In 1970, I was 24 years old, an alcoholic and drug abuser, and had aspirations to be a writer. At that time, I knew very little as to who I was as a Native person. I knew I was born at Red Lake and I was “Chippewa.” I knew about some our cultural practices, largely through the art of my father, Patrick Robert DesJarlait. The village of Red Lake was heavily Christianized, As such, I didn’t have any knowledge about traditional customs and beliefs and wasn’t aware that we even had a language of our own. My father, who was a first language speaker, lost his connection to language as a result of the assimilative policies of Red Lake Boarding School that was run by St. Mary’s Catholic Mission. In the summer of 1970, his friend, Gerald Vizenor, came to visit us. Vizenor just had two small books published – “anishinabe nagamon” (songs of the people) and “anishinabe adisokan” (tales of the people). A few days after Vizenor’s visit, my father gave me the books and told me to read them. He said they were important books and that I could learn from them. Indeed, I learned. I was mesmerized by the opening for “anishinabe adisokan”: “You have asked me to me to tell you the customs of our ancestors and the origin of the anishinabe. My nosjishe, it is your wish and I shall tell you our beliefs.” One particular sentence stood out: “The anishinabe are known in the dominant society by the invented names ojibway and chippewa. In the language of the people the anishinabe are the woodland people.” That particular sentence set me on a lifelong journey to find myself – not as an Ojibwe or Chippewa person, but as an Anishinaabe person. And, it was language that formed a core to understanding my identity. Vizenor’s books was my introduction to language, a language, that until then, I didn’t know existed. Although the books weren’t written fully in Anishinaabemowin, words were interspersed throughout the texts. In one of the books, he included a glossary – anishinabe words. Vizenor used the only source available at that time – “A Dictionary of the Otchipwe Language” by Bishop Baraga. Vizenor wrote: “Anishinabemowin is a language of verbal forms and word images. The spoken feeling of the language is a moving image of tribal woodland life…the language is euphonious…and the words are descriptive.” You have to imagine what it was like for an Anishinaabe person to read Vizenor’s books. Back then, we didn’t have culture programs or language programs. We lived in the shadow of who we once were. We were "Chippewa" whose identity and language was buried deep under layers of historical trauma and the assimilative policies of the Church and the colonized agenda of the government. Amid the ashes of systematic racism, Vizenor relit the embers and light began to grow in a place of darkened oppression. And, language was a pivotal point in leading one back from a tangent of assimilation to the Path of Life. After reading those books fifty years ago, at age 74 on the Fourth Hill of Life, I am still learning the language. But I would rather still be learning than be an invented person. © Robert DesJarlait, 2020
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