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| xv TO SET A WRITTEN NET Ziibaaskobiige: To Set a Written Net Aanii ezhikidoying . . . ? How do we say . . . ? Two words or four words, it is the same incessant question that haunts the students and teachers of language. Many, many times on the journey of learning Anishinaabemowin I have repeated that question, first in English, then in Anishinaabemowin without knowing exactly what each part meant. Eventually I learned the “say” in the center was kido, and I began to understand the ying means all of us with you included, instead of yaang, which would mean just us without you. And finally when I said it again in Anishinaabemowin I knew that the ezhi softened and expanded the phrase, beyond the answer of the moment, to “This is the way this always happens.” The path into a language is clear when the sounds come together as shared meaning to exchange. Aanii ezhikidoying “dream”? I asked, and was told bawaajige. Much later, maybe years later, I told Howard Kimewon, Mindimoye n’gii bawaanaa (“I dreamed of an old woman”). G’gii waabaamaa (“You saw her”) he offered, telling me that depending on how you are speaking of the dream you should sometimes simply use the word “to see” because, as he pointed out, “That’s what happens in a dream.” Bawaajige and wabaamaa (“to dream” and “to see”) stuck in my poet’s mind with bawa’am, the word I learned from Jim Northrup for ricing; xvi | To Set a Written Net and bawaagonan, a word I once heard for brushing snow off the low roof of an ice-house. The brush of rice falling off the stalk was clearly echoed in the sweep of snow, which made me wonder if in dreams we sweep reality away, cast time aside, and see the other side for a while. There is no way I can know for certain if these words grew from the same stalk, but I can see patterns as a linguist and hear the stories as a poet. More importantly, these questions led me to rethink the way I “see” Anishinaabe literature. Native American literature has a place in the American literary canon, and many authors have included specific tribal details that merit consideration in the context of tribal nations and confederacies. What I try to do here is take a walk with four authors through Anishinaabe literature using language as my eyes. Thinking differently about possibility, moving beyond the basic truths of nature, spirit, and old stories, I try to connect the meaning of words in a way that brushes the world away to show what is underneath. And the underneath of Anishinaabe language and literature, at least in this dream, is a central tension, an energy fueled by opposition, that frames the way both language and story are woven together. By connecting the words and their patterns of use to the stories and their meaning, we can hear the ishkwa (after) in the ishkode (fire) and question the relation of burning to being. Some traditions explore the truth of the phrase “I think, therefore I am.” The Anishinaabe eschew a single word for think and instead attach endamo to every way they can dream of being . . . gichinendamo (delighted), giiwinaadendamo (crazy), and bekaadendamo (at peace) are only a few of the many options, and this is only one of several endings to consider, and endings are only one category of comparison. Verification of existence is not tied to thought as much as to connection and direction. The project at hand is to explore ideas of connection and direction in Anishinaabe language and literature. In Anishinaabemowin, words fall together according to particular patterns, with sounds and meaning constructed around an Anishinaabe worldview. A prominent non-Native scholar of indigenous linguistics during the early 1900s, Edward Sapir, said in his book American Indian Languages: “No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached” (209). His theory follows on centuries of cultural comparison in North America. When Gabriel Sagard wrote in 1632 “Les mots de Gloire, Trinité, sainct Esprit, Anges, Resurrection, To Set a Written Net | xvii Paradis, Enfer, Eglise, Foy, Esperance & Charité, & autres infinis, ne sont pas en usage chez-eux (The words Glory, Trinity, Holy Spirit, Angels, Resurrection, Paradise, Hell, Church, Faith, Hope, and Charity and a multitude of others, are...

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