Here & Now

Noon Wednesday with guest Margaret Noodin

Marisa Wojcik:
Welcome to Noon Wednesday. I’m Marisa Wojcik, a multimedia journalist with Here & Now on Wisconsin Public Television. Today we’re discussing a topic that is forever ongoing, which is language preservation. And specifically indigenous languages. So joining me is Margaret Noodin. She is the Director of the Electa Quinney Institute of American Indian Education. As well as an Associate Professor of English and American Indian Studies at UW-Milwaukee. And Margaret thanks so much for being here.

Margaret Noodin:
Thank you very much for having me.

Marisa Wojcik:
So I want to start with about a year ago, Gary Besaw of the Menominee Indian Tribe delivered the State of the Tribe’s Address to the state and spoke about efforts to preserve and teach indigenous languages and how that’s a priority. So can you give us an idea of just what does that landscape look like today?

Margaret Noodin:
Well I would say a couple of things. One that it absolutely is a priority because for us so much about how we view the world is through language. So if you want to describe, you know for Gary, that forest up there and how they’ve lived there so long and in particular ways there are words and phrases he would want to be able to use and ensure that his grandchildren and the next many generations would be able to use. And I think that’s how many of the nations feel. So all across North America and really throughout the world, you have indigenous languages that represent place in a very different way and then the communities of people who are from that place. They will often feel that if you can say it in your language you’re being more accurate and you’re preserving very specific knowledge. So the importance is there. And it’s a real challenge for the Menominee Nation, they are the only Menominee nation in the world. We’re lucky to be right in their back yard. This whole space is very Menominee in many ways. And they have a real challenge. Being you know a teacher of Ojibwemowin, I have a different kind of advantage where there are over 200 nations that use the language that I use that I teach. A little bit easier but it’s still an endangered language. It’s not a first language in any home anymore. So you have a range. You have a range from people that have a real challenge to people that have you know, a little bit of headway and we’re making some progress.

Marisa Wojcik:
And an important distinction you made to me was this effort isn’t just within the confines of our state borders. That tribes in nations across the country and across large geographical spaces are working together and with the states’ borders are not as important as the connections between the different tribes.

Margaret Noodin:
Right it’s really as if there are different borders. So you can really take the Great Lakes and almost 600 miles all the way around those Great Lakes, you will hear Anishinaabemowin, whether you’re in Manitoba or Ontario, North Dakota, Minnesota, it’s really kind of the same language landscape. And here in Wisconsin where you’re really in a crossroads we have the Ho-Chunk Nation representing a completely different family of languages. And then the Stockbridge-Munsee people and the Oneida people who were relocated here from the East, they represent an Eastern family of languages. So we think of it in that way, that there’s a broader language family map that kind of is overlayed onto our political and national boundaries.

Marisa Wojcik:
And so what happens when those worlds collide? When the political national boundaries and the indigenous nations have to maybe work together? I know the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is working to try and incorporate some of these efforts into schools themselves. Does that collaboration have to happen between those two different worlds?

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah I think it does. I mean I think if we’re going to have everybody in this place, appreciate the space, I was thinking as I came to visit you this morning. I came from right along the Milwaukee River. I was driving on Mequon Road through Ozaukee County into Waukesha and I thought these are all words that I know. I know what these words mean because it’s the language that I teach and how many people around here don’t know the words. And I feel like in some ways, we wish that it were a part of every public student’s education whether they are native or not, that they at least learn a little of this. So in that context, the nations, the sovereign nations who are preserving the language for their future generations to use, to get them in the public schools, with the other Wisconsin citizens, they really have to work together. Everybody that’s a citizen of a sovereign nation in the US is a dual citizen of the United States. So you really have a constant balancing, meeting the needs of both situations.

Marisa Wojcik:
So in some ways the language is a little bit representative of a lot of other things. So of where things are spatially, geographically. Where a person is maybe with their identity. So they’re dual citizens but they are also dual linguistic, is that right?

Margaret Noodin:
We hope, we wish they were yeah. I mean I wish every student that I encountered on my campus who was coming to us really almost as an international student. My students come from you know their home nations, who often provide them some scholarship support if they can but it’s not a guarantee. Every nation is a little different. They represent that space but they did not even always get to learn the language. So many tribal nations have their students attending public schools in Wisconsin. They don’t all run their own school systems. Some run schools but some don’t. So not every student that comes and studies at the university level has had the opportunity to learn their language up until that point. So it’s an interesting challenge because it’s I think even harder for them in some ways. The I don’t know I guess the, sense of almost melancholy of not being able to have learned their language is a little heavy and I often find my students who are non-native dive right in and learn it. And it’s good to have both in a class because getting at the difficulty of the language is hard enough to feel sort of burdened by and worried about why you didn’t get to learn it. I think adds another layer.

Marisa Wojcik:
I mean how did we get here? I feel like it’s maybe a misconception that, people maybe speak this language in their homes but is that not true?

Margaret Noodin:
No there’s no, none of the nations really I can’t think of any in our language groups here. I think on the Navajo Nation in some of the reserves in Canada there would be a few instances where it is a first language in the home. But even then it’s in a society now surrounded by English. So even if you are in Canada growing up on the trap line and your family still knows the language, the minute you go to school, or turn on the radio, or turn on the TV, you’re going to hear English. And same with the Navajo Nation, where there’s pretty good of the language there. Same thing, when they encounter school systems, when they begin to do their taxes, or you know deal with so many things that we deal with in the modern world it would be in English. So that legacy of, really it was larger nations growing around the US and Canada, both becoming very large nations surrounding smaller nations. They had a boarding school system that really erased the language quite effectively. And it was no accident at all, it was very intentional. They wanted people to assimilate. And the tribal nations in some cases, decided we need to do that to move forward. In many cases they’ve worked to hold on their language.

Marisa Wojcik:
So is monolingualism the goal is or is it just a reality that the goal is to try and not only preserve and stabilize but amplify indigenous languages but English has to come with it. Is it one or the other?

Margaret Noodin:
I would say and we look at the globe now and how the world is very small given technology and transportation and the way humans are able to know one another. I wish everybody knew at least three languages. But you know I’m a linguist so I would say that right? But I think if we were say in this space, 500 years ago, certainly when I’m standing in Milwaukee, that’s absolutely the case. You would know Ho-Chunk, Menominee, Potawatomi, you would’ve had to know at least two or three languages. To move up and down these rivers, to trade in the Kankakee Swamp area, the Chicago area, to move in to the different regions and encounter other people. You would need to know more than one language. So it is interesting as people throughout the world start looking at how to have nations that accept multiple ways of being. And I think when you give children two languages, right from the beginning, they start to think about multiple ways of seeing things. So we might want to do it because it’s saving the languages for tribal nations. But I do think and we hear this certainly from the Department of Public Instruction that world languages are something that we should be emphasizing for all of our benefit.

Marisa Wojcik:
So is it possible to get more of the language, or what is it actually look like? Is it at all offered in K12 schools? Are there immersion schools? Mentorships or apprenticeships like, how does it look now and where do we want to go?

Margaret Noodin:
Right yeah. It’s a real range, certainly the easiest thing and most relevant for us here is the Wisconsin landscape. I think the universal goal would be for kids to grow up feeling they were proficient in more than one language. That they could speak English fluently and attend schools and succeed. But that they also could speak the traditional language of their community. And how you get to that it really ranges. So some communities have immersion daycares. Some of them have strong family language programs where families learn the language together and use it as much as they can at home which might mean kids could use it for certain domains. But when they go off and get their first job or credit card they’re not expecting that they’d know every word they encounter in their indigenous language. There really is a range. We have immersion schools that are completely in the language up through the middle grades. Up in Lac Courte Oreilles, the Waadookodaading School achieves that. But then we also have the Indian Community School in Milwaukee where the children study one of three different indigenous languages every single day but they have their other classes in English. So it’s a real mix. And the main goal is just to get people using them. Because once you do teach the language, then you also have to have a reason to use it. So you know I’m waiting for plays and novels, and you know things to come out. Even tribal communities to say we’ll now conduct all our voting in our language. Or increasingly lawyers for different tribal nations are saying we will put all of our own legislation in our language. So reasons like that need to exist for people to want to learn them.

Marisa Wojcik:
How much is funding a factor in all of this?

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah funding can be a huge difference. On one hand it just has to be important and a priority for people because, you could have all the money in the world. And unless you’re going to make the 20 minutes a day, you’re not going to learn the language. I’ve had students who are well funded and their tuition is paid but if they don’t make the time they won’t learn it. And I know we have communities who some are not wealthy communities at all and they struggle and they get small grants and they augment them a little bit. But they don’t have large casinos. And they don’t have a lot of funding but they got a lot of heart and they have language programs that are thriving because they believe in them. And we also have some communities now that have built amazing apprentice programs and are creating curriculum and doing really good things with the funding that they have. Resources that they you know may have had only in recent decades to dedicate to language.

Marisa Wojcik:
So if you’re not an indigenous person how can you be a steward of these efforts? What can you do?

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah that’s a really good question. And it’s somewhat debated. There are some tribes that would say we want to restore our language first and our priority is just not to teach them to others. I know that’s a point, a perspective that a lot of people have. But everyone here I mean certainly we’re living in a state with an indigenous name. When you start thinking about a lot of our state names in the United States, they really all have a lot of tribal origin. So I often tell people whatever town you live in, just keep peeling back layers ’til you get to a native place name. And then follow that trail. And if you live in a place that is of Ojibwe origin or Potawatomi origin, there are many, many resources. You could actually study quite a bit just on your own going on the internet. But there are also a lot of places where people can kind of get together, have community language classes, work with nations to support their language, or really just be darned good stewards of the place names that they exist in. I recently worked with some folks in the town of Sheboygan and some other folks had asked about the name Oconomowoc. And so for folks who really just know the names of the places around them is a good start.

Marisa Wojcik:
Do we know any metrics as far as, how many languages there were and how many have been lost? Do we know how urgent this issue is and how quickly some of the languages are disappearing?

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah I mean there’s a lot of ways to look at that. So as a responsible linguist, I could tell you to you know, look up some of the data and frankly, if we were looking at it from that standpoint, a living language should be defined as a language spoken in the home by more than two generations. So it would mean you have to encounter families where most of their conversation with each other. Parent to child or child to grandparent, or across two generations, is all in the language. And we don’t have that anywhere in this state right now. Even when I declare Ojibwe language day at home, it’s still not the same because, you know my kids grew up in a very English environment. They attended schools where they were the minority for sure. So you have to really think about how quickly it can be lost and you can look at many of the immigrant communities. It doesn’t usually take more than one generation before the language can disappear. It just takes that one generation to perceive that there’s no value in it. Maybe they say I just should learn this other English. And let that dominate because my home language isn’t useful and then it’s gone. So right now in our area, we often would say that most of the indigenous language speakers are over 70 and there are very, very few people under 20 that can use the language. For most of our 12 nations in Wisconsin, we probably have only a handful of speakers that are under 20. Which is a sobering thought. But all we can do is keep trying. I know when you started out your conversation with Gary up at Menominee, they’ve got a couple of second language speakers that are very strong and they’re working with teachers. And they’re working with kids. So there’s hope. But their language when their nation was terminated suffered a lot. And so they do not have a group of elders speaking that language right now for them.

Marisa Wojcik:
So at the beginning you talked about why this is important. In what ways is language tied. What things are language tied to? That’s not just about speaking the language. There’s a lot of other facets that weave in and out.

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah so now again I have to think how do I keep the answer short right? I would say the core thing that many people believe is that it’s a mix, both of scientific knowledge that’s extremely valuable for us as a species to understand how we fit here. And how our species has fit with other, types of life on the planet. I mean how do we fit in that landscape? And that’s extremely important. But then you also have a sense of health and well-being. So many, many people who retain the language, the parts of it that they go to first and have been most adamant about retaining are the ones that help them thrive spiritually, psychologically. The holistic sense of well-being that can come from being able to sing a thank you song at the right time of the year in the language of the place is very, very powerful. So a lot of people would say that just for healing and well-being, the languages are important.

Marisa Wojcik:
Would you mind teaching us a few words?

Margaret Noodin:
Sure you could try. I’m trying to think what would be really useful. So there’s, you could try a whole song, want to try a song?

Marisa Wojcik:
Oh boy.

Margaret Noodin:
To me that’s what’s, a lot of fun is people just trying to use it. So we have two words for Mother Earth. They don’t say mother and they don’t say Earth. It’s a kind of a common song for us. We sing if often to teach kids the directions. So the two words are Shkaakaamikwe. Try that one.

Marisa Wojcik:
Shkaakaamikwe.

Margaret Noodin:
And then Mazikaamikwe.

Marisa Wojcik:
Mazikaamikwe.

Margaret Noodin:
Yeah so we kind of repeat those. And then the next part is G’daanisag.

Marisa Wojcik:
G’daanisag

Margaret Noodin:
And that G’ in the front means your and daani is daughter. So and then ag is more than one of them. So G’daanisag.

Marisa Wojcik:
G’daanisag.

Margaret Noodin:
That’s your daughters. And then then bimose.

Marisa Wojcik:
Bimose.

Margaret Noodin:
Is to walk. And then you add ag again ’cause there’s more than one of them walking. So bimosewag.

Marisa Wojcik:
Bimosewag.

Margaret Noodin:
Yup yup. So now you’ve got Shkagamik.

Marisa Wojcik:
Shkagamik.

Margaret Noodin:
Mazikaamikwe.

Marisa Wojcik:
Mazikaamikwe.

Margaret Noodin:
G’daanisag.

Marisa Wojcik:
G’daanisag.

Margaret Noodin:
Bmosewag.

Marisa Wojcik:
Bmosewag.

Margaret Noodin:
So you made a whole statement which is saying this sort of life force that takes care of us, you might translate it as Mother Earth. Your daughters are walking and then we say the four directions. So Giiwednong.

Marisa Wojcik:
Giiwednong.

Margaret Noodin:
That’s North. And Waabanong.

Marisa Wojcik:
Waabanong.

Margaret Noodin:
Is East. Zhaawanong.

Marisa Wojcik:
Zhaawanong.

Margaret Noodin:
That’s South. And then Ningaabii’anong

Marisa Wojcik:
Ningaabii’anong.

Margaret Noodin:
Is West. So I’ll put it together as a song. See if you can jump in on the second verse.

Marisa Wojcik:
Okay.

Margaret Noodin:
Shkaakaamikwe, Mazikaamikwe, Shkaakaamikwe G’daanisag bimosewag Giiwednong Waabanong Zhaawanong Ningaabii’anong And then we have like usually the little hey uh hey uhs in there. But that’s actually traditionally how people learn. And it’s kind of scary for us in a modern world to not have something written down right?

Marisa Wojcik:
Yeah.

Margaret Noodin:
But just learning to listen like that is different so okay I’ll do it again. Jump in if you can. Now that you know the song right? Shkaakaamikwe, Mazikaamikwe, Shkaakaamikwe G’daanisag bimosewag Giiwedinong Waabanong Zhowaanong Ningaabii’anong hey ya hey ya You did good. But I mean I think that’s such a good lesson, just in terms of hearing the language and being willing to just try something. And having to just trust that one person to another language can be enough you know?

Marisa Wojcik:
Well this is very cool. Thank you so much.

Margaret Noodin:
Thanks for trying.

Marisa Wojcik:
For teaching us some new things and I’ll practice a little bit.

Margaret Noodin:
That’s fine yeah.

Marisa Wojcik:
I bet I’ll dream that song tonight.

Margaret Noodin:
You can find it. We have a website, ojibwe.net where you can hear my daughters and I sing it. So it’s fine but I think really learning to listen is so important. We just need to practice it more.

Marisa Wojcik:
Well Margaret thank you so much for joining us. This was really wonderful.

Margaret Noodin:
Thanks.

Marisa Wojcik:
So Noon Wednesday is going to take a brief hiatus. We will be off for two weeks but we will be back January 9th. So we will see you again next year. And thank you so much for joining us on Noon Wednesday.