Living Our Language_ Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories - Anton Treuer [71]
[18] Haa namanj iidog geyaabi ge-ikidowaambaanen. Haaw iidog i’iw ganabaj minik.
Gii-pakitejii’iged Wenabozho
[1] Ahaaw akawe bangii niwii-tibaajimaa a’aw isa Wenabozho. Inashke Wenabozho iidog anooj gii-izhichige. Anooj gegoo ogii-kashkitoon. Akina gegoo ogii-kikendaan iidog.
[2] Inashke dash aabiding iidog, inamadabid imaa—imaa sa endaad iidog. Mii sa gaa-chi-inendang, “Haa ganabaj apane inga-babaamose.” Mii iidog maajaad babaamosed. Maagizhaa imaa aandi eyaad iidog wa haa bakitejii’igewag. Miish iidog omaa ezhi-biindiged imaa bakitejii’igewaad. Miish imaa bezhig iidog gaa-izhi-nandomigod, “Hey Wenabozh! Giwii-pakitejii’ige na?” “Haaw isa geget.” Wa, mii sa iidog odaminod bakitejii’iged.
[3] Maagizhaa mii sa iidog wiin nitam iwidi obakite’aan i’iw bikwaakwad. Wa, hay’ niibawid aazhaa gaa-izhi-bakite’ang. Wa apane iidog i’iw bikwaakwad iwidi chi-waasa iwidi ogii-ani-ganaandaan. Miish iidog imaa gii-ipitood imaa ji-gizhiibatood iidog anishinaabeg gaa-izhi-noondaagoziwaad aaniin igo anishinaabeg, “Haa Wenabozh! Home run. Home run,” inaa iidog. Haa mii sa go Wenabozho iidog, mii sa go apane gii-kiiwebatood.” Haa mii sa i’iw.
We’re Not Losing Our Language
[1] “Well, maybe we are losing it,” they say. “We are losing the Indian culture.” But maybe not—the Indian language is still here. It is only us: we are lost, and [therefore] losing everything. Indian traditions and what the Indian came to do long ago, it’s still there. Like I heard one old gentleman say, “We’re not losing our language, the language is losing us.”
I Was Born in a Wiigiwaam at Gaa-jiikajiwegamaag
[1] All right, I’ve accepted the tobacco given to me by this man who wants to know me better as well as the things I do while I am here on earth myself. See this, I am asking myself for our Great Spirit to help me here today in what I am going to say.
[2] As for my Ojibwe name, I am called Giniw-aanakwad. But then again this white man’s name, Joe Auginaush, is how I am known.
[3] And I was born over here, that’s here near the south end of Roy Lake as it’s called, over there on the other side of Roy Lake as it’s called. It’s over there that I was born. I was born in the sugar bush; I was born in 1922. And that’s what I’ve come to know of it; we were here in the sugar camp. And my dad he built a house over here at Auginaush Creek as it’s called, he built the house over there.
[4] Then we were always someplace [around there]. I don’t know the extent to which I studied in Ojibwe, but one time they decided I’m going to speak English. Maybe when I was somewhere around eight years old; I was that age when I knew everything I know of what happened and how things were with us. I always accompanied my parents and grandmothers wherever we went to pow-wow together and when we went to the medicine dance.
[5] That was until I was around ten years of age; then at that time I left, departing for the boarding school. I didn’t know English when I left. And we were taken over there to Wahpeton, North Dakota, as students. When we arrived over there, well I didn’t know that English language. We had a hard time; for one year I had a hard time speaking English.
[6] You see over there where we went, we were not permitted to speak the Ojibwe language. And we were not permitted to sing anything when we wanted to pow-wow. But we certainly did that anyway. And I was somewhere around Wahpeton, after 1937 that’s where I was. And after a while I spoke English very well, and in the eighth grade I was done.
[7] Then I came home, and here we were sent along over to Bagley as it’s called, and again I was a student. But I didn’t like it, and I almost thought, “It’s just me, I am the only one there.” Now I know I was perhaps the only one who was Indian there. But no, no I didn’t think about it that way when I went later on, the way the white man looks at himself. In fact I didn’t even go. I was there at our home in the winter reflecting. You see,