Well, I am back in Winnipeg and now starts the hard part. Learning Michif while living Michif was one of the most valuable experiences of my life and I sincerely hope that I can keep it up. Keeping Michif while living in Winnipeg surrounded only by English speakers is already posing a challenge

I was asked to keep up the blog, because as boring as I think my life is, Michif language is not. I remembered that this Michif language acquisition, immersion and revitalization is not a "on-off" project. There should not be an end to learning and using Michif. As far as language in my life go, I could maybe afford to stop using pig-latin and maybe my walkie-talkie lingo and still survive, but I really do not think I can afford to lose Michif.

So here it is, the life of a single, urban, indoor-plumbing using, Winnipeg Métis woman using and learning Michif. The trials and tribulations of cabin life and learning the language has now transformed into the trials and tribulations of finding a Michif speaker in the city.

Just when I thought I was going to have to lean only on my Elders - with a growing long distance bill - I spontaneously inaugurated a new student today. My former graduate studies classmate, misery-loves-company, dear friend Sharon Humphrey was just reflecting on how she wished she used the Cree she learned years ago a little bit more.

Too late; I heard her; she couldn't take it back. I pounced.

She is now the somewhat-willing recipient of my Michif conversations. Knowing my dear friend Sharon spent her "formative" years living in Montreal acquiring her "more-than-just-swears-and-drink-orders" French as well as her Cree skills make her my new urban Michif buddy.

I promised her lots of talking - in Michif - about people behind their backs and that sold her.

In all honesty, though, Sharon has one valuable resource that I do not have. She has a young 5 year old son. I secretly hope he will not only be arriving to kindergarten in September with a backpack full of hot wheels cars, but a little "Taanshi kiya" too.

9/18/2007

I am just getting ready for my last couple of days here under the very bright, very telling full moon. My Aunt, a nurse who has worked in emergency rooms for several years, taught me well that full moons have several meanings. Right now, all I'm getting is paranoid and a little nostalgic. I packed up to leave Winnipeg on a full moon and I am now packing up by the light of another full moon.

There are numerous theories and stories about full moons and I hear new ones all the time. In any event, full moons really freak me out.

Despite being adequately freaked out, I am ready to reflect on how fast this month of 'living Michif' has gone by.

I believe only people who lived in or were raised in the country can truly appreciate the unique connection between the land, the water and everything else. In this case, it is language. In terms of this project, one of the things I think I have reflected on the most is the importance of connections between place, language, stories and people.

This town has started to feel like home. Not only in the sense that my language instructors' families have made me feel at home, have been kind and welcoming, but in the sense that I will also miss the land and the places just as much when I leave.

I know this Michif language program is far from over. I still have so much more to learn and both Rita and Grace have encouraged me to phone, email and visit as often as I can. That's the trick - use the language or lose it. At the very least I have learned how important and endangered this language is; the last thing I want to do is lose it. I can only hope I can give it life just like my teachers have. I think that given the right setting though, I just may be able to.

I am Métis, but I can honestly say I have never really 'lived Michif' like this before.


And for the 'bleaders'* out there...

Things I will miss: The loons; swimming in the lake while Rita talks to me from shore in Michif; Ramona saying 'fish' (kichi pahpiw); using a language every day that is truly a 'laughing language' in every sense of the word; hearing Grace's stories; and, simply, learning Michif. I think I may actually miss being in school now (gasp!) and I think if I can learn Michif, then it's probable that anyone can!!

Things I will not miss: My camp 'throne'; my camp 'shower-bag'; the loons; strobe-light lightening storms; big fat mosquitoes; all other bugs in general (mainly the ones taking up residence in my bed and car); and li marde labrinth**.

*blog-readers = bleaders

**This refers to the diligence one must exercise when navigating space shared with four dogs with - ahem - healthy constitutions.

8/02/2007

I have never been good with numbers. I think I'm a literature person and after this month, maybe I could even be a 'language' person. So, with that in mind, someone will have to explain this to me: Why does the Weather Network give you two temperatures when it is inexplicably hot out? Sure, they give me hourly updates to tell me their 'numbers' - say 37°C - but that it "feels like" 42°C. Right now, in my cabin, I'm feeling 142°C. Do you think the Weather Network is just trying to mess with me? I think it feels like they are playing a tricky little mind game.

Oh, and here is a time-saver, Weather Network: Make sure to keep my rant on file for the winter months when -37°C feels like -42°C with the wind-chill!

Maybe this irrationality is heat exhaustion setting in?

As for my lessons, it is so hot, the only Michif phrases I can seem to recall right now are those that involve "it's hot"(kishitew) and "I'm going swimming"(ni wii bakashimon).

There is a lot of talk about the weather in our lessons. Since we are living Michif and learning about the community, we have been given a lot to think about in terms of how the weather has changed; how storms have never been as bad as they have been this year; how plants are disappearing; how animals are acting strangely and appearing where they shouldn't; and how fast the water is rising.

I am not currently in what I would consider "the North" right now. However, I think there is a message from the 'North' that the 'South' is not receiving. It has been said, but I think it demands to be said again, that the rate of consumption in the South is being felt in the North. I will spare you of my enviro-rant of the day, but will simply say I have heard several accounts of how the land here has changed and may not be able to recover.

Why doesn't the Weather Network - or all other mainstream networks for that matter - communicate what THAT feels like?

7/30/2007

I guess this is what the month is all about. As much as it is about content and the Michif language itself, it is also about how I learned it.

Today I learned about herbs - lii michin. Using the Michif language, I gained a sense not only of what the herbs used in medicinal teas and rubs are for but also how my teacher came to know about them.

I listened; I internalized the discussion; I smelled herbs; I related the stories back to the herbs; I increased my Michif vocabulary; I appreciated the origins of lii michin; I worked hard to treat the knowledge of the herbs with a level of reverence; and, of course, as per usual, I gestured with my big claw-like hands as I spoke and spilled the herbs all over the floor.

I soon learned what you do when that happens.

I must be retaining some of what I learn, though. My parents just made the drive from their home in Devlin, Ontario, to Camperville to visit me. They seem to have noticed (and seem a little shocked) that my teachers had good things to say about me. After a lifetime of mixed, not-always positive reviews from my teachers, it was quite refreshing for them not only to hear decent reviews from my instructors but also see and hear that I am speaking Michif functionally. As long-time interested observers and not-so-silent financial partners in the ongoing saga of Tricia's education, I think they were impressed. They were only here for a day but they could see, as I do, just how much you can learn in a day through Michif and the women who speak it.

7/24/2007

I've been getting comments and questions about my health. Mostly concerning insect-borne west nile or lyme disease and various other ailments; sunburns, swimmers itch, the "fever", the rockin' pneumonia... People are thinking of me here in my rustic cabin by the lake. Wondering what is going to "get" me.

For those concerned, none of the above will probably kill me, though. It will not be the bugs, flora, fauna, my own misfortune or clumsiness (falling over a rock) that gets me.

What will be the death of me? Ironically, it will be technology.

Video camera, digital recorder, digital photos, DVDs, wireless internet, related software and laptop computers. These are all things I am fully equipped with here, yet the only technology on which I seem to have adequate training is the bbq lighter I start my citronella candle with. Even then, the coordination required for the tricky thumb-index-finger-child-proof thing is a little too much for me.

I have been granted an amazing opportunity here. I am able to listen to talented Michif speakers as they teach me their language - the language of their grandparents, tell me stories in Michif and teach me lessons that will be with me for a lifetime. Both of my teachers encourage me to learn and hope that I will pass on some of what I have learned. In the process, they hope I will record some of the language and stories so other people can learn from this experience.

Sadly, my desire to record the language and my ability to record it do not match up. I have, so far, resisted the urge to launch the above mentioned technology into the lake. However, I feel comfortable enough on my workplace website to say the thought of feeding the workplace camera to the pelicans did cross my mind.

Not to panic. All NAHO property is in excellent working condition and will be returned in that condition. I was making light and making jokes in order to retain some of my patience. Let's just say in a moment of desperation I may have offered a tech support employee my car in exchange for an IP address.

I hope he likes Corollas.

7/17/2007

There are a lot of things I'm really starting to enjoy about immersion (as a way of learning a language). Aside from the obvious desire to distance myself from university for the summer after recently graduating, I am really loving the "freedoms" it allows. Since there are only a couple students here, the course is customized.

I think it's an interesting dynamic to have both women instructors and all women students. I'll leave my personal reflections on my peaceful month away from men for another time, but lets just say my teachers are, at all times, woman-mentors. In lessons, they know what interests me/us. As an example, they help explain linguistic differences between animate and inanimate objects in the Michif language.

Inanimate: the cup is hot (kishitew)
Animate: Brad Pitt is hot (kishishoo).

Granted, the old Michif nohkoms (grandmothers) may not have used Brad Pitt in their "traditional" language transmissions and maybe referencing something so recent isn't technically in keeping with my immersion methods. However, I have no doubt they used that sentence a few times to describe some nice looking guy.

Who am I kidding? Those Michif nohkoms used that sentence last week.
Some of them may have glasses, but they know hot animate objects when they see them.

7/11/2007

It is my first day in my new home for the month of July. By no means did I want to make anyone go out of their way for me, but I arrived to a beautiful cabin - that I have to say is much nicer than my own apartment back in Winnipeg. Really.

It's all about atmosphere and expectations I suppose. In my city apartment: neighbor's fence door banging repeatedly outside my window = irritating. In my cabin: waves hitting rocks repeatedly = not irritating. I'll report back on the irritation level these loons reach, though.

Upon arrival, though, I didn't want to make a lot of noise. I did not want to be the disruptive city-dweller making a "grand" entrance into a small community. As it turns out, though, I am THAT girl. You know, the girl with the car alarm that goes off at midnight because she forgot her keys in her pocket? I'm always that girl. Trying hard not to be a bother, but probably alerting the entire town of Camperville to my arrival.

Michif is most definitely a "laughing language" as my teachers tell me. So I'm sure stories of my first couple of days will provide them with a start to the arsenal of material they will use to laugh at me in Michif - especially during this "beginner" period when I really don't know what they're saying!!!

So, even though I grew up in the "country," I have this feeling I have been slightly tainted by the city lifestyle. It is possible that, in the last 10 years, I've forgotten what a bear's #2 looks like? Is it necessary for me to cringe and gasp in shock every time my Corolla bottoms out on a mud hole or pot hole? The only difference between these off-road craters and the ones in my back lane in Winnipeg is the amount of wildlife residing in them.

There are some small adjustments in the first days, but without a doubt, I am in constant awe of the knowledge that my teachers, Rita and Grace, have not only of their language but of the history of this community. I feel extremely fortunate not only to learn the language, but to learn the stories they are telling in my Michif lessons. The stories and the language are clearly indivisible from one another. For all the school learnin' I have completed, there is nothing that can compare to this!

7/06/2007