‘Gi-mishoomis gaa-wiishkobaninig giigidowin’ Your grandfather’s words were very sweet: An Ojibwe petition from mid-19th century
By the mid-19th century the British and the Anishinaabe had entered into numerous treaties and surrenders throughout the Great Lakes area. The treaties were reportedly conducted in Ojibwe (aka Anishinaabemowin) with interpreters but there is no record of how they translated the treaty or the speeches of the Crown into Ojibwe – usually all that remains is the English record of the proceedings and the written treaty. This presentation will analyze a document written, or dictated, in Ojibwe by Captain Paudash of the Rice Lake Mississauga (Rice Lake, southeastern Ontario) detailing his account of the ‘Gun Shot’ Treaty and the 1818 Port Hope Treaty. This important document promises to shed light on how the Mississauga Anishinaabe understood treaty and their relationship to the British through the lens of their own language. The document (no date) has been transliterated from an obsolete Ojibwe orthography into the modern orthography. Attention will be paid to the Ojibwe vocabulary, metaphors, phraseology, and discourse, culminating in a comparative discourse analysis.