A Failure in Translation
This blog post is, essentially, a cautionary tale. It’s about automatically assuming that we understand a word or a concept, rather than questioning our assumptions—even the most basic of these–and then digging deeper to find an “Aha!”. Let me explain this through the place name Ottawa. Ottawa is an important place for a lot of […]
Wa’tkwanón:weron Ohneganos Ohnegahde:gyo – Water is life Workshop Participants
General Maps in Chronological Order Nunaliit Atlases Nunaliit Demo “The CBC Map” – Carte de l’Amerique Septentrionnale : depuis le 25, jusqu’au 65⁰ deg. de latt. & environ 140, & 235 deg. de longitude (1688) Jean Baptiste Louis Franquelin, hydrographe du roy, à Québec en Canada Atlas of Ontario Neuroscience Partie orientale du Canada ou […]
Language is Identity: A Case for Indigenous Language Revitalization
Many thanks to Melanie Lefebvre (@theoriginalmel on Twitter) for this week’s blog post. This paper, “Language is Identity:A Case for Indigenous Language Revitalization” was written for Concordia University’s course INDI 620/2 Language, Land, Identity, taught by Professor Elizabeth Fast. Melanie’s glorious artwork, a watercolour painting of buffalo anatomy is also presented here. Maarsi for your […]
Rice Lake
In my post on Chaudière Falls, I mentioned that there are at least three names for this important “landmark”: the French term, used both in English and in French (Chaudière Falls), the Mohawk name (Kana:tso), and the Algonquin term (Akikpautik). A single place having more than one name is relatively common, even if one name […]
Naming News 01/24/18
Naming News 01/24/18 Last year it was brought to my attention via Twitter that a motion was being put forth in Minneapolis, Minnesota to rename the city’s largest lake. The proposal to rename Lake Calhoun was brought before the Hennepin County Board in November where it passed by only one vote (Chanen, 2018) and the […]