why I study the ojibwe language

Aaniin kina wiya! Today I'm going to talk a bit about Anishinaabemowin, or the Ojibwe language. I am a non-Indigenous student of Anishinaabemowin. Sometimes, people are interested in knowing why I like learning this language so much. It is very challenging to learn, so part of it is for the thrill of the intellectual challenge. But there are also some things about Anishinaabemowin that I consider to be very beautiful and that reminds me of Ojibwe culture and their worldview. 

Anishinaabemowin has a very interesting grammatical structure. You see, most Indigenous languages of North America are considered polysynthetic. This means that they have a high number of morphemes per word. A morpheme is the smallest unit in a language that holds meaning. The English word "cats" has two morphemes, the noun "cat" and the "s" which is a plural ending. 

In Anishinaabemowin, there are a lot of very long words that are dense with morphemes. It feels like every syllable holds so much meaning. 

There's an example I can give of this that comes from "The Seven Generations and Seven Grandfather Teachings" by James Vukelich. Vukelich talks about the Anishinaabemowin word "indaanikoobijigan." This usually means "my ancestor" but it can also mean my grandparent, my great grandparent, my grandchild, my great grandchild or my descendant. To understand "indaanikoobjigan" better, Vukelich mentions the "aanik" morpheme, which also appears in words like:

aanikoobidoon (string it together, tie it)

aanikegamaa (chain of lakes)

aanikanootamaw (translate it for her)

aanik-ogimaa (someone who fulfills the role of a chief if the current one can no longer do so. "ogimaa" is chief)

Vukelich concludes that aanik indicates something linked in a process or working in a chain, and so "indaanikoobijigan" is like "one to whom I am inextricably linked"

His book has other examples of Anishinaabemowin morphemes as well. Being aware of the structure of Anishinaabemowin words just makes it seem like a poetic language, extremely rich in meaning with tons of potential for metaphors. 

I'll do some more Ojibweposting later. Giga-waabamin miinawaa!!

Centipede Season 2025 in southern ontario has officially begun! Get out your essential oils now!

 Okay so like sorry that this is one of the topics I am weirdly hyperfixated on but once I start thinking about centipedes, I can't stop. Specifically the North American house centipede. I don't understand why they gotta be like that.

For those of you who don't know, March to September every year is Centipede Season in southern Ontario (the peak times are really July and August though). This is when you might see centipedes in your basement and bathroom as they enjoy damp places. They are nocturnal. And they eat other bugs and sometimes other centipedes (okay I know y'all are going to be like "nah that's cap." Listen, I'm no entomologist, but I'm pretty sure that Leggy Boys eat each other. Just trust me on this. Don't worry about my citations.) You should dispose of a centipede's corpse if you kill one or another one will come to eat it soon. They have a strong sense of smell, so bowls of vinegar or essential oils may scare them off. They run very fast and it is terrifying. They are usually black, sometimes orange. They have too many legs. 

They are basically demons from the deepest pits of hell. However, I kinda feel bad for saying that. Every insect has a role to play in the ecosystem. Deleting one would affect everything else. Perhaps it is concerning that our society has normalized insectophobia so much. Leggy Boys have feelings too. And I know I called them demons but if we're being real, when God sings with his creations a centipede will be part of the choir. But I never claimed to be perfect, morally speaking. And I would rather die than be friends with one of them. I basically hate centipedes as if they killed my firstborn son and I have a duty to avenge him. I know this is irrational, but it doesn't stop me. 

Anyway, centipedes do not actually have a hundred legs. In French they are called les milles-pattes (1000 paws). They are called either khankajoora or chalisapad in Hindi. Chalisapad means forty legs. In Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe, they are simply called "kaadi-mnidoosh" (leg-bug). Or if you are both an Ojibwe language learner and an insect rights activist, you could use more inclusive language and say kaadi-mnidoons, with a diminutive rather than pejorative ending. My Ojibwe language teacher told me something about the word mnidoons that blew my mind so I made a Reddit post about it in r/Ojibwemodaa which you can read here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ojibwemodaa/comments/1fkzgbb/manidoonsag_bugs/ Yes, it really does mean "little spirit." 

Okay I have one more Ojibwe-related thing to tell you guys before we start focusing on Leggy Boys again. I made this meme in Ojibwe and it says "when the centipede on the wall starts running fast."

Okay back to talking about Leggy Boys. Where was I? Oh yes, about their number of legs. It's not 100. How many are there then? Well idk, count them yourself!! Because I'm definitely not doing it. 

The main thing about centipedes that bothers me however is the fact that they are in my house. I saw a Leggy Boy yesterday with my own eyes and he was huge. He was in my hallway. I don't understand why a creature like that needs to be in my house. Bro looks like he's native to the Amazon rainforest, but he's literally in a Canadian suburb. Why??!?!?!? He should be hanging out with those spiders that get big enough to eat birds, not with me. He would have more in common with them. 

I simply could not have imagined that such a being could exist until I saw one myself. 

Do you guys think I should just get over myself and make peace with the Leggy Boys? Idk, let me know your thoughts. 

what does "gikinawaabiwin" mean?

Hello frens. The title of this post includes the word "gikinawaabiwin," which means "learning by seeing" (as a noun) in Ojibwe. This is the title I came up with for a poem I wrote recently. I won't share the whole poem, only the first few stanzas here. If you guys remember my post on knowledge acquisition, it's basically a poetic version of the themes I discussed in it. Here is the post I'm referring to: https://freyathefrypan.blogspot.com/2024/09/when-you-want-to-acquire-more-knowledge.html

Here are the first three stanzas of my poem :) and honestly, since the rest of the stanzas suck I think I'm just going to leave it at this and say this is the final version:

I met disciples in an ashram on the edge of the jungle 

who said they sought moksha and spent their days 

fasting, praying, meditating, 

But in twenty-five years of abnegation 

they still had not received a vision, 

Their souls had not been liberated 

and they seemed to live in fear of the world. 

I met black-robed scholars who thought that Knowledge 

was something one could conquer, 

It was what they sought to master, 

They thought Nature’s secrets could be wrested from her 

that Wisdom would visit them during their candle-lit study in their stone towers, 

But She never came 

And they did not feel the Sun’s warmth in a year. 

In Mikinaakominis, Knowledge surrounded me 

in a land where the branches of evergreen trees 

looked like peacock feathers to me when I first beheld them, 

In Anishinaabewaki, the land is a teacher 

if one is willing to learn by seeing.

--

I am quite happy with this, especially with the second stanza which I consider to be a banger.