January 15, 2003
Class brings new life to ancestral Odowa language
Grand Traverse Band members deepen their understanding of native language
By Carol South
Herald contributing writer
To reconnect with their culture and deepen their understanding of traditions, some members of the Grand Traverse Band of Ottowa and Chippewa Indians have been studying Odowa, their native language.
Odowa language classes are held weekly in Traverse City at the Band's education office. Monday, seven students gathered to review grammar, pronunciation, punctuation and verb tenses for two hours. With equal parts laughter and determination, the students are forging links with the past.
"I really feel that I can't appreciate my culture without my language," said Susan Ives of Traverse City. "I just learned a few words before taking the classes, but I want to be fluent. We're all trying to regain our culture."
Melanie Storm of Traverse City has been trying to learn her ancestors' language for 15 years. She worked with tapes on her own until she began attending classes last summer.
"As I learn the language, everything makes more sense to me," Storm said. "My great grandfather was fluent but he did not teach us. My mother and aunts do not speak it."
Odowa is an oral language that dates to antiquity and, as with all languages, both reflects and shapes the culture. Native scholars in the Three Fires Council, which includes members of the Ottawa, Ojibwe and Potawatomi tribes, have been converting it to a written language. The language uses only 17 letters, four of them vowels, in its written form. While there are different dialects among the three tribes, the foundation of the language is the same.
Brian Corbiere, a fluent language instructor with the Grand Traverse Band, has been teaching with the band since 2001. Prior to this, he taught in Wisconsin. He sees a growing interest among Native Americans in learning their traditional language.
"Our language is fully unique, very descriptive," Corbiere said. "There's no way you can be confused by what a person is saying - not like in English when you go to the store to buy hamburger and there's no ham in it."
Corbiere pointed to a gap in use of the language and a dearth of fluent speakers who were raised speaking it. However, even though the language skipped generations, Corbiere said his people have a blood memory that they can tap to access their heritage.
"It is hard for a non-native to understand that language has its own spirit," Corbiere noted. "That's hard to teach because you have to make a certain spiritual connection with the language and have to know a great deal about your culture - you cannot separate the two."
"The language has a spirit and if you can reconnect with the spirit, you will get it," he noted.
One key to learning Odowa is to unlearn many of the rules of English, to disconnect from those avenues of thinking that differ from native ways. The linear structure and stricter rules of grammar learned in school do not apply directly to Odowa and some concepts defy translation altogether.
"There are words that we can't properly describe in English because they just don't make sense in that language," he said. "We have to unwash our brains and that's a long process because we have spent all of our lives learning Western European theology, philosophy and grammar."
As students deepen their understanding of Odowa, they can begin to delve into different levels of the language. These levels include words, phrases and concepts that have been nearly lost over the years. The highest level of the language is used only during ceremonies or social gatherings.
"Even the most fluent of speakers today use only around 50 percent of the language," Corbiere said. "Over the years even that has been slowly deteriorating as people drop off letters or mispronounce them. We are making efforts to reintegrate the original translations as much as possible and try to reintegrate that other 50 percent that are not being used."
For more information on Odowa language classes contact the Grand Traverse Band of Ottowa and Chippewa Indians Adult Education Department at (231) 271-7229.