Online Ojibwe dictionary launched

An online Ojibwe-English dictionary — the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary — is now up and running thanks to the University of Minnesota American Indian studies department and a group of Ojibwe Elders.
The dictionary expands on a current printed dictionary, which has only 7,000 words. The new online dictionary already has 30,000 words.
“Language is important because we are losing it,” Elder Leona Wakonabo said in the online dictionary. “We must teach the language to the little ones. So one of the things I do is work with the teacher of the K-6 students.”
Wakonabo is one of nine Ojibwe Elders who will be honoured for their work on the dictionary at a launch party Apr.2.
Elders Gerri Howard and Wakonabo both kept their language alive by teaching Ojibwe and speaking only Ojibwe with each other. They are both Ojibwe language teachers at the Niigaane Ojibwe Immersion School on the Leech Lake Reservation in Minnesota and help at a weekly language table at the Deer River High School in Minnesota.
“In order to speak my language I went to work helping others learn,” Howard said in the online dictionary. “And I do it because I never taught my children. I work with the teacher of K-6 students.”
Available at http://ojibwe.lib.umn.edu/, the searchable, talking online dictionary features the voices of Ojibwe speakers and a gateway into the Ojibwe collections at the Minnesota Historical Society.
“This sets the standard for how indigenous languages will be learned and preserved into the future,” said James A. Parente, Jr., dean of the College of Liberal Arts.
In addition to providing translations for words, the dictionary also provides context for words. For example, the entry for wild rice includes audio clips of four Ojibwe Elders speaking the word manomin, photos from the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society and Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, and snippets from texts, including meeting minutes, reports and research manuscripts dating from 1922.
Brenda Child, chair of the Department of American Indian Studies, said objects “are in conversation with the language” within the dictionary.
Described as both casual and scholarly, cutting edge and useful to Native people who speak the language, the dictionary merges the academic expertise of university scholars with the visual resources of the historical society and other collections.
The dictionary received funding from Minnesota's Historical and Cultural Heritage Fund and the project has just been awarded another grant to support phase 2 of the dictionary, which will incorporate feedback from users, enhance the virtual museum and add youth-friendly features.