small note on Michif & Leonard Peltier

[Mike Cleven]

At 08:37 PM 12/5/99 -0800, David Robertson wrote:
>LhaXayEm.
>
>"Prison Writings:  My Life is My Sun Dance", by Leonard Peltier, United
>States Prisoner #89637-132; published by St. Martin's Press, New York.
>Edited by Harvey Arden.  Introduction by Chief Arvol Looking Horse.
>Preface by Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark.  1999.
>
>A good book, well worth reading for several reasons, the most surprising
>of which is that on page 72 Peltier notes:
>
>	"As a child, I became fluent in metis [Michif] -- a French -
>	Indian mixture -- as well as English, and I also spoke some
>	Sioux, Ojibway, and French words.  Since every language gives
>	you a different view of reality, I soon saw that there were many
>	realities you had to cope with in this life, most of them
>	unpleasant."
>
>Leonard Peltier is 55 years old, I think.  He speaks of being beaten for
>"talking Indian" at BIA boarding schools in the mid-1950s.  In light of
>Peter Bakker's definitive book on the Michif language and the people who
>speak it, it is worth noting that Peltier considers it an Indian language.
>Apparently many speakers consider themselves a group distinct from both
>Indian people and Whites.
>
>You will learn more if you read Leonard's book.

I'll dig out my list of Metis bookmarks for anyone who wants them.  The
Metis do indeed consider themselves "a people apart" - and historically
were treated that way by "both sides", although of course much more
derisively by non-Indians than Indians.  Although they do not consider
themselves "Indian" or "First Nation", they DO consider themselves "an
aboriginal people".  The distinction is somewhat like that between Inuit
and Native Americans/First Nations; aboriginal but different.

I'm not sure whether Peltier is talking about Michif here, though, unless
those parantheses are from the printed edition.  There _is_ a dialect of
"Metis French" that is also commonly referred to as "Metis" (actually,
Michif itself rarely is); I don't know how current it was on the US side of
the border but when I was first in University (egad 26 years ago!) I had
acquaintances from Manitoba who spoke it as a family language; their last
name was Scottish, they had red hair, but they were Metis and spoke French....

Later

Mike C