Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [7]
2. Mary Losure, “Saving Ojibwe.” National Public Radio: December 26, 1996.
3. Sweetgrass First Nations Language Council, “Sample of Fluent Native Speakers in Southern Ontario,” Aboriginal Languages Development in Southern Ontario: Interim Report, October 1994; Joe Chosa, interview, 1997.
4. There have been some attempts to textualize oral versions of Ojibwe migration. See William Warren, History of the Ojibway People (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1985) and Edward Benton, The Mishoomis Book (Hayward: Indian Country Communications, 1988).
5. For a good overview of the Iroquois Wars, see Helen Tanner, Atlas of Great Lakes Indian History (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).
6. The Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota have often been collectively called the Sioux. They are very closely related in terms of language and culture, although they did not function as one group or political entity during this period. The word “Sioux” is a corruption of the Ojibwe word naadowesiwag, meaning “snakes,” in reference to them as an enemy.
7. Anton Treuer, “Ojibwe-Dakota Relations: Diplomacy, War and Social Union, 1679–1862” (master’s thesis, University of Minnesota, 1994); Richard White, “The Winning of the West: The Expansion of the Western Sioux in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of American History 65.2 (1978): 319–43.
8. The Nelson Act mandated that the Ojibwe people consent to allotment. For most Ojibwe communities, treaties had already stripped away most of the primary land base, so they didn’t have any leverage with which to bargain. At Red Lake, however, the entire land base was unceded. Commissioners seeking consent for allotment in Minnesota found that asking those at Red Lake to give up their primary land base and have the remainder alloted was simply too much to ask. Thus, commissioners succeeded in securing land cession from Red Lake but not allotment.
9. See the Morris Act of 1902, Clapp Rider of 1904, Clapp Rider of 1906, and Burke Act of 1906 in particular, discussed in Melissa L. Meyer, The White Earth Tragedy: Ethnicity and Dispossession at a Minnesota Anishinaabe Reservation, 1889–1920 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1994).
10. Maude Kegg, Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 1991), ix.
11. Although this sentiment is well known, my understanding of this political division at Mille Lacs was developed by several conversations I had with David Aubid of Sandy Lake.
12. Anton Treuer, “The Importance of Language: A Closer Look,” Oshkaabewis Native Journal (Bemidji State University) 4 (Spring 1997): 3–11.
13. Inuktitut uses a syllabic writing system, although it is different from the one employed for Ojibwe and Cree.
14. Anton Treuer, “New Directions in Ojibwe Language Study,” Oshkaabewis Native Journal (Bemidji State University) 2 (Spring 1995): 3–6.
15. John Nichols and Earl Otchingwanigan (Nyholm), A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).
16. To order tapes of the available recordings, write to Oshkaabewis Native Journal, P.O. Box 1003, Bemidji, MN 56619, or call (218) 755-3977.
Inaandagokaag
Balsam Lake
(St. Croix)
ARCHIE MOSAY
ARCHIE MOSAY (1901–1996), whose Indian name was Niibaa-giizhig (Sleeping Sky or Evening Sky), was a man whose influence transcended his many titles.1 Medicine man, Midewakiwenzii, Chief, Boss, Healer, Speaker, Religious Leader, Spiritual Advisor, Grandpa, Dad, Friend: he was all of these things and many more. The 1,200 people who paid their respects at his funeral represent a mere fraction of the lives he touched so deeply.2
Archie Mosay’s parents did not send him to school after the second grade, choosing instead to keep him home and to instruct him in the art and rituals of traditional Indian religious leadership. This lack of education in the Western tradition enabled him to learn more about