The vast majority of the
estimated 300 languages spoken in North American before the arrival of
Christopher Columbus are endangered or extinct. But the Miami language,
once spoken throughout much of Ohio and Indiana, is in the process of
being revitalized.Thanks to a cooperative effort by the Miami
Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University, the college named in honor of
the tribe, the first comprehensive dictionary for the language is due
to be published in late February. Titled Myaamia neehi peewaalia
kaloosioni mahsinaakani (or A Miami-Peoria Dictionary), the 200-page
book contains about 3,500 entries plus a brief description of the
language and an English cross-reference list. The accomplishment
reflects a university/tribe partnership that is unusual in higher
education, says Daryl Baldwin, director of the Myaamia Project for
Language Revitalization and a member of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.
He, along with David Costa, a linguist who has done extensive language
work on the Miami-Peoria language, are co-editors. When Miami
University was founded in 1809, the Miami Tribe was well known
throughout the Midwest, but in 1846 the tribe was forcibly removed from
Ohio and Indiana and relocated first to Kansas and then in the 1870s to
what is now Oklahoma. Being uprooted twice was devastating to a tribe
struggling to maintain its way of life in the face of government
efforts to suppress the use of native languages and force assimilation,
says Baldwin. [more]
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