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Renata Birkenbuel
ICT
While ICT Newscasts’ daily “Language Break” is a hit with viewers seeking common, realistic ways of speaking in various Indigenous languages, one storyteller reminds us that learning remains “a long game.”
“It has to extend beyond the school day,” said Chris La Tray, Anishinaabe Metis and Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Much in demand, he is Montana Poet Laureate, adding that students need to carry over their lessons to family and elders at home in order to practice and build upon crucial language skills.
If the family isn’t on board, language revitalization and preservation can be a challenge.
“If it’s not happening at home, then it’s not really happening,” he added. “And, and that … is a long game.”
Learning bit by bit every day phrases seems enough to start – as “Language Break” remains increasingly popular with viewers seeking realistic ways of speaking.
The quick-hit language lessons of everyday phrases from across Turtle Island will eventually include other tribes. For example, in Ojibwe from the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota, “Mino giizhigad noongom,” translates to “It is a good day today.”
Here’s the breakdown: Mino refers to something that is “good, nice or well.” Giizhigad refers to “day.” Noongam refers to “today.”
La Tray, author of “One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large” (2018) and “Descended From a Travel-worn Satchel: Haiku & Haibun” (2021), remains realistic about some language learners rapidly becoming fluent or at least partially proficient.
“It’s a few words at a time, it’s a few phrases at a time, and over a couple generations maybe we have a goal from having a dozen first language speakers to maybe 30, and then another generation maybe we have a hundred. So it’s a long game. It’s nothing that’s gonna happen in, you know, in my lifetime.”
Each tribe differs in the language resources – online or in person on reservations or pueblos. Most tribes, he said, offer a language program of some kind.
The Ojibwe offer Rosetta Stone. Some tribes provide flash cards for studying.
“There’s a lot of resources if you start digging into it. It depends on the tribe and it depends on the language.”
La Tray always begins his readings, workshops and public speaking with “Boozhoo, indinawemaaganidog,” which means in Ojibwe “Hello, all of my relatives.”
Ojibwe or Anishinaabe encompasses many different tribes that fall under the same umbrella as Nishina Abe people.
“And as Little Shell Chippewa people, we are part of that larger picture as well,” he said. “And I just like to remind people that we are indeed all relatives as human animals and relatives to all of our non-humans that we share the world with. I just think it’s important to recognize our kinship with everything that we share the world with.”
La Tray acknowledges that he doesn’t speak Salish, for example – one of the 12 recognized Montana tribes and as many as 13 languages that co-exist in a vast state.
Yet he serves as a role model for all ages, from grade-school children, teachers, parents and elders.
“I know a couple words here and there. I still use my Anishinaabe words and I share those words with my students as part of a recognition of … a lot of Little Shell people living on a reservation. There’s little shell people living on every reservation in Montana.”
What’s important is that others see and hear a high-profile historian like him speak in his own language.
“One thing that we all have in common as tribal people is the need to revive our languages. And, you know, if I can speak mine and inspire someone to learn a few words in their language, then that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Montana is home to at least three immersion language schools – one on the Flathead Reservation, one at Fort Belknap and one on the Blackfeet Reservation.
“Language isn’t something that’s separate,” he added. “You know, language plays a role in whatever it is you’re studying, whether it’s math, whether it’s history, any of the sciences.”
Resources may be limited for Montana Little Shell, but La Tray emphasized that other resources are available, including his mentors James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, Turtle Mountain speaker and author, plus Anton Treuer, Ojibwe and “Word of the Day” creator, Bemidji State professor and author.
Such language leaders impress with heavy credentials, but La Tray said even as fluent elders die and youngsters increasingly pick up their language, earning an advanced academic degree in languages is not required.
“That does nothing for preserving your culture. Indigenous people need to guide academia, but at the same time, tribes need to figure out a way that we can make it a way that people can live and, and earn a living and … sitting at the knee of elders, preserving oral culture and preserving stay-at-home culture.”
Nothing connects a person to culture and tradition the way language does. Preserving our cultures, he said, is cultural – not racial.
“There are concepts that exist in an Indigenous language that just simply do not exist when we’re speaking the colonists language.”
The Salish, for example, rely on over 40 ways to say “from here to there,” based on the time of year, weather conditions, distance – all critical differences. The Inuit have about 40 words for snow.
“Conceptually it’s the same thing. When you’re living tied to a specific place, your language reflects that.”
Overall, La Tray teaches critical approaches to language preservation and revitalization that can span generations.
“If you are a culture that is tied to the landscape and, and what you’re going to do is determined by the celestial elements that are happening at that time, that’s profound. And we don’t have that in English. We still have the land, and we still have the spirits of the land that are trying to communicate with us. We just need to do a better job of listening.”
Signing off, La Tray says, Miigwech for “Thank you” or Chi-miigwech for “Thank you very much.”
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