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| Photo by Robert Snache spirithands.net |
by Eva Wissting
I had been in Canada for over a year when I first heard Anishinaabemowin, or the Ojibwe language as it is also called. During the land acknowledgment of an event I attended, I was embarrassed to realize that I had never before heard any of the Indigenous languages of this place. Even worse is that it took me yet another year to hear Sámi––the Indigenous language of my home country, Sweden.
Both Anishinaabemowin and Sámi are listed as endangered languages by, for example, Endangered Languages Project and UNESCO. My first language, Swedish, is a well documented language. In 1786, King Gustav III inaugurated the Swedish Academy with the objective to promote the “purity, vigour and majesty” of the Swedish language––primarily by documenting it in the Swedish Academy Dictionary, but also through publishing books, running a library and managing literary and language related awards and scholarships. The preservation and standardization of the Swedish language has been an ongoing project, funded by the Swedish state, for 235 years. For Sámi and Anishinaabemowin, the situation has been very different.
Both Sweden and Canada have a long history of attempting to eradicate Indigenous languages––though in recent years, efforts to revitalize them have surfaced. Writer and scholar Anton Treuer has done significant work in documenting and writing about––and in––Ojibwe. In his book Living Our Language, an anthology with stories from ten Elders, Treuer writes:
Maintaining strong oral traditions is a top priority for the survival of Ojibwe language and culture. This book is not intended to substitute written stories for oral tradition or spoken language. Rather, it is a tool that language students and teachers can use [. . .] Textualizing the language is a necessary step to developing an Ojibwe language literature, allowing us both to preserve the language and to teach it. [With] books like this one, the contributing elders can reach Ojibwe people in urban areas and other communities they would not otherwise be able to reach. (p. 10-11)
The stories in the book are transcribed into written form in the Indigenous language and then translated into English. Another book that simultaneously works with both Anishinaabemowin and English is scholar, writer and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s collection of short stories and songs Islands of Decolonial Love. The book is primarily in English, but Anishinaabemowin words are also woven in. Although the stories are created for the written form, many of the texts are also recorded and available on the publisher’s website––thereby connecting the texts back to the Anishinaabe tradition of oral storytelling.
In Postcolonial Translation, scholars Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi state that translation always has been at the core of colonialism (p. 3). Translation can be a form of violence, for example when it has contributed to the absence of Indigenous languages in our societies. However, translation can also be a method of decolonization––when it is used to preserve and spread endangered languages, as we see examples of in Treuer’s and Simpson’s literary works. Not all is necessarily lost in translation, it depends on what we choose to do with it.
Bibliography & Further Reading
“A Brief Timeline of the History of Indigenous Relations in Canada,” Indigenous Corporate Training
“Anishinaabemowin: Ojibwe Language,” The Canadian Encyclopedia
“King Gustav III,” The Royal Palaces
Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice, edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Travedi
“Sweden’s Troubled Relationship With The Indigenous Sámi Community” by Pallavi Chatterjee
“The Sámi Languages,” Ságastallamin
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