Ancestors
Monday, October 13, 2025 10:15AM
August 13, 2025, 5:39 PM
From Page 17:
Local link to this thought:
Anishinaabe/Ojibwe, Vocabulary
“ I love to share these words to give some perspective of how old the language is and how long our relationship to the land is…...literally thousands of years.”
“These ancient words date back thousands of years, maybe even prior to the ending of the last ice age.”
- Nookomis = 'my grandmother'
- Gichi-gami = 'The Great Lake' aka Lake Superior
- Makwa = 'black bear'
- Indaanikoobijigan = 'my great grandparents' or 'my ancestor'
- Mooz = Moose
- Misamik = Giant Beaver
“This means that when we hear a word like Nookomis, we are hearing a sound created by a person who knew this land back when it was covered by ice a mile high, before Gichi-gami (Lake Superior) existed. When we use the old words, we are using words that were spoken by someone who saw woolly mammoths, giant Mooz, and Misamik (giant beaver).
From page 18-19
- Aanikanootaage = ‘to translate’
- Aanike-ogimaa – vice president
- Aanikegamaa = chain of lakes
- Aanikobidoon = ‘running out of thread and typing another piece of thread to the end of the first. (When this happens, the two pieces of thread become one.)
- Aanik = ‘to be interconnected’ or ‘to be linked’ or ‘to work in a sequence’
From page 18-19:
“My ancestor” includes “my great, great grandparent” as well as the person ten thousand (10,000) years ago who saw the Misamik.”
“Within the word Indaanikoobijigan is the word part (aka Morpheme or ‘root word’) that carries meaning: ‘annik’….it suggests that the Ojibwe word for ‘my great grandparents’ DOES NOT MEAN JUST THAT.”
“Many Objibwe words contain morphemes. In this book, I observe morphemes in different environments, to understand the meaning of certain words, rather than just a translation.”
From page 19-20:
If we were to spiritually translate the phrase ‘my great grandparents,’ ‘my ancestors,’ it would mean: ‘one to whom I AM connected,’ ‘that being to which I AM inextricably linked.”
“What’s more, this word is used for both: ‘my great grandparent’ AND ‘my great grandchild.’ In Ojibwe, we use the same term for one another, they are interchangeable. Sometimes I wonder if we are actually saying I AM YOU!”