Minnesota is celebrating 150 years of statehood. Some Minnesotans that is; for many American Indians, the sesquicentennial is a painful reminder of language loss in the last 150 years due to European immigration and federal policies of assimilation, alottment and relocation.

In an MPR article today, Red Laker Roger DesJarlait speaks about how learning the Ojibwe language is helping in the healing process: “First the individual heals, and then you heal the family and then you heal the community.”

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Interestingly enough, a different proposal for Minnesota statehood was advocated for just 16 years before Minnesota statehood in 1858. This proposal by Wisconsin Governor Doty would have made Minnesota an all-Indian state where white settlement was forbidden. The treaty wasn’t altruistic, but promoted as way to assimilate American Indians and provide a place for other states to send their unwanted Indians. Listen to the MPR interview with a state historian on the Doty Treaty.

Ojibwe culture, language and identity are all tied up together in a complicated knot. It is difficult as you follow the thread of one, to disentangle it from the other two; perhaps impossible, as they are all part of the same thread that runs through one’s life. What left of Ojibwe culture without the language, Ojibwemowin?

“Our cultures and our languages — as unique, identifiable and
particular entities — are linked to our sovereignty. If we allow our
own wishful thinking and complacency to finish what George Armstrong
Custer began, we will lose what we’ve managed to retain: our languages,
land, laws, institutions, ceremonies and, finally, ourselves. And to
claim that Indian cultures can continue without Indian languages only
hastens our end, even if it makes us feel better about ourselves.” writes Ojibwe author David Treuer in a recent Washington Post article (If They’re Lost, Who Are We?).

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines culture as “the characteristic features of everyday existence (as diversions or a way of life) shared by people in a place or time.” Dictionary.com calls it “the sum total of ways of living built up by a group of human beings and transmitted from one generation to another.”

If Ojibwemowin ceases to become a feature of everyday existence, if the knowledge, world view and beliefs of generations which are contained within the very words of the language are lost, what then is left to distinguish Ojibwe culture from Ojibwe heritage or ethnicity? It’s a complicated and sobering question.

His brother Anton Treuer read a portion of a story from the book Living our Language during an NPR interview in April (Letter Men: Brothers Fight for Ojibwe Language). The story entitled, “Gaawiin gii-wanitoosiimin gidinwewewinaan” by Joe Auginaush speaks of how it is not the people who are losing the language, but rather the language that is losing the people.

In listening to him read that story, I saw in my mind a thread running through the twisted tangle of life, and the challenge to grab that thread and follow it back to the language, lest we become lost.