Woman tries to save Ottawa language (fwd)

Wed Jun 20 16:16:03 UTC 2007

Woman tries to save Ottawa language

Wednesday, June 20, 2007
By Morgan Jarema
The Grand Rapids Press
http://www.mlive.com/news/grpress/index.ssf?/base/news-36/1182349560130730.xml&coll=6

ADA TOWNSHIP -- Pat DiPiazza just wanted somebody to talk to.

The Ada Township resident, who grew up in a household where Ottawa was
spoken, said it has been five years since she carried on a conversation
with another person who speaks the American Indian Ojibwe dialect.

"When I was young, there was an Americanization of Indian kids in school,"
DiPiazza said. "They weren't allowed to speak it, and their parents wanted
them to learn English.

"Now, their children want to learn the language so they can pass it on, but
there aren't many people left to teach it."

Even at local cultural events, she said, she couldn't find anyone else who
spoke Ottawa.

According to Minnesota-based Native Languages of the Americas, a nonprofit
organization that aims to preserve and promote endangered Native American
languages, there are only about a half-million native speakers of American
Indian languages in Canada and the U.S.

So DiPiazza gathered about a dozen other Native Americans she knew who range
in age from 22 to 78 who wanted to learn -- plus a few of their spouses --
and now is wrapping up a class teaching conversational Ottawa at Ada Park.

DiPiazza doesn't know the spellings of the words she teaches. She has made a
key of hundreds of words, all spelled phonetically.

For example, "hello" is "boo-shoo."

"Thank you" is "mig-wetch."

Shirley Francis is taking the class with her husband, Simon, who is Ojibwe.

Francis, 78, said she wishes there was a class in the language when she was
raising her children. Now, she finds herself taping pieces of paper with
Ottawa words to furniture and other items around her Southeast Grand Rapids
house.

At a recent class, Francis pulled a black wide-brim straw hat from her head
and twirled it with a finger.

"Duh-guan-don chi wik-won," she said with what seemed like effortlessness
before she admitted "I've been practicing that sentence for six weeks
straight."

Spenser Cantu, 22, drives with his father, Phillip Cantu, from the Muskegon
area, for the weekly class.

Father and son already knew many Ottawa words, but were not conversational.

"It's something I'd like to be able to pass to my children," Spenser Cantu
said.