Tribe fights to save language, Publishes dictionary (fwd)

[phil cash cash]

Tribe fights to save language
Publishes dictionary

MIAMI OK
Miami University 1/27/2005
http://nativetimes.com/index.asp?action=displayarticle&article_id=5889

The vast majority of the estimated 300 languages spoken in North
American before the arrival of Christopher Columbus are endangered or
extinct. But the Miami language, once spoken throughout much of Ohio
and Indiana, is in the process of being revitalized.

Thanks to a cooperative effort by the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami
University, the college named in honor of the tribe, the first
comprehensive dictionary for the language is due to be published in
late February.

Titled Myaamia neehi peewaalia kaloosioni mahsinaakani (or A
Miami-Peoria Dictionary), the 200-page book contains about 3,500
entries plus a brief description of the language and an English
cross-reference list.

The accomplishment reflects a university/tribe partnership that is
unusual in higher education, says Daryl Baldwin, director of the
Myaamia Project for Language Revitalization and a member of the Miami
Tribe of Oklahoma. He, along with David Costa, a linguist who has done
extensive language work on the Miami-Peoria language, are co-editors.

When Miami University was founded in 1809, the Miami Tribe was well
known throughout the Midwest, but in 1846 the tribe was forcibly
removed from Ohio and Indiana and relocated first to Kansas and then in
the 1870s to what is now Oklahoma.

Being uprooted twice was devastating to a tribe struggling to maintain
its way of life in the face of government efforts to suppress the use
of native languages and force assimilation, says Baldwin.

By the early 1960s, the last tribal member to speak the language
conversationally had died but it was not until the late 1980s that
there was attention to what that loss meant. In 1995, the Miami Tribe
of Oklahoma-partially in response to the 1990 passage of a native
language law that reversed past federal policy-launched an organized
effort to revive its language.

Language is culture, explains Baldwin. "It's important because it
embodies our values and belief system and generations of accumulated
human knowledge. And all of these things are important to our identity
as Miami people," says Baldwin.

For example, Miamis say "nipwaahkaalo" when departing, which is often
translated to "take care," but it also means to have wisdom or be
conscious. The word is related to the verb "nipwaameewa," which means
he teaches him. So this farewell term embodies a basic concept of Miami
culture-that seeking knowledge is important.

"There's a way of understanding the world that is embodied in this
language. To me that's the real value of this effort," he says.

There's much more work to be done to make Miami a living language, says
Baldwin.

Tribal elders, who can only recall fragmented phrases or bits of songs
and prayers, are documenting their memories. In Miami Tribe households,
children are beginning to use some of the ancient kinship terms-"iinka"
for mother and "noohsa" for father-that have not been heard for
decades.

It took generations for the tribe to almost lose its language and it
will take years to bring the language back, predicts Baldwin. But the
process has begun and the outlook for the Miami language is hopeful.

There are, explains Baldwin, lots of native studies program, but few if
any universities have the intimate ties with a specific tribe that
Miami University has with the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. The
relationship, which began in the 1970s, has steadily strengthened until
now it includes several research and service projects in addition to
language revitalization efforts.