Links/Resources

The following are links or referrals to sites, books, or other resources I consider both useful and usually accurate, though with the obligatory caveat that I don’t necessarily agree with everything there.

Table of Contents

Ojibwe Language

General

  • Rand Valentine’s site on Anishinaabemowin. While some parts are missing (hopefully to be filled in one day!), there is still a wealth of useful material here, from PDFs on some of the basics of Ojibwe derivational processes to maps of dialectal variation to recordings of narratives. Especially helpful are explanations of various concepts for people who don’t have a background in linguistics, and the conjugational paradigms. Most of the material, including the paradigms, is Southwestern Ojibwe, but some is Saulteaux or other dialects.
     
  • [NOTE: down as of September 2022]
    Weshki-ayaad’s site on Anishinaabemowin. Contains a huge and eclectic collection of various materials from all sorts of sources, regions, and time periods, including various grammatical notes from Weshki herself, lessons from a defunct Saulteaux site, very extensive verb conjugation paradigms, a complete transcription of Edward Wilson’s 1874 grammar and dictionary of Eastern Ojibwe, re-transcriptions of some of the texts collected by William Jones from north and west of Lake Superior in the early 1900s, hundreds of example sentences from various sources and dialects, and more. Note that dialect affiliations are not always made explicit (e.g., some of the demonstrative pronouns given here are fairly specific to central Minnesota).
     
  • Red Lake Schools Ojibwe, maintained by Giniwgiizhig, principal of the Red Lake (MN) School District, is a great resource, particularly for language revitalization and cultural education programs. It contains a wide variety of vocabulary in the Red Lake dialect organized by topic, including many terms relating to the modern world, a classroom setting, etc. There is also an overview on verbs and numerous links to various Anishinaabe cultural resources.
     
  • Kees van Kolmeschate’s collection of documents on the Ojibwe language. Primarily a large number of old (19th and early 20th century) works re-transcribed and often annotated, representing a huge amount of work on Kees’s part.

Grammars

  • Rand Valentine, Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar (printed book). This is the modern gold standard of Algonquian grammars. It covers both the Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa dialects, those which have lost all unstressed vowels. At over a thousand pages long, it covers a massive amount of information, and I’ve found its extensive focus on derivational morphology (including not only 208 pages over three chapters on the subject, but also four pages worth of Finals listed in the index) particularly useful. Also a wonderful feature is that while it is a reference grammar, it’s not merely directed at linguists, and takes pains to explain all linguistic concepts and jargon clearly and intuitively, so that people without a background in linguistics—including Anishinaabe educators and community members—can make full use of it; a glossary of all technical terms is included at the end as well to aid such users. (Also a nice feature is that a portion of the proceeds go to support Ojibwe language maintenance and revitalization efforts!) The only significant drawback for me is that some aspects of syntax, pragmatics, and their interface (how do pragmatic factors determine word order, what are the uses of various “discourse particles,” how does one make varying levels of requests and demands, etc.) may be mentioned but are not given very extensive treatment—although these issues have been, and are still being, investigated in more detail by other authors, Valentine does provide references for other works that go into more detail on some of the topics, and I obviously recognize there’s a limit to how long the book could reasonably get. One other minor issue I’ve noticed is that several sources cited in the text are missing from the bibliography.

Texts

  • Each issue of the Oshkaabewis Native Journal contains numerous Ojibwe language texts from speakers of various communities (generally Southwestern Ojibwe, but from both Wisconsin and many parts of Minnesota), usually although not always with facing English translations, covering a variety of topics. A glossary of all terms can be found at the end of each issue, although the glossary doesn’t always seem to match the words used in the given edition (so far I’ve almost only found instances of words in the glossary that aren’t in the main text, so it’s usually not a problem). In addition, all of the later issues also have accompanying audio, a very useful and important feature. Some issues additionally contain essays, book reviews, and other informative notes or discussions in English. One shortcoming must be mentioned: as Brendan Fairbanks notes, many of the transcribers/translators “did not make it a practice to check” for accuracy with the original speakers of the text, “or any other native speaker,” and thus many of the texts as published contain “both transcription and translation errors.” While the existence of audio recordings for many of the texts makes this slightly less serious of an issue, recordings don’t exist for all texts, and in some cases those that do exist were made by non-native speakers. I would also add that some of the re-transcriptions of older published texts contain transcription or phonemicization errors. On the positive side, the latest few issues did feature significant checking of the audio with the original speaker or other native speakers from the same community (though the result is still sometimes “normalized” and doesn’t reflect exactly what was said).
     
  • In spite of their age, William Jones’s two volumes of Ojibwe texts, obtained from 1903-1905 north and west of Lake Superior, remain among the best, and certainly the most extensive, Ojibwe text collections. They are available through the Internet Archive: volume one; volume two. Over the two volumes there are 143 texts in total, from five narrators. Written in Ojibwe with facing English translations, they almost exclusively cover traditional narratives, dealing with the creation cycle and the many other adventures of Nanabush, animal tales, several versions of the Wemishoozh/Mashooz story, the Rolling Head, Turtle on the warpath, the boy who over-fasted, and other familiar tales. For those who don’t know Ojibwe, one feature of the texts is that Jones’s translations are often very literal, though this comes at the expense of the English sounding very awkward and clumsy (which is not helped by his use of stilted and overly formal diction) and, occasionally, almost incomprehensible. There are several other drawbacks that should be mentioned. For one, the Ojibwe is written in a pre-phonemic orthography, so every minute phonetic detail is noted, while preverbs and clitics are usually not written separately from their hosts, which may make some words difficult for beginning Ojibwe learners to parse. Additionally, as the texts were taken down by careful dictation, they don’t represent fully fluid, authentic oral performances. Nonetheless, if these caveats are kept in mind, the texts retain their great value and usefulness even after more than a century.
     
  • John D. Nichols, editor, An Ojibwe Text Anthology (printed book). While this book is rather difficult to obtain these days, it has much to recommend it. It includes 35 texts from ten narrators—covering at least four major dialects, with several different subdialects represented—in seven sections. Each text is divided into three parts: the original Ojibwe text, an English translation on the facing page, and then an interlinear text with detailed grammatical (though not morpheme-by-morpheme) glosses. Beyond this, the greatest and most unique asset of the collection is that the texts cover numerous different genres and narrative styles, unlike most text collections, which tend to be all in one genre and style (usually either autobiographical/historical or traditional myths). There are humorous stories about misunderstandings, puns, acculturation, and dialectal differences; historical and autobiographical narratives; traditional mythic narratives; fictional tales; the transcript of a didactic film narration on how to build a traditional birchbark canoe; and a technical document prepared in 1978 by a native speaker, based on a similar English document, to warn residents of Grassy Narrows and Whitedog First Nations about the effects of mercury poisoning—the result of the Dryden Chemical Company dumping thousands of pounds of mercury into the local river system throughout the 1960s. There are also glossaries following each section, covering the words used in the texts in that section.
     
  • Maude Kegg, Portage Lake: Memories of an Ojibwe Childhood (printed book). A wonderful collection of 41 often charming and humorous stories related by Kegg (Naawakamigookwe), an elder from Mille Lacs, MN, to linguist John Nichols about her childhood and the daily activities of the traditional Minnesota Ojibwes in the early 20th century. The stories are in Ojibwe with facing English translations, and there is a glossary at the end of the book. Just prior to the glossary there is also a very helpful guide for figuring out how to find a word in the glossary based on the inflected form in which it may appear within an actual text, including a list of all conjugational endings, in alphabetical order both from front-to-end and from end-to-front.
     
  • Anton Treuer, editor, Living Our Language: Ojibwe Tales & Oral Histories (printed book). A collection of 57 texts (transcribed from recordings of extemporaneous talks), mainly personal reminiscences and advice for future generations, from ten elders from various parts of Minnesota and one from Wisconsin. The texts are in Ojibwe with facing English translations, and there is a glossary of all words at the end. Treuer also provides brief biographies and some notes about each speaker and their stories.
     
  • Dibaajimowinan: Anishinaabe Stories of Culture and Respect (printed book). Features 34 (technically 35, see below) narratives in Ojibwe from 13 (14) narrators, with following English translations. There is an accompanying CD with recordings of the narratives, valuable both in its own right and as it illustrates some dialectal differences (the work features speakers of Border Lakes Ojibwe, Manitoulin Odawa, and Southwestern Ojibwe from throughout Minnesota and Wisconsin). The book is also very reasonably priced. A significant downside, however, is that it was not well-edited. The glossary at the end leaves out many words found in the texts, orthographical conventions are not consistent between different texts or even sometimes within a single text, several of the texts differ somewhat from the actual audio, and there’s an entire additional 21-minute-long text on the CD (#35) which is not printed in the book. An additional but more minor complaint is that while the narrator of each narrative is identified, there is no additional information on them, their background, or their community affiliation, although they frequently provide that information themselves in one or more of their narratives. (Though given that the texts are not ordered by narrator, or seemingly any other obvious criterion, this can be a pain to actually make use of.)

Dictionaries

  • Ojibwe People’s Dictionary. This is a superb resource of approximately 17,000 entries, primarily covering the dialects of Ojibwe spoken in Minnesota north to the Canadian Border Lakes, though occasionally including Wisconsin forms as well. Entries feature some conjugations of the word (including, helpfully, its reduplicated form), and most feature audio clips (often from several different speakers). A large number also contain example sentences, invented spontaneously by the consultants and recorded. Most—although not all—derivationally complex entries are also broken down into their component morphemes, which have their own separate entries, so that one can get a feel for and investigate the various words associated with each morpheme and the processes of Ojibwe derivational morphology. The site also contains a “cultural collection,” featuring photos and descriptions of many elements of traditional Ojibwe culture.
     
  • Nishnaabemwin Online Dictionary. This dictionary of Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa with approximately 12,000 entries, which is published but still under development, is part of the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas and Dictionaries projects (linked to below). It shares a number of the features of the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, including copious example sentences associated with entries, taken from numerous textual sources as well as invention by native speakers, including one of the editors, Mary Ann Naokwegijig-Corbiere, who is a native speaker of Wikwemikong Odawa. Since Nishnaabemwin syncopates all historical unstressed vowels, the dictionary also presents the unsyncopated version of each word within the entry. The one significant feature of the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary which the Nishnaabemwin Dictionary lacks is audio recordings of words and sentences from native speakers.
     
  • Freelang Ojibwe Dictionary (FL). This is by a very, very significant margin the most comprehensive Ojibwe dictionary available, featuring just over 100,000 entries, and it’s always the first dictionary I check (in addition to the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary). It covers all dialects of Ojibwe, utilizing over a hundred lexical resources from various areas and eras.

    There are some downsides that must be mentioned, though. While the dialect affiliation of words is noted, there is no additional information on the exact source(s) from which the word was taken (there are over a hundred sources listed, not including personal communications with at least nine native speakers of Southwestern Ojibwe); but it’s quite important to know, for example, whether a word is attested in a 19th-century dictionary versus a modern resource, whether a word is attested in ten sources versus one, or whether the source was a work by a native speaker or had native speaker involvement, or whether it was simply produced by a non-native speaker (and perhaps a not very competent one). While the dictionary uses a number of dialect codes, these are idiosyncratic, limiting their usefulness, and FL has misclassified the dialect of at least a few sources. I’ve also found some instances where the dictionary team transferred typos/misprints/errors from their source to the dictionary without catching them or where they inaccurately phonemicized an older source. Finally, FL includes a large number of toponyms from outside traditional Ojibwe territory, many based on calques of the (sometimes folk-etymologized) meanings of the name of the place in whatever the local Native language is. I don’t understand why these words were included, particularly since they make it impossible to determine when a name for a place in, say, eastern Quebec is a modern invention, or is actually attested in some Algonquin resource. Still, despite these issues FL, if used judiciously, is a very valuable resource.
     

  • Richard Rhodes, Eastern Ojibwa-Chippewa-Ottawa Dictionary (printed book). A dictionary of the Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa dialects, with approximately 9,000 entries. Especially useful are the numerous example sentences that help clarify the precise semantics and proper usage of various words. In addition to codes indicating the grammatical gender and verb class of each word (standard in any modern Ojibwe dictionary), entries may also be marked as “technical” (e.g., bird species names that only bird enthusiasts are likely to know), “archaic,” “rare,” etc., or as applying to specific semantic fields, like playing cards. There is a long and helpful introductory section on how to interpret the entries, as well as on the phonology and phonetics of both Eastern Ojibwe and Odawa.
     
  • John D. Nichols and Earl Nyholm, A Concise Dictionary of Minnesota Ojibwe (printed book). Containing approximately 7,000 entries, this dictionary is more or less what the title advertises, although it’s based more specifically on the speech of Mille Lacs. Long considered the “Bible” of Ojibwe language students, it’s to some extent been superseded by the Ojibwe People’s Dictionary, also edited by John Nichols and which builds on the foundation laid by this work (though the OPD has much more of a focus on the speech of Red Lake, Leech Lake, and Nigigoonsiminikaaning). I feel a need to include it here nonetheless, as my copy’s spine broke from overuse years ago and is currently patched up with about 20 layers of scotch tape.
     
  • Some older missionary dictionaries from the 19th century still retain some usefulness in spite of their flaws and the advances that have occurred since they were written—in particular, I have made fairly frequent use of Frederic Baraga’s dictionary of Michigan and Wisconsin Southwestern Ojibwe (available on the Internet Archive here; second edition edited and modified by Albert Lacombe here; the dictionary also includes a few Algonquin and Odawa words, which are usually labeled as such), and, for those who can read French, Jean-André Cuoq’s dictionary of Nipissing Algonquin (which he just called “Algonquin”; available on the Internet Archive here). Both had a fairly keen ear for the language they were recording, and their transcriptions can be reasonably easily converted into the modern orthographies with the one significant exception of vowel length, which Baraga only marked sporadically and Cuoq almost never marked; additionally, Baraga is mostly though not fully reliable on consonant fortition, but Cuoq usually did not distinguish lenis and fortis consonants. Both of them include a number of example sentences and Cuoq has some additional comments on usage. The fact that both men were missionaries must be kept in mind when interpreting their definitions and whether some words actually existed outside of translations of Christian materials, but for the most part they are reliable. A partial errata list for Baraga’s dictionary can be found on Kees van Kolmeschate’s site linked to above. Note that Cuoq’s dictionary is only Nipissing-French, with no corresponding French-Nipissing section.

    An additional French dictionary from a few years after Cuoq is Georges Lemoine’s 1909 dictionary of Nipissing (available here), which in a reversal of Cuoq’s format is French-Nipissing only. Lemoine marks long and short vowels more consistently than either Cuoq or Baraga, and the work contains significantly more entries. On the other hand, Lemoine’s identity as a missionary is perhaps even more of a factor in this dictionary than the other two, and many of the entries were clearly invented in the course of needing new words when translating religious materials, probably with limited native speaker involvement; many other definitions given for concepts for which there was often no aboriginal Ojibwe term were likely invented by Lemoine as well, as they’re far too long and clumsy and not in the style of native Ojibwe neologisms. The dictionary also has a fair number of misprints, and pages are unnumbered from “F” onwards.

Algonquiana

  • Papers from nearly all the back-issues of the annual Algonquian Conferences are now available online for free. These cover a huge wealth of information, from linguistics to history/ethnohistory to culture and anthropology to political issues, though certain topics and perspectives tend to get heavier coverage, partly depending on the era of publication; and linguistics has always been a primary focus. The issues currently available are those from the first conference in 1965 (published in 1967) through the 44th conference in 2012 (published in 2016). However, issues two through five are currently unavailable, and I’ve also noticed papers missing from several of the uploaded issues, in some cases numerous papers (particularly those from issue seven). For these, you can download the full issue from here, which will contain the article. [Update, July 2023: Unfortunately, this link no longer works.]
     
  • The Algonquian Linguistic Atlas project is another wonderful resource, or rather, large collection of resources. Included under its umbrella are 11 online dictionaries of various Algonquian languages, verb conjugations for several languages, a collection of specialized terminology in various semantic fields (medicine, sports, the body, etc.) in several languages, information on and help with Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, an atlas showing the realizations of various parameters in various languages and dialects (and a series of apps based on these data), some conversation manuals (the page linked to also has other resources on Algonquian grammatical structures), an in-progress database of linguistic structures across Algonquian languages, and more. For links to the project’s dictionaries, see below (the Nishnaabemwin Dictionary is linked to above).
     
  • At least three sites on Algonquian languages offer numerous resources including most or all of grammatical information, orthographical information, lessons, stories, sound recordings, research publications, and other resources, as well as links to dictionaries: Blackfoot, East Cree, and Innu. The other languages covered by the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas should eventually have similar sites.
     
  • The linguist Will Oxford (see also below) hosts a number of miscellaneous helpful Algonquian resources on his website, including definitions of common Algonquian linguistics terms, Proto-Algonquian verb paradigms, maps of language locations, and more. This also includes an easily navigable version of Leonard Bloomfield’s seminal 1946 “Sketch” reconstruction of Proto-Algonquian; for a detailed discussion of Proto-Algonquian on this blog, including some of the advances in our understanding since Bloomfield, see here.
     
  • Several other Algonquianists offer many of their papers and other published works on their websites or elsewhere online (a big shout-out to everyone in academia who does this!). Those I know of include Amy Dahlstrom, Michael David Hamilton, Christopher Hammerly, Marie-Odile Junker, Phil LeSourd, Éric Mathieu, Will Oxford (see also above), Conor Quinn, Bryan Rosen, and Natalie Weber, though I’m sure there are more, and this isn’t counting Academia.edu or ResearchGate accounts. While Yurok is Algic, not Algonquian, the Yurok Language Project hosts many publications by its researchers (as well as a dictionary/texts and other resources); and both the Algicists Juliette Blevins and Andrew Garrett share prepub versions of many of their papers on their websites. Likewise, Matthew Dryer shares his research on Kutenai (Ktunaxa), which is not Algonquian but shares many grammatical traits with Algonquian. (His website, like Blevins’s and Garrett’s, also has his publications on a great deal of other linguistic topics.)

Algonquian Dictionaries

Most of the following dictionaries are part of the Algonquian Linguistic Atlas’s Algonquian Dictionaries project, though some are not; I’ve found all of them to be helpful, however:

  • Arapaho. Includes some sound recordings and inflected forms. The dictionary is part of a larger site on the Arapaho language which includes lessons, recordings of stories and songs of various genres, some modern terminology, and more.
  • Atikamekw (Cree). The dictionary is Atikamekw-French and French-Atikamekw, without English definitions or information at this time, but one unique aspect is that all words are also given a definition in Atikamekw itself—allowing it to be used as a monolingual Atikamekw dictionary—which is truly wonderful, and to my knowledge a first for any Algonquian language dictionary. (For example, the definition of kwakwapicic [= kwākwāpiššišš], “butterfly,” is given as French “papillon (m.) rhopalocera, lépidoptère (m.) (papillon diurne ou nocturne)” and as Atikamekw “Mantcoc ka miret wapokoniriw ka mawockatcitat. Wactenamakaniw ka mokockatcitat.” = roughly “Insect which pollinates [lit. ‘gives what it has gathered to’] flowers. Candles/lights disorient them.”). Most entries have an example sentence as well. Some, but not all, entries provide a pronunciation, which is important since vowel length is not marked in the practical orthography; however, consonant fortition seems to not to be indicated with complete consistency even in the pronunciation guide.
  • Blackfoot.
  • Cheyenne. Includes sound files and example sentences for most entries, as well as, in some cases, etymological information (of interest partly because of how significantly Cheyenne has changed phonologically from Proto-Algonquian). Entries are also sorted into categories (“birds,” “health,” “nationalities,” “social events,” etc.), which you can search by.
  • Cree (Eastern Swampy and Moose), combines these two very similar varieties, and is based on the decades of work by Doug Ellis (also available on an older site, not in the Algonquian Dictionaries Project format, here). One can use it in conjunction with Ellis’s updated Eastern Swampy and Moose Cree verb conjugation tables (PDF).
  • Cree (Fort Severn). This dictionary deals specifically with the Fort Severn variety of the Western Swampy Cree dialect. You can search in English or Cree (in any of Roman, Western Syllabics, or Eastern Syllabics orthographies).
  • Cree (Moose).
  • Cree (Plains): Itwêwina. Includes conjugations of verbs and inflections of nouns, and breakdowns of some but not all complex longer words (which contain preverbs/prenouns). There are a few entries with associated recordings, but not many.
  • Cree (Plains). Not as many features or as user-friendly as some of the other Algonquian Dictionaries Project dictionaries. At least for me the scripts on the site often freeze up as well, but I don’t know if that’s just an issue on my end.
  • Cree (Woods and Plains). A compendium of words from Woods Cree and two varieties of Plains Cree, culled from four individual dictionaries.
  • Cree (Métis). Has sound files for each entry, but a somewhat idiosyncratic spelling system. Represents the Métis Cree dialect spoken at Île-à-la-Crosse, Saskatchewan, which is primarily Northern Plains Cree but with a significant contingent of Métis French nouns and some other words. The language could alternatively be viewed as a variety of Michif with much greater Cree than French influence, and it is referred to by the dictionary, and some researchers, as “Northern Michif” (see below for southern Michif dictionaries).
  • East Cree, including both the Northern and Southern subdialects; searches can be done in English, French, or Cree (both in Roman orthography and Syllabics). There are corresponding verb conjugation tools for both the Northern and Southern dialects.
  • Innu (Montagnais). As with East Cree, you can search in English, French, or Innu. The Innu results helpfully usually present pronunciation information from multiple communities, since the standardized orthography hides some phonemic details as well as a great deal of dialectal variation. In some cases, attestations of a given term found in old sources are also provided. A corresponding verb conjugation tool is here.
  • Maliseet-Passamaquoddy. This is based on the dictionary published by David A. Francis, Robert M. Leavitt, and Margaret Apt, Peskotomuhkati Wolastoqewi Latuwewakon: A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary, though it has been updated. The website also includes a pronunciation guide and detailed noun and verb conjugation charts.
  • Michif (the mixed French-Algonquian [mainly Plains Cree] language). This dictionary covers the dialect spoken at the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. A number of entries are associated with example sentences, and in most cases the pronunciation and etymology of the word is provided.
  • Michif. The spelling is not entirely consistent and sometimes overly English-based, but there are sound files for each entry. Represents the dialect spoken at St. Lazare, Manitoba.
  • Miami-Illinois (Myaamia-Peewaalia). Includes sound files for entries (though necessarily by non-L1 speakers, since the language went extinct in the mid-1900s), as well as plural forms of nouns and some conjugated forms of verbs.
  • Mi'kmaq (Listuguj). This dictionary is specifically in the Listuguj dialect. One useful feature is that there are at least three audio recordings of every word (each from a different speaker).
  • Naskapi.
  • Penobscot (Eastern Abenaki). Although no credits or other information are listed on this site, this appears to be hosted by the Penobscot Cultural and Historical Preservation Department, and based on Frank T. Siebert Jr.’s Penobscot dictionary files and notes.
  • Potawatomi. At the time of writing (October, 2020) this is still in beta form and being updated. Features include sound files, keywords, links to related words, and in some cases example sentences. Some care must be taken, as it’s obvious that some of the sound files for the headwords were recorded by second-language speakers and not native speakers, even when recordings of native speakers are available and also linked to elsewhere in the entry.
  • Proto-Algonquian. This is essentially the material from John Hewson’s 1993 book A Computer-Generated Dictionary of Proto-Algonquian, though with a handful of corrections. Users should be aware that the dictionary has several drawbacks and that there are many erroneous reconstructions and fair amount of erroneous data; and it was, as the title suggests, basically just created by having a computer compare four Algonquian languages and derive proto-forms from them.
  • Unami (Southern). Includes a number of example sentences, as well as numerous sound files recorded by native speakers before the recent loss of the last L1 speakers. Also included on the site are some basic lessons as well as a number of recorded stories/texts in several genres. The main website of the Delaware Tribe of Indians also has a page with some lists of words by category.

History, Culture, etc.

  • Handbook of North American Indians (printed books). 15 volumes of this planned 20-volume work were published by the Smithsonian Institution between 1978 and 2008, which are unfortunately all that will be published. Most volumes cover a particular culture area of North America north of Mexico, though a few deal with other specific topics; each one is massive and incredibly in-depth, with articles on every group in the area, archaeology, the physical environment, history, languages, and more. Articles on individual tribes or groups usually cover social lives, material culture, religious beliefs, history, and relationships with other tribes and with the U.S. or Canadian governments, as well as sections on synonymy and further reading and a footnote on the language(s) spoken. All chapters are written by experts in the particular field, and while they can get quite technical and are usually very dry, the books are intended to be useable by the general public. The volumes most relevant to Anishinaabe peoples are Volume 6 (Subarctic), Volume 13 (Plains), and Volume 15 (Northeast). Some other volumes also contain some chapters relevant to Anishinaabeg in a broader sense (particularly Volume 2 (Indians in Contemporary Society), Volume 4 (History of Indian-White Relations), and Volume 17 (Languages)). Be aware that some of the material and focus in the older volumes is now out of date.
     
  • (More to come)

Miscellaneous

  • Marianne Mithun, The Languages of Native North America (printed book). While it’s pricey, this is easily the best book on the native languages of the United States and Canada. Mithun covers in great detail the various and fascinating phonological and grammatical structures found among the languages, in chapters which could in fact serve as good introductions, for someone with a basic knowledge of general linguistics, to concepts like noun incorporation, applicatives, evidentials, and grammatical relations (as it did for me, at least). The second half of the book covers every language family and isolate, living and extinct, found in the area, including discussion of research on the language/family (including references, often dozens to hundreds of them in the case of better-studied families; the bibliography runs well over a hundred pages), internal classification of the family, alternative names and other information on each individual language, as well as a brief grammatical sketch and text in one or more languages from the family. There are several maps showing language locations as well. There are unfortunately some typos and other errors which made it past review; most are inconsequential, but a few are not, including the discussion of obviation in Ojibwe, where in the example Odawa text the wrong word or morpheme is emphasized a few times (pg. 78, especially line two), surely confusing readers not already familiar with the language. The incredible breadth and depth and usefulness of the book overwhelmingly outweigh such occasional quibbles, though.
     
  • LanguageGeek. This site has some information on the speakers, phoneme inventories, and orthographies of a large number of Native languages, although some of it is out of date or not fully reliable (I don’t think it’s been updated in a long while, sadly). The most valuable parts of the site are the discussions of Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, and especially the fonts offered for download—including general Unicode fonts as well as a number of specific fonts for Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics, Dakelh (Carrier) Syllabics, Blackfoot Syllabics, and the Cherokee syllabary.
     
  • Story Time With Ug is the truest analysis of the human condition you will find. I recommend starting with the earliest posts first. Ug strong.