Language Reclamation
Biigtigong Nishnaabemwin (Our Language)
I continue to lend my full support to the revitalization of our Biigtigong language, Nishnaabemwin. Despite the calculated efforts to remove our language and all that it contains, Nishnaabemwin is still here. We were very fortunate to have saved and documented our dialect of Nishnaabemwin. I am very grateful to the individuals who put their time, effort and hearts into this effort, especiallly the 19 individuals, including Art Fisher, Cecil Twance, Myra Michano and JP Montano. As a result of their work, we have a dictionary, noun charts and verb charts - all very important to saving our language.
I also support the community's plan to create understanders and speakers of Biigtigong Nishnaabemwin. I thank Cindy Fisher, our previous Education Director, for bringing our language vision and immersion to the community. Although we have encountered many challenges and obstacles, we have overcome them because of the hard work and commitment of many. I remain committed to the direction from the community and bring Nishnaabemwin back to its rightful place in our world.
It remains our goal to create 2,000 hours of immersion video and an additional 10,000 hours of audio/video in Biigtigong Nishnaabemwin. Our language is important and is an intergal part to defining and expressing who we are. It holds the collective knowledge of the many generations of our ancestors and expresses our worldview. Revitalizing our language is one of our greatest challenges and can only be accomplished by everyone working together. Our challenge in creating immersion classes has always been that elders told us they want our specific dialect and our list of fluent speakers is dwindling. We therefore look to technology. I hope that Nishnaabemwin will once again be the language spoken throughout our community and inside our homes. This will be one of our greatest accomplishments.
