto a gravel road where the snow under her shoes packed into washboard ripples. She ran around a towering red rock butte, past two old mattresses dumped on the roadside, and into the shadow of a mesa she sometimes runs on top of.

Hunt, a high school junior and a resident of the Navajo Nation, was on a short training run for the national cross-country championships being held Saturday in San Diego. Her team, Wings of America, has risen to prominence with an unlikely collection of athletes. It is a group of American Indians from reservations around the country, and a Wings team has won a boys or a girls national title 20 times since first attending a championship meet in 1988.

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Treuer in the LA Times

Matthew L.M. Fletcher1 Comment

From the LA Times:

Native American languages are dying out with the elders.

By David Treuer, Special to the Los Angeles Times
February 3, 2008

Photo illustration by Mark Todd

Only three Native American languages now spoken in the United States and Canada are expected to survive into the middle of this century. Mine, Ojibwe, is one of them. Many languages have just a few speakers left — two or three — while some have a fluent population in the hundreds. Recently, Marie Smith Jones, the last remaining speaker of the Alaskan Eyak language, died at age 89. The Ojibwe tribe has about 10,000 speakers distributed around the Great Lakes and up into northwestern Ontario and eastern Manitoba. Compared with many, we have it pretty good.

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Odawa language course makes its way into Harbor Springs’ curriculum

ilpc

By Christina Rohn News-Review Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 16, 2008 9:32 AM EST

A groundbreaking new course is being offered at Harbor Springs High School — Anishinaabemowin, the native language of Odawa Indians. The class, which is a collaboration between the Little Traverse Bay Bands (LTBB) of Odawa Indians and Harbor Springs Public Schools, began in September 2007 — the beginning of the current school year.

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