Defying Maliseet Language Death: Emergent Vitalities of Language, Culture, and Identity in Eastern Canada

Notes

Notes 1. The Specter of Language Death 1. I have received permission from Chief Stewart Paul of Tobique First Nation to use the actual name of the community for my publications. He has also given me permission to use the research data from my fieldwork for teaching and publication purposes. 2. See http://www.unesco.org/culture/ich/index.php?pg=00206. 3. See http://www.nationalgeographic.com/mission/enduringvoices/. 4. In the years since my initial fieldwork the sign has since come down and been replaced by a more distinguished looking sign. After the earlier sign came down one of the eagles was salvaged and mounted on one of the remaining steel pipes. 5. I was coming out of the band office one morning and a woman was walking toward the office entrance and we were both noticing the number of headstones in the immediately adjacent cemetery. The woman looked at me with a mischievous smile and shook her head, saying, “Ever since they opened the new cemetery people have been dying to get in!” I could only smile back and shake my head in agreement. 6. The band office has moved since my fieldwork. The band government decided to move into a newly completed complex that was originally designed to be a “Lodge” for tourists as part of an economic development program. For reasons unknown to me, the band government decided to use the Lodge as the new band office. This may be the only band office that has jacuzzis in each office! 7. The Tiger’s Den no longer exists. It burned to the ground after a kitchen accident set the building ablaze. | notes to pages 12–18 202 8. At the time of writing Mah-Sos School has been vacated while serious mold problems were addressed. 9. It was fortunate for the Tobique community that the neighboring nonnativecommunitiessenttheirvolunteer firefightersto putouttheblazebecause the Tobique fire engine was absent, undergoing repairs. 10. I was born in the Convent on Main Street, across from the church. The Convent no longer exists; it was demolished during the time I was doing fieldwork. 11. Maliseet community members also use the term because of the dominant cultural pressures for effective communication. This issue is developed later in the book. 12. This spelling is on the official letterhead. I discuss orthographic ideologies in chapter 4. 13. This was true at the time of fieldwork but the intervening years have seen changes in tribal government as well as in the fortunes of the families on Rodeo Drive. The term is seldom used today. 14. American Friends Service Committee (1989:d-8). 15. American Friends Service Committee (1989:d-8). 16. There is no consensus on either the use of this term or the spelling. For example, I have heard it said by a “fluent” speaker of Maliseet that the term should be Wolastokukwiyik, and yet many others cannot agree on the spelling of either term. 17. On vocabulary see Barratt (1851), Alger (1885), Jack (1895), and especially Chamberlain (1899). For grammar see Teeter (1967, 1971). For story collections see Charles Godfrey Leland (1992, originally published in 1884 and reprinted in 1902) for his two collections and respective translation attempts as a professional response to Henry Rowe Schoolcraft’s Algic Researches (1839). See also John Dyneley Prince for his collaborative work with Leland (Leland and Prince 1902) and his “correction” to Leland’s “poetic” impulse in his representation of Passamaquoddy Texts (1921). Prince published additional Passamaquoddy papers (1897, 1899, 1901, 1916, 1917). For Maliseet-specific tales, see Frank Speck (1917) and W. H. Mechling (1913, 1914). On prayers see Vetromile (1857), a small prayer book with some “Maliseet prayers.” 18. See Kolusuwakonol: Philip S. LeSourd’s Passamaquoddy-Maliseet and English Dictionary as edited by Robert M. Leavitt and David A. Francis (1984). For grammar see Leavitt and Francis, Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Verb Paradigms (1986). The resource book is Leavitt, Maliseet and Micmac: First Nations of the Maritimes (1995). 19. There were several books from wbep in the classroom but the two that notes to pages 18–22 | 203 were adjusted for classroom instruction were Amucalu (The Fly) and Espons (The Racoon). Amucalu was used as a simple and interactive text while Espons is a nicely illustrated reading and vocabulary text that required some adjustments in terms of dialect and local expressive idioms. 20. See Ganong (1899...