aaniin nindanishinaabewininiw goshsa ge niin. Waaskonaweb nindizhinikaaz.
greetings my fellow relations, I am myself a pure blood of the spontaneous
Indigenous peoples of our mother. I am called Waaskonaweb.
I am with you Spiritually as you face our common struggle with our
oppressors of the pale-skinned originals.
We need to take this further by examining the English language. W. Leap, a
linguist at the American University did a research study on
Anishinaabemowin and English. One of the most significant findings that
caught my mind was that English as a language is predominantly noun
oriented, 60% of all the words are nouns. You can do a quick check on this
by going over any dictionary and you will see for youself how nouns appear
more often then not. William goes on to report Anishinaabemowin is 80% verb
based. so you see how the two perceive their world very differently, I 'll
let you gain some of your own personal insights from this indigenous
philosophy.
My point is as long as we continue to use only our oppressors' mode of
communication we will continue to have these barriers before us. It has to
do with the way we are forced to think based on the internal structures of
language. Since English predominantly, by its nature, labels things, and
people, it will continue on its course of destruction. The results from
speaking only in English will perpetuate a value system based on material
priority, which does not have a genuine concern for understanding the
meaning of life, The indigenous mind is of course connected globally with
others who have been concerned with the understanding of Spiritual
principles and of natural law.
First, we who are indigenous (pure-blood) or indigenous americans
(mixed-bood) have an obligation to learn our nations languages of the
original past. Otherwise we will never perpetuate a caring, sharing and
loving belief system which will benefit all, not only us, but, equally to
the melanin deficient peoples of the world, who are truly the minority
population of the world. They make up less than 10% of the world's
population, whereas the indigenous peoples of the world make up well over
90%.
Second, we must always resist and confront the misrepresentational labels
that are placed upon us, like illiniwak, an Algonquian word. But more
clearly, we must not accept others' words that are outright destructive, and
yet we continue to use them, without us being conscious of what it is doing
to us. I am referring to words like "indian," "american indian v. canadian
indian." There exists mass quantities of English words that fit into this
category.
Third, my own personal committment relating to this area is to exhort
all peoples who live on mother earth, regardless of biological factors, to
be bilingual. I'm specifically promoting any of the varoius indigenous
languages of the world, not English and Spanish (this would be acceptable
provided we had a third, which must be indigenous), not English and
Russian, etc., none of the proto-european languages by themselves will do,
we know this has not changed the way we value life and its significant
counter-part (inanimate being). There is absolutely no viable reason why we
aren't bilingual at this point in time, especially when we are being
permitted to do so, supposedly under this contemporary self-determination
era. Our ancestors on average used to speak 15 other langauges, now
imploring ourselves to speak two languages is not really asking to much,
particularly when we have the answers to prolonging life which is of course
embedded in the Indigenous languages. We must truly change how we think and
the way to do that is for us and others is to learn other perceptions
through indigenous langauges. Please do not misunderstand me I am not being
ethnocentric about it, nor am I promoting indigenous languages simply we
want to be number 1, that is totally contrary to our basic philosophy of
humbleness before our creator, who is our authority, and not to any group
of humanoids or human created entities. That's why we have customs and
rituals, which of course don't have power within itself, but are more like
markers or the memories of our Spiritual past. That is all encompassed in
our inherited langauges. Mii'iw akawe, Waaskonaweb:)