ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ (cree)

let's take a moment to examine the abo policies of the early US and Canada, or rather their result.

once the atlantic seaboard as far south as south carolina were speakers of closely related languages of the algonkin branch of the algic family, the most widespread aboriginal language family in north america.

in the united states, we have endless placenames, mostly yankee and the surrounding "early states" regions, taken from those languages. for anyone familiar with the family, the mississippi transparently means big river, illinois is a french spelling for the word for [native] peoples - reflected below - and that's just the two biggest. ohio, connecticut & massachusetts are algonkin, as are all those crazy placenames from miami (OH) to usquepaugh (RI). the original name of "the state of rhode island & providence plantations" was aquidneck, which swamp yankees still use when in-state, though more recently it has come to mean the large island on which the world-famous city of newport is located (as opposed to the mainland or the islands of jamestown, prudence & cet.).

we wiped these peoples out almost to total extinction; while they visibly live on in our national character (perchance accounting for the distinctly non-caucasian tinge of the 'white' american - more'n a little abo and black blood runs in allegedly euro veins here, and vice-versa) and foodstuffs, their languages are almost entirely extinct. have you ever heard an algic language spoken? i grew up a five-minute bike ride from the main narragansett reservation, with narragansett classmates, and the only words i know are topographical in nature. the only algonkin peoples from what is now the united states whose language remains vibrant are the kikapú, who fled from their home near ohio and currently live in mexico.

if, on the other hand, you live in canada, the first nations are a visible presence. the subarctic algonkin language grouping called cree is living, and in great variety.

Canadian Census lists 97,230 Cree speakers, while according to Howe and Cook, there are 80,000. There are 775 speakers in the United States (U.S. Census)

this group of speakers historically lived from saskatchewan in the far west to the labrador coast in the east - and they remain in these territories. i make no claim that life has been painless, but the fact is that their language(s) are thriving, as are the other algonkin languages of canada: ojibway, ojicree, naskapi & innu ("montagnais"), for starters. speakers of cree alone have a dazzling dialect continuum: consider the names these dialects have for their language (most of which are cognate with the US state name illinois, if you note):

ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᐏᐣ Nēhiyawēwin, ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐍᒧᐏᐣ Nēhiyawēmowin, ᓀᐦᐃᖬᐍᐏᐣ Nīhithawīwin, ᐃᓂᓃᒧᐏᐣ Ininīmowin, ᐃᓂᓂᐎ ᐃᔑᑭᔗᐎᐣ Ininiwi-Išikīšwēwin, ᐃᓕᓖᒧᐎᓐ Ililīmowin, ᐄᔨᔫ ᐊᔨᒨᓐ Īyiyū Ayimūn, ᐄᓅ ᐊᔨᒨᓐ Īnū Ayimūn

the proto-algonkin word for a human being was *iriniw, plural *iriniwaki, and characteristic of all the algonkin languages is how each treated the phoneme *r. for example, the southeastern new england subbranch of algonkin show the same kind of variations by tribe in this sound as do the cree and ojibway: in narragansett, the word became iynu or innu; in pequot, it was iynu; in loup (western mass), it was ilnu; on long island and the continental side of long island sound, it was irnu. all of these groups have lost their language, though some groups are trying to restore it. in cree, we have everything from iyiniw to iinuu: that *r shows variation all across the spectrum, from th (as in the) to n and r and y and l. and these groups are still all speaking their languages. in fact, they publish books in cree using a geometric syllabary.

i have no point to make except that my grandfather's language and society was stolen from him, and hence i feel that loss. he wasn't from an algonkin-speaking people; he was an off-rez cherokee, one of the once-mighty "five civilised tribes" against which attempted genocide was committed. repeatedly. but as a swamp yank, i've run with the only natives i've known; indeed, i discovered while living in san diego that one of my dyke friends, a west texan emigrée, was a narragansett: her family's home plot was right where i grew up, her close kin were in my schools.

my grandfather was estranged from his people and his native tongue, but he lived his life in a traditional cherokee way: he farmed small plots, hunted and bred hunting dogs, and had the skills familiar to any person raised in the rural south. he was not a religious man, but he was a rôle-model for me, and his influence on me far outweighed his genetic potential, that's for sure. i wish he hadn't been adopted, that his own family hadn't succumbed to alcoholism and poverty and, finally, old age. i wish i had met mahaelia keaton, his nana, who passed down stone tools from the time when they were used to him as heirlooms, and from him to me. i wish my own family wasn't so ignorant of the native blood and culture in our lives: before he died, my grandfather said the same to me, and i was shamed and bitter i hadn't been with him more.

i wonder how much my own life reflects what he brought into our family. i've taken to studying native north american languages, and i'm attracted to those that make sense to my upbringing. there are no cherokee speakers here, and cherokee is an exceedingly difficult language and the books and tapes insufficient without help (for instance, they do not treat tonality, which is phonemic in cherokee and the other iroquian languages as well). i have done some work on the reconstructed pequot - the narragansett firmly refuse to speak about cultural or linguistic issues to outsiders - and on the other languages in the family, such as the well-attested cree and the nearly unknown and long-dead powhatan. they have a lexicon that is native to my birth-region. they are its native tongues. when i speak the names of towns and rivers, i want to know what i am saying. the dead from the massacres of the colonial era are under our feet, but students learn nothing about their lives or about the fact that native peoples remain alive and their cultures vibrant even here. i need to do my piece to make this right, not out of some misguided liberal postmodernism but out of my own search for the history of my own self, my own land, my own languages.