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The Language of the Manidoog and of the Scrolls

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The Language of the Manidoog and of the Scrolls

Anishinaabe religious life is conducted in Anishinaabemowin, and the register in which it is conducted is distinct from ordinary speech. Names given at a naming ceremony are Ojibwe names and are understood to describe something seen; the aadizookaanan, the sacred narratives, are told in winter and are themselves treated as beings rather than as stories about beings; the songs of the Midewiwin lodge are in an archaic and formulaic Ojibwe that members learn as part of their instruction.

That last body of material is restricted. The Midewiwin is an initiatory society with graded membership, and its songs and teachings are not public property. Nineteenth century ethnographers obtained and printed some of it, and the printing does not make it open. The atlas describes the existence and function of this register and does not reproduce it.

The birchbark scrolls belong here too, and are commonly misdescribed. The figures incised on them are not an alphabet and do not spell Ojibwe words. They are mnemonic: a sequence of images that fixes the order of a song or a rite for someone who already knows the material, and that is unreadable to someone who does not. They are a record keyed to the language rather than a writing of it, and their relationship to the songs is the same as that of a knotted string to a debt.

Because so much of the tradition sits inside the language, language revival and religious continuity are the same project. Immersion schooling is now the main instrument of both.

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