Description
Investigates the 2016 installation of Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe language) toponym signs throughout the White Earth Reservation, reflecting an ongoing tradition of Ojibwe linguistic preservation rooted in environmental knowledge of waters. Drawing on ethnographic interviews with White Earth citizens, descendants, and personnel, this work addresses how these public markers make Anishinaabemowin visible in the world for Ojibwe youth and other White Earth Anishinaabeg, while marking the reservation as an Ojibwe space. These place name signs, along with youth language programs, intervene in the legacy of imposed language loss of Anishinaabemowin on the White Earth Reservation caused by mission, day, and boarding schools. Examines Ojibwe people's intergenerational efforts to document place names, responses to these signs, and how they relate to toponymic authority and spatial belonging. Focuses on historic and contemporary stories of Ojibwe geographic relationships grounded in fishing, hunting, ricing, and gathering within and surrounding Gaa-waabaabiganikaag. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Restoring Indigenous Place Names in Settler Colonial Contexts; 1. Ojibwe Place Names: Geographic Belonging and the Lives of Anishinaabe Toponyms; 2. 'A Lot of it wasn't Around in the Atmosphere': Addressing Legacies of Imposed Language and Land Loss through Environmental Print in Anishinaabemowin; 3. Archival Diving and Atmosphere Building for Ojibwe Futures: Intergenerational Curation and Cultivation of Geographic Knowledge; 4. 'We Want the Ojibwe on the Top. We're not Renaming Something': The Politics of Names, Claims, and Returns; 5. Roots in White Clay: A Pre-Reservation History of Gaa-waabaabiganikaag; Conclusion: 'It Sits in Your Spirit and It Starts Taking Root Again': Mapping the Endurance of Ojibwe Geographic Knowledge and Relationships; References.
