Gift of language welcomes people home

Page 6

I remember the first word I ever spoke in my traditional language - Peendigaen. Come in. I was 23 and had been reconnected to my original family for less than a year. The gentle roll of Ojibway was foreign to me after two decades in the non-Native foster care system and, at first, that simple word felt awkward, clumsy, wrong. But when the person I spoke to smiled and stepped into my mother's house, I felt complete, worthy, real.

Peendigaen. Come in. It's significant this would be the first word I spoke since it allowed me to come in to a fuller realization of myself. Up to that point I still felt like a stranger in my own home. When my people would talk around me I could not be included and I felt alone, afraid and angry.

Alone is not a comfortable feeling. Human beings were not created for solitude and when language prevented me from being included, the sense of aloneness was difficult. It made me withdraw. Coupled with the fear I felt, it was devastating. I was afraid that people, my own people, would think less of me when they discovered I did not speak my language. So I withdrew even further. After struggling to make a reconnection, feeling like withdrawing over the language issue was confusing.

All of which made me angry.

I was angry at the Children's Aid Society for removing me from my roots at three years old, for forcing me into a non-Native world, and for abandoning me to the so-called care of people who did not care whether I discovered my real self at all. Added to that, I felt angry with my family for speaking Ojibway around me. I thought they were purposely trying to isolate me when all they were doing was what came naturally to them - speaking their language.

And I was angry with myself.

Inside me was a private rage. I felt inadequate because in the short year I had been returned to my family, I had not picked up any words at all. I felt inferior. My years in the outside world had taught me to rebel at inferiority, to fight it, to prove myself capable in the eyes of that world, to take a strong, prideful stance against it - and my reactions were the same in this case. I became closed, aloof and distant.

Eventually, however, the magic inherent in our culture saved me. My people allowed me my feelings and the time to acquire a sense of the language. There was no forced feeding of expectation - merely a quiet acceptance of where I'd been, what had happened to me, and the knowledge that we all arrive where we need to arrive when we are supposed to get there.

When I felt no pressure to become more, I relaxed. My eyes, ears, heart and mind opened up to the possibility of the reconnection experience and I began to learn. Soon the idea of the language became real to me and soon after that, my first Ojibway word rolled off my tongue.

In the years since, I have learned more. Although I am far from fluent in my first language I have an understanding that allows me to feel included, a part of things, when Ojibway is spoken around me. The knowledge of belonging is the greatest gift that comes with speaking our languages. Language is the door that allows us to come in to a full knowledge of ourselves as Aboriginal people.

There will always be those who return to our circles without the ability to speak. I have heard people tell returnees that they are not Indian if they cannot speak their language. I have heard them called down, rejected and abandoned because of their lack of the tongue. This is what we need to avoid if our languages are to survive and flourish.

Our people cannot speak their languages largely because of circumstances beyond their control. Maybe their parents left the language behind and did not teach them, or more likely, outside agencies removed them from their roots and access to their language. What's required is patience and acceptance of where they've been, what has happened and the fact that we all get where we need to go at our own speed. You can't force feed language. It's learned slowly ovr time and should be part of the gifts we extend to our own when they return to us, when we stand at the doors to our communities and say Peendigaen - come in.