The Ojibwe (Chippewa) Language
Facts and Information about the People Who Speak Ojibwe
Mar 23, 2009 Margaret M. Williams
“We’re not losing our language, our language is losing us.” The words of the Ojibwe elder Joe Auginaush open Anton Treuer’s book, Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories [Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001], a unique bilingual anthology that is part of a greater effort to preserve the Ojibwe language.
Ojibwe vs. Ojibwa, Ojibway, and Chippewa
Ojibwe, Ojibwa, Ojibway and Chippewa are all anglicized terms given to the group of indigenous Indians who live in the northern U.S. and southern Canada. The native name for these people is Anishinaabe, which, according the Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe [University of Minnesota Press, 1995], means “human” and “Indian.” More specifically, the term Ojibwe is the native term for an Ojibwe Indian.
Dr. Anton Treuer, Assistant Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University in Minnesota, said (in a 2009 email interview) that the term Chippewa is a mispronunciation of the native term Ojibwe. To use the term Chippewa is not, in Dr. Treuer’s estimation, “egregiously offensive, just not exactly right.” As he explains, “the U.S. government used to use Chippewa exclusively in official correspondence and policy, but that has now changed as the result of native advocacy.”
Ojibwe Population Facts
The Ojibwe nation is the largest First Nations group north of Mexico. According to the 2000 U.S. Census, there are approximately 150,000 Ojibwe living in the U.S., concentrated mainly in the upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, and North Dakota.
The Canadian census combines a variety of indigenous groups under the name Métis, a group that also includes Cree, Algonquin, and the Ottawa among others. The 2001 Canadian census reports just over 300,000 Métis. About a third of those are Ojibwe living in southern Canada, primarily in Ontario, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan.
Various other estimates, including Dr. Treuer's own, put the combined number of Ojibwe speakers at somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand, with the majority living in Canada. While they are generally conversant in the language, most Ojibwe speakers are not fully fluent. The vast majority of fluent Ojibwe speakers, according to Dr. Treuer, are over the age of 70 and their numbers are dwindling. The language is losing their native speakers.
Dialects of The Ojibwe Language
According to the Native Languages of the Americas website, Ojibwe is part of the larger Algonquian language family. There are five significant dialects of the Ojibwe language, which are geographically aligned.
- Northern Ojibway (also known as Severn Ojibwe or Oji-Cree) is spoken primarily in central Canada.
- Southern Ojibwe (often referred to as Minnesota Ojibwe or Chippewa) is spoken in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
- Western Ojibwe (sometimes called Plains Ojibway) is spoken primarily in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and North Dakota.
- Eastern Ojibwe is spoken in Ontario and parts of northern Ohio
- The fifth dialect is actually the Ottawa language, which, as Dr. Treuer explains, is related to Ojibwe in much the same way that Portuguese is related to Spanish. (The Ottawa, according to the Native Languages of the Americas website are politically independent from the Ojibwe but share the same language.)
Dr. Treuer says that while the dialect differences can be significant, Ojibwe speakers can all understand one another.
Ojibwe Script
The Ojibwe do use a written language. While there is not a single accepted orthography, Dr. Treuer says the double-vowel system is most widely used in academic work, publications, and teaching. A syllabic orthography was developed in the 1840s using non-Roman characters and is still widely used today, especially in Canada.
According to Dr. Treuer, the Ojibwe had a writing system, which they used on birchbark, prior to contact with Europeans. However it was a system of mnemonic devices rather than a written language per se. French and British religious and political officials started writing Ojibwe (then called Chippewa) in the 17th century, but the first real system for writing the language was developed in the mid-19th century.
While the Ojibwe are losing their older, more fluent speakers, the Ojibwe language is considered to be the most thriving of all North American indigenous languages today. The Native Languages of the Americas website credits this to the efforts of the many Ojibwe who are teaching their children to speak the language.
For a list of Ojibwe language resources, read "Learn To Speak Ojibwe."
Midwewinind, Chippewa from White Earth Reservation
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