A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE ...

While many speakers from other Minnesota dialects also refer to their language as
Ojibwe, or Ojibwemowin, the term in this thesis refers to the variety of Ojibwe that is
spoken at Mille Lacs. This is what my consultants (my elders) call it, and so I will call it
that too.
1.2 Why study Ojibwe discourse markers?
As of 2008, there are over 4,000 enrolled members of the Mille Band of Ojibwe.
This includes 2,100 members who live within reservation boundaries, 800 tribal members
who live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metropolitan area, 500 tribal members who live in
other Minnesota towns, and 600 tribal members who live elsewhere in the United States
and other places (Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe website, 2008). The language spoken by
the people of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe is the Ojibwe language, and is an
endangered language. Recent estimates reveal that only an estimated 80 fluent speakers
remain out of these 4,000 enrolled tribal members, putting their current fluency rate (i.e.
number of fluent speakers) at about two percent (Marge Anderson, personal
communication). At Mille Lacs, all native speakers of Ojibwe are over fifty years of age.
The current state of the language for other Minnesota Ojibwe reservations is similar.
In 1997, it was estimated that the White Earth Band of Chippewa (Ojibwe) had a fluency
rate of one percent and that the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe had a four percent fluency
rate (Treuer 1997). It is likely, however, that the current number of speakers at White
Earth and Leech Lake is now even lower. The number of fluent speakers for the other
Minnesota Ojibwe bands such as Red Lake, Nett Lake, and Grand Portage, is unknown,
but these bands reportedly share similar decreases in the number of native speakers.
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