Phonological system of Mitchif ======>some CJ words

[David Lewis]

At 01:11 PM 01/24/2000 -0800, you wrote:


>David Lewis wrote:
> >
> > At 07:11 PM 01/23/2000 -0800, you wrote:
> > >  Mitchif was never that widely spoken across
> > >the Metis community as French was;
> >
> > I'm not sure this statement can be substantiated  in all Indian
> > communities. My friends at Turtle Mountain maintain that they primarily
> > spoke Michif or English, not French.
>
>I wasn't saying that this was the norm in all Indian communities, or in
>all Metis communities, more specifically.  I was speaking numerically
>across the board, and more specifically of the historic French-based
>Metis nation of the Canadian Prairies and the Canadian Shield.

It is problematic the group all Indians or Metis in one category and say
"across the board." This is a Federal practice which has served to define
and divide Indian people everywhere. Across the board, more Indians live in
cities than on reservations, but it cannot be said that even though they
may have equivalent characteristics, they are usually not of the same
cultural context and have much different interests, but are nevertheless
Indian. Certain pockets of Indian people have maintained native language
use, like Grand Ronde, like small native communities everywhere. That's why
it is so hard to equal language with numbers, because there is so much
variation in culture. If we were generally speaking of all Indian people,
the majority speak Spanish!

>  Isn't
>Turtle Mountain Mitchif a different "flavour" of Mitchif from
>Manitoba/Saskatchewan Metis; one being Ojibway based, the other Cree?  I
>think as someone else pointed out here in another discussion long ago
>some American Metis are Protestants, which Canadian ones almost never
>are.  The French legacy within the Canadian Metis is a clear historic
>fact, and IIRC during constitutional hearings which followed various
>native crises ten years ago spokesmen for the Metis addressed the
>hearings in both French and English, then read a statement in Mitchif,
>which they desired to have enshrined as a national language, or at least
>some kind of protected status.  But IIRC they were quite clear that
>French was more historically widely spoken within their community;
>Mitchif might have become more current in a West where Riel and Dumont
>had been victorious, but French was much more identifiably the daily
>language of the Metis culture of the pre-Canadian West than Mitchif; it
>varied from community to community _of_course_, and some Metis
>communities of French linguistic heritage probably use English
>nowadays.  Did the Turtle Mountain people ever speak French, or have
>anything to do with the French Metis culture to the north?

Of course!, Indian communities, while hampered by the international
borders, do not necessarily respect them. For example the Mohawk Rez is on
both sides. French was probably spoken, but I am not sure how much. But
they have cross-border relationships.


>BTW "Metis" and "Indian" in Canada are clearly separate terms, although
>I realize they may not be in the US; both agree upon a mutual
>description as "aboriginal peoples", however, which also includes
>Inuit.  "Metis" in Canada has now been extended by legal definition to
>include people of part-native inheritance from anywhere in the country,
>not just the historic Metis community of the Prairies and Shield; this
>is somewhat controversial within the traditional Metis culture-community
>but the advantages of counting greater numbers when dealing with the
>federal government has forced a compromise; there _are_ as a result two
>or three competing Metis national organizations, however, with different
>membership lists....

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David Lewis                     541.684.9003
P.O. Box 3086           Cell 541.954.2466
Eugene, OR 97403

talapus at kalapuya.com, coyotez at darkwing.uoregon.edu,
         coyotez at oregon.uoregon.edu

                 http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~coyotez

ICQ# 45730935
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