A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

influenced by this already existing grammatical machinery, but also by grammatical
options made available to speakers by language contact.
1.1 The language
The people at Mille Lacs normally refer to their language as Ojibwemowin, which is
to be interpreted as ‘Ojibwe language’. When they ask someone whether they can speak
Ojibwe, they normally ask: Gidoojibwem ina? ‘Do you speak Ojibwe?’ (using the word
ojibwemo ‘s/he speaks Ojibwe’). This contrasts with other sister dialects of Ojibwe
where the common query is rather: Gidanishinaabem ina? ‘Do you speak Indian?’
(using the word anishinaabemo ‘s/he speaks Indian’). My personal experience has been
that sister dialects situated more to the north in Canada, or those further east, make
regular use of the term Anishinaabemowin ‘Indian language’ to describe their own
language, rather than the term Ojibwemowin. This experience comes at the expense of
being corrected quite often by native speakers from those areas who do not make regular
use of the term Ojibwemowin to refer to their own language as I do. In his grammar of
what is commonly known as the Odawa language (a sister language to Ojibwe),
Valentine uses the term Nishnaabemwin to identify the language of his grammar, since
“that is the term that its speakers, the NISHNAABEG (singular, NISHNAABE), typically use
to identify their language” (Valentine 2001:1). 2 He notes, however, that Odawa has also
gone by other names such as Ottawa, Chippewa, and Ojibway. The emerging challenge
here is that many dialects in Minnesota have also been known as Chippewa and Ojibway
(or even Ojibwa). This, undoubtedly, can be confusing to readers who are trying to
2
Speakers at Mille Lacs call themselves Anishinaabe ‘Indian’ as well.
3