A project of love and dedication between a New Brunswick scholar and Indigenous elders is preserving the Peskotomuhkati-Wolastoqey language for generations to come.
The collaboration has spawned an online portal and this winter, the second edition of a print dictionary will be published.
“It was not just my being able to provide for my family, but it was an enrichment for me,” said Margaret Apt, a Peskotomuhkati language and cultural preservationist from Maine.
She was spurred to take on the project because she herself faced hurdles as a child. She spent a few years off her reserve and says she lost some of the language while staying with English speakers.
When she returned, she remembers her Grade 1 teacher hitting her for explaining a lesson to classmates in Peskotomuhkati.
“It startled me,” she recalled. “I even told my grandmother, and she said, ‘That’s their way of trying to keep you from speaking your language.’”
It was her grandmother who encouraged her to keep speaking their language by using it daily at home.
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“I asked my uncle why and his response was, ‘She was determined that you speak the language,’” said Apt.
To continue that legacy, and to pass the language to her grandchildren, Apt has spent decades conducting research and interviews.
She worked alongside University of New Brunswick professor emeritus Robert Leavitt and the late Indigenous elder David A. Francis to work on the Peskotomuhkati-Wolastoqey dictionary.
Its first edition was published in 2008.
“One of my favourite things that somebody said about the dictionary was a woman at Woodstock (New Brunswick) who told me … I sleep with this book,” said Leavitt.
He says many of the “fluent comprehenders” — or those who grew up hearing the language and can comprehend it but can’t speak it — had a lot of shame around their language.
The dictionary helped change that.
“It impressed people. (They said) ‘Our language really is something. Here’s the concrete evidence of it,’” he said.
For their work, the three were recently awarded the Governor General’s Meritorious Service Medal.
Apt says she is focused on the next generation, and keeping their language alive.
“We’re still here. Our language is still here, and we just need to start teaching the younger ones,” she said.
“And in order to do that, we have to be willing to speak the language on a daily basis.”
When asked what her favourite entry in the dictionary is, she says “kolselmol” without hesitation.
The meaning? I love you.
“Because when I give it to my grandchildren, they give it back and it just sounds perfect coming from them.”
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