#boozhoo = hello

[feekins]

...TODAY, IN MY RE-READING OF CH 4 OF TRIGUN MAXIMUM VOL 1...

beloved new characters! Vash being adorable!! sadness!!! and even more translation discrepancy shenanigans!!!!

let's jump right in, shall we? ;D

(NOTE: I'm reading the Dark Horse [physical] and the Overhaul [online] translations side-by-side)

ok so in the Fall flashback, immediately after Vash lashes out at Knives when he tries to give him a hand to help him stand, the wording of the two translations is slightly different. on the surface, they basically mean the same thing, but. idk. you be the judge. Dark Horse has Knives saying "...what's your problem? You and I are the only brothers we have." meanwhile, the Overhaul has "What is it with you? You and I are brothers. We only have each other."

so then, Vash is like (I'm quoting the Overhaul here, but the translations are p much the same for this bit) "It's all your fault! Rem... Everyone... You killed them all!" and right here, I'm stricken by the way he's kneeling, tears in his eyes, screaming at Knives...grieving and so angry... 🥺

(Dark Horse on top, Overhaul on bottom)

and here's how Knives replies. imo Dark Horse makes him seem just...bad and chaotic, whereas the Overhaul's translation shows that what Knives claims to be his reasoning for his choices is more pragmatic (in part, anyway).

Vash responds with "you're not human!" which he means in a figurative sense, as in 'cruel; without sympathy, pity, compassion, etc.' - but, unsurprisingly, Knives takes it literally, which is where we get our next notable (imo) translation discrepancy. Dark Horse has Knives saying "Exactly!! Don't ever compare me to those faceless vermin!! Don't ever!!" meanwhile, the Overhaul has "Precisely! Like hell I'll be like them! Don't ever compare me to those vermin! Don't ever! Never again!"

oh, the irony in that extra bit in the Overhaul. "Like hell I'll be like them!" ohhhhh, Knives. bby. literal child. you have no idea. 🫣

boozhoo, brother undertaker!!! 🪶 it's so interesting to think about Indigenous ppl like me in this 'verse. how do we navigate this new world? how do we carry on our traditions? how do those traditions change? in any case, it's comforting to see media in which we endure so far into the future...

aaaaaand Vash and Wolfwood get to bickering like an old married couple again. love that for them~ 😆💕

I. would. totally get a tattoo of this panel. jeez, what a cutie.

and the way Vash gets to crying? about how bad the situation with the Polo family and the Fris family has gotten? after 152 years, despite everything, he's still so soft. as an adult, that really resonates with me 🥹

oof, this line from Wolfwood, though (Overhaul translation, but it's basically the same in Dark Horse): "Even people who would never fight will pick up a gun if their loved ones are killed." if that ain't one of the main theses of Trigun, man...

AND THEN WE MEET BRAD!!!!!! oh, but I have a newfound fondness for him =u=

one interesting thing I'd like to note: in Dark Horse, that lil guy we see with Brad is consistently just called "Sensei" - but in the Overhaul, he's "Doctor". I suspect this might have been to differentiate him from the "Doctor" we meet just before Knives' resurrection in Trigun vol 2. anyway, it makes a lot more sense to me, "Sensei" being called "Doctor"...but to avoid any confusion moving forward (and to avoid spoilers), I'll stick with the way Dark Horse refers to the two.

oh and also, in Dark Horse, Vash refers to the place Brad and Sensei are from as "the city" but in the Overhaul, it's "the colony" 🤔

(Dark Horse on left, Overhaul on right)

...yeah, idk what this is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ANYWAY. this exchange between Brad and Sensei over the next 2 pages rly strikes me. it goes like this in Dark Horse:

BRAD (talking to Vash): "Well, I'm sure two years is nothing to you."

SENSEI: "Stop it, Brad. He's not that kind of human."

BRAD: "Hmph. Human!! Human, you say?"

but in the Overhaul, it goes like this:

BRAD: "Well, I'm sure two years is only like a blink of an eye to you."

SENSEI: "Stop it, Brad. He's not that kind of person."

BRAD: "...hmph. Person... Yeah, right..."

'human' VS 'person' - linguistically speaking, the 'person' translation makes more sense. irl American English speakers don't go around saying "I'm not that kind of human" - it's 'person'.

either way, though, it's another illustration of the kind of reservations some humans might have about Vash...

...but here, what *I* have reservations about is Dark Horse's timeline!

last chapter explicitly takes place in February of 0113. that would make Lost July (which happened on July 21, 0104) nine years ago.

oh, Dark Horse, u so silly~

Dark Horse's translation of those two big speech bubbles is "The only one who stood against him all this time...the one who can't leave, who comes back from the dead, is that gentleman, right there." so. whereas Dark Horse frames the conflict as something solely between Vash and Knives, the Overhaul frames it as Knives against humanity, with Vash as the necessary force that comes between them.

and...oof. "Won't you trust me" gets me every. time. 😭

oh, and earlier in the chapter, Brad mentions he met Vash once when he was 4yo. after the exchange above, we learn it's been 13 years since then, which makes Brad 17yo at present! just another timeline thing I'd like to note =u=

the translations are similar enough here, but...idk, I just want to show them both here, bc either way, it's such an important scene for Wolfwood. you really get a glimpse into how he thinks, how he sees the world - not to mention how, as we've seen before, he truly is a man stuck between a rock and a hard place...

...and then we have Vash's response. in the Overhaul, we see that for him, it's not a matter of indecision or taking too much time deliberating, as Wolfwood seems to imply. for Vash, it's "right here and now, there are lives on the line, so right here and now, I'm gonna do something about it."

and now, we end on a silly note: this little panel on the last page of the chapter always confused me. thanks to the Overhaul, it doesn't anymore 🤣🤣🤣

[queen-karnia]

Help Me Pay for Summer Tuition

Boozhoo! Aaniin! (Hello) I am an Indigenous Student studying my traditional language in an M.A. program. I hope to create free resources guided toward self-learning for many communities and individuals to use.

Despite taking no classes in the summer, my institution requires M.A. students to pay summer tuition, which is a whooping 3k! This was quite a surprise to me. I do have student-loans, but their funding does not cover summer tuition. I also have a job, but on top of rent and expenses, it's hard to make enough. I am posting here to ask for help. Any donation helps, no matter how small, will greatly help me. I know I am literally one of tens of thousands of students who ask for charity, and my cause is no more important than theirs. I just hope that there are some people out there who have a little extra to spare, and who resonate with my struggle.

Gchi Miigwech! (Many thanks).

Kofi: https://ko-fi.com/karnia

[gogandmagog]

Boozhoo (hello)! from another Native American Anne of Green Gables tumblr! I do not really have a question but just wanted to say how cool it is that there are at least two of us!!

ʔi čəxʷ! 🤍 Omg, hi hi hi! I know maybe half a dozen Ojibwe words, and boozhoo is one. (In case this makes it look like I’m having a bit of a brag, I should confess that all the rest I know are for animals, like ko-ko-ko for owl; so pretty much only the very easiest to remember, right? 😭) We actually have some Ojibwe friends + cousins over here on our Rez, in the Coast Salish territories. And! As for natives on tumblr and in this smart little Montgomery community, we are at least three strong now, by my count! I won’t tag our other moot in case she doesn’t wish to be tagged but maybe she will comment! I’m so glad you said something. Besides which, your posts are brilliant, how ever did I miss these???

[its-ticsticstics]

Anishinaabemowin/Ojibwe words from nothern Ontario (Nipissing)

Hello- "Boozhoo" or "Aaniin"

Ojibwe language - "Anishinaabemowin"

Thank you- "Miigwech"

Zhawenim- Pity; have compassion for; show love and kindess

[thesinglesock]

is there a word for the opposite of false friends? like when two different languages have words that sound the same and also mean the same, despite not being related? Like how “boozhoo” in Ojibwe and “bonjour” in French both mean “hello”, or how “jadda!” in Norwegian and “yatta!” in Japanese are both exclaims of accomplishment? Or how both Spanish and Bidumsáme looked at a cat and went “yeah that’s a gato/gáhtto right there.” there has to be a linguistic term for this but so far my google searches have given me no results to speak of. anyways if anyone has more examples of this please add on I love this genre of word

[naabesim]

Dog visit

Noongom gizhaate (70°F, niibin na?) aanawi ikidowag wii-zoogipon ji-aabitoose. Ingii-mawadisigonaanig ingiw animoshag wiijigamigishkawiyangidwaa, Moose miinawaa Ruger. Moose bishagiishkaanzo, ozaawaanzo Ruger.

The weather is hot today (70°F, is this summer?) but they say it will snow on Wednesday. The neighbor's dogs, Moose and Ruger, visited us. Moose is dark colored, Ruger is yellowish.

Indayinaanig Barkley (agaashiinyi) miinawaa Shila (ma'iinganing izhinaagozi) ozhiingenimaawaan. Biindig dazhiikewag, aanawi owaabamaawaan zhaabwaabandamowaad waasechiganaabik.

Our dogs Barkley (she is small) and Shila (she looks like a wolf) dislike those dogs. Barkley and Shila stayed inside, but they could see Moose and Ruger through the glass.

Gii-ishpi-giizhigak gichi-anama'ewigamigong agidaaki gii-inosewag Mech, Barkley miinawaa Shila. Ayekoziwag. Mino-giizhigad.

In the early afternoon, Mech, Barkley, and Shila walked to the big church on the hill. They are tired. It is a good day.

Boozhoo Ruger.

Hello Ruger.

Ganawaabandiwag.

They are looking at each other.

Nishkaadizi Shila.

Shila is angry.

Baapi Shila. Ishkweyaang ayaa Barkley.

Shila laughs. Barkley is behind her.

Noongom neshangishinoog.

Now they are relaxed.

Megwejiishkiwag gii-ayaa Barkley.

Barkley was in the mud.

Anweshin Shila.

Shila is resting.

[ghostnebula]

someone just posted in a group dedicated to anishinaabe people from my area that "miigwetch is the anishinaabe word for 'thank you'" and everyone immediately was like "dude we fucking know???"

[sugarmoonaki]

i am alive! i haven’t used my laptop in awhile bc i’ve been mostly staying at my bf’s house... now that i’m writing this down i don’t make sense in my life decisions

i still have some of my stuff at my cousin’s place aka my laptop n clothes... just having a hard time making that decision moving in... anyways i’m down for any opinions 

[baapi-makwa]

Boozhoo (hello), my name is Ken, I am a disabled Ojibwe artist from northern Wisconsin. I am writing this post because I am having a hard time making ends meet and any donations I could possibly receive at this time would be greatly appreciated. Recent events have left my bank account depleted and my cupboards bare, I have some food but it will not last and I still do not know how I will cover all the utility bills.

I do have PayPal, that is really the best way to donate at this time, the email I use for that is: baapimakwa@gmail.com, or you can click here.

[neechees]

I’ll still never be 100% sure if that My Immortal author was really a pretendian or not but like I did see she called herself Cree and then listed words in Ojibwe when asked if she knew any of the language, so I found that weird. A lot of non-natives actually get Crees and Ojibwe ppl mixed up so if she was a pretendian that’s evidence.

[reanimatedcourier]

How to Write Indigenous Characters Without Looking like a Jackass:

Update as of December 26th, 2020: I have added a couple new sections about naming and legal terms, as well as a bit of reading on the Cherokee Princess phenomenon.

Boozhoo (hello) Fallout fandom! I'm a card-carrying Anishinaabe delivering this rough guide about writing Indigenous characters because wow, do I see a lot of shit.

Let's get something out of the way first: Fallout's portrayal of Indigenous people is racist. From a vague definition of "tribal" to the claims of them being "savage" and "uncivilized" mirror real-world stereotypes used to dehumanize us. Fallout New Vegas' narrated intro has Ron Perlman saying Mr. House "rehabilitated" tribals to create New Vegas' Three Families. You know. Rehabilitate. As if we are animals. Top it off with an erasure of Indigenous people in the American Southwest and no real tribe names, and you've got some pretty shitty representation. The absence of Native American as a race option in the GECK isn't too great, given that two Native characters are marked "Caucasian" despite being brown. Butch Deloria is a pretty well-known example of this effect. (Addendum: Indigenous people can have any mix of dominant and recessive traits, as well as present different phenotypes. What bothers me is it doesn't accommodate us or mixed people, which is another post entirely.)

As a precautionary warning: this post and the sources linked will discuss racism and genocide. There will also be discussion of multiple kinds of abuse.

Now, your best approach will be to pick a nation or tribe and research them. However, what follows will be general references.

Terms that may come up in your research include Aboriginal/Native Canadian, American Indian/Native American, Inuit, Métis, and Mestizo. The latter two refer to cultural groups created after the discovery of the so-called New World. (Addendum made September 5th, 2020: Mestizo has negative connotations and originally meant "half breed" so stick with referring to your mixed Latine and Indigenous characters as mixed Indigenous or simply by the name of their people [Maya, Nahua].)

As a note, not every mixed person is Métis or Mestizo. If you are, say, Serbian and Anishinaabe, you would be mixed, but not Métis (the big M is important here, as it refers to a specific culture). Even the most liberal definition caps off at French and British ancestry alongside Indigenous (some say Scottish and English). Mestizo works the same, since it refers to descendants of Spanish conquistadors/settlers and Indigenous people.

Trouble figuring out whose land is where? No problem, check out this map.

Drawing

Don't draw us with red skin. It's offensive and stereotypical.

Tutorial for Native Skintones

Tutorial for Mixed Native Skintones

Why Many Natives Have Long Hair (this would technically fit better under another category, but give your Native men long hair!)

If You're Including Traditional Wear, Research! It's Out There

Languages

Remember, there are a variety of languages spoken by Indigenous people today. No two tribes will speak the same language, though there are some that are close and may have loan words from each other (Cree and Anishinaabemowin come to mind). Make sure your Diné (you may know them as Navajo) character doesn't start dropping Cree words.

Here's a Site With a Map and Voice Clips

Here's an Extensive List of Amerindian Languages

Keep in mind there are some sounds that have no direct English equivalents. But while we're at it, remember a lot of us speak English, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. The languages of the countries that colonized us.

Words in Amerindian languages tend to be longer than English ones and are in the format of prefix + verb + suffix to get concepts across. Gaawiin miskwaasinoon is a complete sentence in Anishinaabemowin, for example (it is not red).

Names

Surprisingly, we don't have names like Passing Dawn or Two-Bears-High-Fiving in real life. A lot of us have, for lack of better phrasing, white people names. We may have family traditions of passing a name down from generation to generation (I am the fourth person in my maternal line to have my middle name), but not everyone is going to do that. If you do opt for a name from a specific tribe, make sure you haven't chosen a last name from another tribe.

Baby name sites aren't reliable, because most of the names on there will be made up by people who aren't Indigenous. That site does list some notable exceptions and debunks misconceptions.

Here's a list of last names from the American census.

Indian Names

You may also hear "spirit names" because that's what they are for. You know the sort of mystical nature-related name getting slapped on an Indigenous character? Let's dive into that for a moment.

The concept of a spirit name seems to have gotten mistranslated at some point in time. It is the name Creator calls you throughout all your time both here and in the spirit world. These names are given (note the word usage) to you in a ceremony performed by an elder. This is not done lightly.

A lot of imitations of this end up sounding strange because they don't follow traditional guidelines. (I realize this has spread out of the original circle, but Fallout fans may recall other characters in Honest Hearts and mods that do this. They have really weird and racist results.)

If you're not Indigenous: don't try this. You will be wrong.

Legal Terms

Now, sometimes the legal term (or terms) for a tribe may not be what they refer to themselves as. A really great example of this would be the Oceti Sakowin and "Sioux". How did that happen, you might be wondering. Smoky Mountain News has an article about this word and others, including the history of these terms.

For the most accurate information, you are best off having your character refer to themselves by the name their nation uses outside of legislation. A band name would be pretty good for this (Oglala Lakota, for example). I personally refer to myself by my band.

Cowboys

And something the Fallout New Vegas fans might be interested in, cowboys! Here's a link to a post with several books about Black and Indigenous cowboys in the Wild West.

Representation: Stereotypes and Critical Thought

Now, you'll need to think critically about why you want to write your Indigenous character a certain way. Here is a comprehensive post about stereotypes versus nuance.

Familiarize yourself with tropes. The Magical Indian is a pretty prominent one, with lots of shaman-type characters in movies and television shows. This post touches on its sister tropes (The Magical Asian and The Magical Negro), but is primarily about the latter.

Say you want to write an Indigenous woman. Awesome! Characters I love to see. Just make sure you're aware of the stereotypes surrounding her and other Women of Color.

Word to the wise: do not make your Indigenous character an alcoholic. "What, so they can't even drink?" You might be asking. That is not what I'm saying. There is a pervasive stereotype about Drunk Indians, painting a reaction to trauma as an inherent genetic failing, as stated in this piece about Indigenous social worker Jessica Elm's research. The same goes for drugs. Ellen Deloria is an example of this stereotype.

Familiarize yourself with and avoid the Noble Savage trope. This was used to dehumanize us and paint us as "childlike" for the sake of a plot device. It unfortunately persists today.

Casinos are one of the few ways for tribes to make money so they can build homes and maintain roads. However, some are planning on diversifying into other business ventures.

There's a stereotype where we all live off government handouts. Buddy, some of these long-term boil water advisories have been in place for over twenty years. The funding allocated to us as a percentage is 0.39%: less than half a percent to fight the coronavirus. They don't give us money.

"But what about people claiming to be descended from a Cherokee princess?" Cherokee don't and never had anything resembling princesses. White southerners made that up prior to the Civil War. As the article mentions, they fancied themselves "defending their lands as the Indians did".

Also, don't make your Indigenous character a cannibal. Cannibalism is a serious taboo in a lot of our cultures, particularly northern ones.

Our lands are not cursed. We don't have a litany of curses to cast on white people in found footage films. Seriously. We have better things to be doing. Why on earth would our ancestors be haunting you when they could be with their families? Very egotistical assumption.

Indigenous Ties and Blood Quantum

Blood quantum is a colonial system that was initially designed to "breed out the Indian" in people. To dilute our bloodlines until we assimilated properly into white society. NPR has an article on it here.

However, this isn't how a vast majority of us define our identities. What makes us Indigenous is our connections (or reconnection) to our families, tribes, bands, clans, and communities.

Blood quantum has also historically been used to exclude Black Natives from tribal enrollment, given that it was first based on appearance. So, if you looked Black and not the image of "Indian" the white census taker had in his brain, you were excluded and so were your descendants.

Here are two tumblrs that talk about Black Indigenous issues and their perspectives. They also talk about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia.

However, if you aren't Indigenous, don't bring up blood quantum. Don't. This is an issue you should not be speaking about.

Cherokee Princess Myth

"Princess" was not a real position in any tribe. The European idea of monarchy did not suddenly manifest somewhere else. The closest probable approximation may have been the daughter of a chief or other politically prominent person. But princess? No.

Here is an article talking about possible origins of this myth. Several things are of note here: women from other tribes may have bee shoved under this label and the idea of a "Cherokee Princess" had been brought up to explain the sudden appearance of a brown-skinned (read: half Black) family member.

For a somewhat more in depth discussion of why, specifically, this myth gets touted around so often, Timeline has this piece.

Religion

Our religions are closed. We are not going to tell you how we worship. Mostly because every little bit we choose to share gets appropriated. Smudging is the most recent example. If you aren't Indigenous, that's smoke cleansing. Smudging is done in a specific way with ceremonies and prayers.

Now, a lot of us were forcibly converted. Every residential school was run by Christians. So plenty of us are Catholic, Baptist, Anglican, Lutheran, etc. Catholicism in Latin America also has influence from the Indigenous religions in that region.

Having your Indigenous character pray or carry rosaries wouldn't be a bad thing, if that religion was important to them. Even if they are atheist, if they lived outside of a reserve or other Indigenous communities, they might have Christian influences due to its domination of the Western world.

Settler Colonialism and the White Savior Trope

Now we've come to our most painful section yet. Fallout unintentionally has an excellent agent of settler-colonialism, in particular the Western Christian European variety, in Caesar's Legion and Joshua Graham.

(Addendum: Honest Hearts is extremely offensive in its portrayal of Indigenous people, and egregiously shows a white man needing to "civilize" tribals and having to teach them basic skills. These skills include cooking, finding safe water, and defending themselves from other tribes.)

Before we dive in, here is a post explaining the concept of cultural Christianity, if you are unfamiliar with it.

We also need to familiarize ourselves with The White Man's Burden. While the poem was written regarding the American-Philippine war, it still captures the attitudes toward Indigenous folks all over the world at the time.

As this article in Teen Vogue points out, white people like to believe they need to save People of Color. You don't need to. People of Color can save themselves.

Now, cultural Christianity isn't alone on this side of the pond. Writer Teju Cole authored a piece on the White Savior Industrial Complex to describe mission trips undertaken by white missionaries to Africa to feed their egos.

Colonialism has always been about the acquisition of wealth. To share a quote from this paper about the ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples: "Negatively, [settler colonialism] strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base—as I put it, settler colonizers come to stay: invasion is a structure not an event. In its positive aspect, elimination is an organizing principal of settler-colonial society rather than a one-off (and superseded) occurrence. The positive outcomes of the logic of elimination can include officially encouraged miscegenation, the breaking-down of native title into alienable individual freeholds, native citizenship, child abduction, religious conversion, resocialization in total institutions such as missions or boarding schools, and a whole range of cognate biocultural assimilations. All these strategies, including frontier homicide, are characteristic of settler colonialism. Some of them are more controversial in genocide studies than others." (Positive, here, is referring to "benefits" for the colonizers. Indigenous people don't consider colonization beneficial.)

An example of a non-benefit, the Church Rock disaster had Diné children playing in radioactive water so the company involved could avoid bad publicity.

Moving on, don't sterilize your Indigenous people. Sterilization, particularly when it is done without consent, has long been used as a tool by the white system to prevent "undesirables" (read, People of Color and disabled people) from having children. Somehow, as of 2018, it wasn't officially considered a crime.

The goal of colonization was to eliminate us entirely. Millions died because of exposure to European diseases. Settlers used to and still do separate our children from us for reasons so small as having a dirty dish in the sink. You read that right, a single dirty dish in your kitchen sink was enough to get your children taken and adopted out to white families. This information was told to me by an Indigenous social work student whose name I will keep anonymous.

It wasn't until recently they made amendments to the Indian Act that wouldn't automatically render Indigenous women non-status if they married someone not Indigenous. It also took much too long for Indigenous families to take priority in child placement over white ones. Canada used to adopt Indigenous out to white American families. The source for that statement is further down, but adoption has been used as a tool to destroy cultures.

I am also begging you to cast aside whatever colonialist systems have told you about us. We are alive. People with a past, not people of the past, which was wonderfully said here by Frank Waln.

Topics to Avoid if You Aren't Indigenous

Child Separation. Just don't. We deserve to remain with our families and our communities. Let us stay together and be happy that way.

Assimilation schools. Do not bring up a tool for cultural genocide that has left lasting trauma in our communities.

W/ndigos. I don't care that they're in Fallout 76. They shouldn't be. Besides, you never get them right anyway.

Sk/nwalkers. Absolutely do not. Diné stories are not your playthings either.

I've already talked about drugs and alcohol. Do your research with compassion and empathy in mind. Indigenous people have a lot of pain and generational trauma. You will need to be extremely careful having your Indigenous characters use drugs and alcohol. If your character can be reduced to their (possible) substance abuse issues, you need to step back and rework it. As mentioned in Jessica Elm's research, remember that it isn't inherent to us.

For our final note: remember that we're complex, autonomous human beings. Don't use our deaths to further the stories of your white characters. Don't reduce us to some childlike thing that needs to be raised and civilized by white characters. We interact with society a little differently than you do, but we interact nonetheless.

Meegwetch (thank you) for reading! Remember to do your research and portray us well, but also back off when you are told by an Indigenous person.

This may be updated in the future, it depends on what information I come across or, if other Indigenous people are so inclined, what is added to this post.

[queen-karnia]

Help My Family Battle the Cost of Living and Wind Damage

Boozhoo, Aaniin (Hello, Hi, in Anishinaabemowin), 

My name is Kachina and my family and I currently live in Southern Ontario, where the cost of living has skyrocketed. My family and I are Indigenous, and we are seriously struggling to eat, as Covid dramatically impacted our finances and now the cost of food is making it difficult to keep up on bills. I know so many people are in the same situation, and my family is not special, but we still could use some help. 

Any financial help will go directly toward food, our mortgage, and repairing serious wind damage that removed the siding from our house this past December. We currently do not have enough money to meet the deductible from our insurance company, and would greatly appreciate any help making up that income. Our current goal is raising 1000 dollars, and doing so would greatly help us. 

If you are unable to donate, I would greatly appreciate spreading this post around so others may see it. 

Gchi Miigwech (thank you very much). 

Ways to help: 

Kofi 

@kachinasherman is my PayPal handle. 

[hypeaholic]

If you can, please help this person out

Every little bit counts, and I mean that.

[wastewacipi]

Hello, Han, Boozhoo!

Im Avis. Im 26 years old. I am both Dakota and Ojibway.

I started my journey on the Red Road when i was 13. My aunt gave me a jingle dress she made me and i now like to dance as much as i can. I dance to heal myself, and also others who cant dance for their own reasons. I also love travelling to different reserves in the summer to dance. Its good to see my relatives and friends there too.

I have a native name, Soaring White Hawk Woman, Wabi Gikke Ikwe. I was given this name when i was 18. I went into the sweat lodge and after we were done, my uncle told us that i needed this name. So we went back inside, and the ancestors gave me this name.

I am learning to become a pejuta winyan. A pejuta wicasa helped my leave behind all my inhibitions and mental illnesses when we came to him for help. He said i had something special in me, and on another time he said we (my mum, sister, and me) were apart of ALL the spirit animal clans. They are always around and apart of us. I am so grateful for this way of life. I can learn to help and heal anyone who needs it. Life is a good gift.

Pidamiya, Miigwetch, Thanks for reading!

ALSO, my username is

pronounced “wash-tey wa-chi-pi” and it means “good dance/dancing”

[nanda-gikendan]

Intro Post

Gisi, 22, mixed anishinaabe/white, she/they

Languages:

Anishinaabemowin, specifically the southwestern dialect of ojibwe, and what will be the primary language on this blog

Japanese

Goals:

meet indigenous language learners

learn a small amount every day.

~ Awenin Gin?

Boozhoo nindinawemaaganidok! Gisi nindizhinikaaz. Makwa nindoodem. 22 indaso-biboone. Nigagwe-gikendaan ji-anishinaabemowin. Che miigwech bizindawiyeg.

~Who are you?

Hello all my relations! My name is Gisi. My clan is the Bear clan. I am 22 years old. I am trying to learn to speak the Ojibwe language. Thank you very much for listening to me.

[roses-raccoon]

Ojibwe Words of the Day are Aaniin (Aw-neen) and Boozhoo (Boo-joe). Aaniin is a familiar hello and Boozhoo is a hello for when you don't know someone well.

The "j" in the phonetic spelling of Boozhoo sounds like the j in the French "Jean" or "je"