April 2013 - Delaware Tribe of Indians

Page 8 Lënapeí Pampil (Delaware Indian News) April 2013Mystery Photos from the Tribal ArchivesDo you know who these people are?If you do, please contact Anita Davis Mathis at (918) 337-6595 or (918) 440-8734 oramathis@delawaretribe.orgTribal ArchivesAnita MathisHappy Spring to all tribal members and your families. With theNew Year come new changes for the Archive/Library Project. Wehave moved into the new Social Service Building. The move bringsnew opportunities for tribal members as well as for others.We have a small library of books for doing research on Delawares(along with other Indian tribes). We will have computers set up fortribal members to research the Archive database very soon. You will beable to search the photos, documents, and other research we have beencompiled so far, with new items added daily.We are working on the online gift shop and hope to have it up andrunning very soon, and the online items will also be sold in a smallshop in the Archive/Library area. Please come check us out.As always we want your photos, documents, anything that is relatedto the Delaware Tribe of Indians. These items can be donated, or youcan bring them in to be copied or scanned and given right back to you.Your items will then be added to the Archive database and shared withall tribal members. Wanishi.■Lenape LanguagePreservation ProjectJim RementerWe are awaiting word from theNational Science Foundationon whether our grant applicationsubmitted last September willbe funded. We were supposed tohear in February but no word hascome yet, possibly because withthe way things are happening inWashington, where no one is sureabout funding.The grant we were working underfor the last year and a half isa DEL (Documenting EndangeredLanguages) grant from the NationalScience Foundation. It has nowrun out and we are actively seekingother funding to continue makingimprovements to the Lenape TalkingDictionary. But even withoutfunding we will continue addingto it. We feel that this is a projectwhich benefits all Delaware peopleand should be worked on continuouslyand not just when there isfunding available.Recent work has concentratedon correcting some mistakes thathave crept in, adding some placenames that are of Lenape origin,and adding some new words andstories.Last year we discovered that,like many web sites that use AdobeFlash, there was a problem withthe increasing use of some popularmobile devices, such as aniPad, which do not currently supportthis technology. In our case,users could not see the speakericons used to play the sound files.However, in the past few monthsour computer programmers wereable to rewrite the code, and nowwe believe that all users that accessthe web site are able to again use iteffectively.Newest Feature: In December2011 we obtained permission fromthe Delaware Nation (formerly theDelawares of Western Oklahoma),based at Anadarko, Oklahoma,to use their tapes to create additionalsound files for the LenapeTalking Dictionary. Although thetwo Delaware groups in Oklahomahave been separated for overtwo hundred years they use thesame Lenape dialect, and we haveadded many of those words in recentmonths. To distinguish them,sound files made from DelawareNation tapes are marked with a{DN} following the Lenape wordon the web site.Also featured under our latestgrant are Stories in Lenape whichcan be played line-by-line. We areparticularly proud of this feature,which allows you to not only learnthe language but also hear some ofLenape history.To get to the stories feature, goto the web site at http://talk-lenape.org.On the top line click onStories and you will be taken to alist of them. You can click on thered speaker icons to hear the titlesof the stories. To hear the entirestory click on the word View nextto the name of the story. You willsee the story written in short phrasesor sentences in Lenape with afree English translation under it.There are a series of red speakericons and by clicking each one youwill hear the Lenape for that line.As the previous line finishes playingif you click the next icon andthen the next on down through thestory you can hear the story as itwas spoken in entirety.Current Status: At the presenttime there are 15,460 single-wordentries (6,400 with sound files),1,680 sentences with sound files,22 stories, 3 hymns, 1 Christmascarol, and 2 “fun songs.”Project History: In 2002 theLenape Language PreservationProject received a grant from theNational Science Foundation toproduce a dictionary database ofLenape. We had the database builtto create a Lenape Talking Dictionarywhich could be placed online.Much of the funding went to digitizingand preserving our existingaudiotapes made in past years withnative speakers of Lenape. TheDictionary first went online in October2005, and was officially onlinein February 2006.Additional Information: TheTalking Dictionary is a work inprogress. We continue to convertaudiotapes of Lenape speakers todigital format, which are then editedto extract the Lenape words.These are then entered into theThe Lenape TalkingDictionary is online athttp://talk-lenape.org. Besure to check it out; you canpractice trying to translatethe poem on page 1 of thisissue of the DIN.Dictionary database and becomeimmediately available on the Internet.We should mention thatthe sound files are not all of studioquality. Most were recorded wheneverand wherever possible – sittingin someone’s living room, ontheir porch, in a classroom, etc., soyou may hear a dog barking in thebackground, or a baby crying, orother people talking.We would appreciate your commentson the Lenape Dictionary.Go to www.talk-lenape.org. Wehope you will find this useful asa learning tool. We will continueadding to the Grammar and Lessonssections so you can startlearning how to construct sentencesin Lenape. It is now up toyou, the Lenape people who wantto learn the language of your ancestors,to make good use of thismaterial the Lenape elders left foryour benefit.■