Sacred Name Collection — Education

Indigenous languages in this school · in preparation

Anishinaabemowin — the Anishinaabe Language

The language of the Confederacy of Three Fires — the peoples of Georgian Bay and the Great Lakes, this collection's own neighbours.

In preparation — in partnership with the Anishinaabe nations' own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Anishinaabemowin: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Anishinaabemowin — also called Ojibwemowin, and written ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ in syllabics — is the Central Algonquian language of the Anishinaabeg, the peoples of the Confederacy of Three Fires: Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi. It is a dialect continuum running from Quebec through Ontario and Manitoba, and south through Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota. The 2021 census counted 26,165 people who could speak an Ojibway language — half of them in Ontario, most of the rest in Manitoba. This collection's home stands inside Anishinaabe homeland, among the Williams Treaties and Robinson-Huron peoples of Georgian Bay.

The language is written two ways — the Double Vowel orthography, most widely used today, and the Ojibwe syllabics in use in Canada since the 1840s, when Gospels first circulated in them — and which system a text stands in is each community's decision. There is no single authority over the whole people. The Anishinabek Nation, speaking for 39 First Nations across Ontario, has declared Anishinaabemowin its official language, and since 2017 the Anishinabek Education System — the largest education self-government agreement in Canada — has held law-making authority over its own children's schooling.

In this school

In this school, the place of Anishinaabemowin is being prepared on the same terms as the library's: no Anishinaabe lesson, reader, or word list will be made here until the nation's own educators have guided and reviewed it. When the door opens, it opens whole — every level of learning, to read and to hear, in the school as in the library.

Their own schools and teachers

Learn Anishinaabemowin in writing

This room opens first for learning to read and write. Nothing here is ours: the chart is a tribal school's own sound chart, the lessons are the nations' own institutes, and the practice sheet holds only the chart's letters, for copying by hand.

The writing

Anishinaabemowin in the Double Vowel system — the sound chart

The Double Vowel (Fiero) sound chart as published by the Fond du Lac Ojibwe School (Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa) for its own students, linked below in full.

The vowels — e is long in its nature; the others stand short and long

The consonants

Combinations such as mb, nd, ng, nj, nz, sk, and shk are built from these letters; they are spellings of clustered sounds, not extra letters.

Anishinaabemowin is also written in Ojibwe syllabics (ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᒧᐎᓐ), in use in Canada since the 1840s. Which writing a community's texts stand in is the community's choice — this room shows the Double Vowel chart because a nation's school publishes it for beginners; the syllabics wait for the communities' own teachers.

Practice the characters

Print the practice sheet and copy the characters by hand. The sheet holds only the characters of the chart above — no words, nothing added. Printable practice sheet — the Double Vowel letters

Learn from their own teachers

The writing is the people's own gift to their learners. The words of the books wait for the partnership.

Hear Anishinaabemowin today

These voices are the Anishinaabe people's own, published by their own teachers and stations. The link takes you to their house; nothing of their voice is copied here.

Recovered reading

One recovered book stands here: the Gospel of Matthew in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe) — OMINUAJIMOUIN AU ST. MATTHIU — translated by Sherman Hall and Henry Blatchford and printed in the Ojibwe New Testament by the American Bible Society in 1856, complete in 28 chapters and 1,071 verses. It is the people’s own book, recovered and set here exactly as it was printed — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection’s own edition in this language waits for the partnership. Its page carries its cautions in full, including the verse number printed “52” at Matthew 26:62. Read Matthew in Anishinaabemowin (1856)

An open invitation

Teachers: if you teach Anishinaabemowin — in a community school, an immersion nest, a college, or at a kitchen table — this school asks for your guidance before it makes a single lesson. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

There is no one door for the whole people: the approach runs nation by nation, beginning with the nations nearest this collection's own home.

To hear it

When Anishinaabemowin opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Anishinaabe speakers. Until then this door is silent in Anishinaabemowin on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

This doorway carries no advertising.