蜜桃传媒

Practising Nakoda: Overview and Reflections on Nakoda Language Documentation by Vincent Collette

Vincent Collette is co-author of Nak贸n-wico鈥檌鈥檈 n茅 usp茅nic鈥檌ciyac / Practising Nakoda: A Thematic Dictionary, published by University of Regina Press.

Like many Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, the Nakoda hold that their language is a gift of the Grandfathers, and the only legitimate language to address the spirits through prayers and songs. One cannot over-estimate the value of the Nakoda language for cultural survival and community healing. Unfortunately, even though it was spoken for millennia, the natural transmission was seriously halted in the 1950-60s, and even before in some communities, due to the trauma of the residential school system.

Nakoda is now an endangered Siouan language spoken in Saskatchewan and Montana. With less than 50 speakers many feel the need to try to reverse this language shift. This documentation project was initially inspired by the late Armand McArthur, a respected Nakoda elder from Pheasant Rump (Saskatchewan) who contacted me when I was a sessional at the First Nations University of Canada (in Regina, Saskatchewan) and sought to produce language documentation. I had never worked on a Siouan language before, and since there were only a handful of speakers remaining, I was worried about the quality of the information I would collect. To build acceptability and enhance connections, I attended as many Nakoda cultural events as I could with my family. After a few months of working with Armand, I met Wilma Kennedy, and we worked together on Beginning Nakoda (Collette, McArthur & Kennedy, University of Regina Press, 2019), a textbook that serves at the university and high school levels.

A few months later, I was attending a Nakoda language conference in Regina, and I met Ira McArthur (Armand鈥檚 nephew), the Chief of Pheasant Rump. He agreed, after a cigarette or two, to financially support a larger dictionary project on the spot because it was so needed. In June of 2018, Wilma and I started working on what would become A Concise Dictionary of Nakoda (Assiniboine) (Collette & Kennedy, University of Nebraska Press, 2023). This work was done in extremis since Mrs. Kennedy passed away in March 2020, one week before the Covid pandemic. Although the dictionary we wrote allows a person to find a specific Nakoda word they have heard, or to seek the Nakoda translation of an English word, it isn鈥檛 an ideal tool for learning a language.

Illustration of a Nakoda person in traditional clothing.

In 2022, I started working with Tom Shawl, a Nakoda speaker originally from Fort Belknap (Montana) to write a thematic dictionary where words are grouped thematically according to their meaning. The Nakoda title of the third book in the series Nak贸n-w寞co鈥檌鈥檈 n茅 懦sp茅n寞c鈥檌ciyac, Practising Nakoda: A Thematic Dictionary (Collette, Shawl & Kennedy, University of Regina Press, 2024) means 鈥渢each yourself the Nakoda language鈥 and its explicit aim is vocabulary building. It contains basic Nakoda vocabulary which is organized into 30 themes. This gives the student the basic words for many themes and a general view of word building patterns. Some sections are meant to enhance daily and ceremonial communication (dances and ceremonies, ceremonial clothing). Since the Nakoda were a war society in the old days, Tom wrote a whole section on war culture which includes words like was茅 git懦 鈥榟e wears war paint鈥, oh铆diga ec懦虂 鈥榳ar deed鈥 or wakt贸knaga ec煤bi 鈥榗eremony in which warriors told their war exploits in a public setting in order to inspire the people, especially the young鈥. We had a lot of fun documenting this special vocabulary, and in general working collaboratively with Tom enhanced greatly the knowledge base.  

Most importantly, the words in our thematic dictionary are not organized alphabetically but are grouped according to the root element or to their meaning. Since a Nakoda word can contain many elements, we have grouped many words formed with the same root element in one section. This method enhances greatly the learner鈥檚 鈥渨ord building awareness.鈥 For example, being able to identify the verb root, like in the case of 聽聽聽-拧办补诲补- 鈥榩lay鈥 is a crucial asset in the student鈥檚 learning success. The more aware the student is about the make-up of complex words, the more skilled they will become at guessing the meaning of more complex words, like 辞-拧办补诲补 鈥榟e plays inside鈥 拧办补迟办颈测补 鈥榟e lets him play鈥, and 测补-拧办补诲补 鈥榟e teases him/her verbally鈥.

As a university professor, I often tell my students that although searching at the library for a specific topic takes more time than searching on the web, the advantage of this physical task is that you can find something interesting you were not looking for. This might, or might not, lead you to new paths and discoveries. Reading a thematic dictionary is, in my view like browsing in the books left and right on a bookshelf: you simply absorb words and connections between words you were not looking for in the first place, just like a child listening passively to the language input of his/her parents. Since full immersion with native speakers is not possible now, what is crucially needed is a user-friendly book that teaches both the core vocabulary and how to use it in sentences. Carefully reading the thematic vocabulary of a language is the best way to build language skills, and Practising Nakoda was the best resource we could create for new speakers considering the endangered status of Nakoda.


Vincent Collette smiles at the camera.

Vincent Collette聽is a professor of linguistics at the Universit茅 du Qu茅bec 脿 Chicoutimi, and the editor of聽Nak贸n-i鈥檃 wo! Beginning Nakoda听补苍诲听A Concise Dictionary of Nakoda (Assiniboine). He is interested in Indigenous languages of North America, and is specialized in historical linguistics, semantics, and morphology.

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