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basic Ohio style mocs(Wyandot/Shawnee/Delaware)

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richardzane:
Kweh Pekane,
forgot to mention that ours(wyandot and wendat)  is an Iroquoian language.
I've heard it said by linguists that Algonquin and Iroquoian languages are as different as Chinese Mandarin and English!
we kept ourt languages and identity even though we were all neighbors and traded constantly.
today , seems everyones unique individuality and identity is getting lost into the flow of panNDNism.

Olanigw (Pekane):
Thanks for the pics!

And that would certainly explain my difficulty.

I am Western Abenaki.  we call ourselves Aln8bak.  No federal recognition in the States but meh, we know who we are and so do Vermonters.  I am working on learning the language so my children can grow up fluent.  Fortunately there are still one or two elders who are fully fluent and they are working hard to revive the language to keep it alive with the help of a linguistics genius that is pouring his soul into the effort and creating teaching materials that facilitate internalizing it.  Cutting edge stuff.

This past generation has seen an explosion in interest in the culture and history, as grandmothers and fathers opened up about their childhood and their grandparents.  In many ways we are still a very much fractured people, since every family made the decision to live as a "gypsy" or "river rat" in their homeland, assimilate to avoid death and persecution, or emigrate to the reservation at Odenak in Quebec over the years as the European population grew and, more recently, the eugenic movement in the 30's.

Yup.  People like to lump everything together by skin color(and even that varies by Nation in the extreme...) "You speak Indian? (i speak Western Abenaki, and badly.) / You are an Indian? (yes I am)/ You don't look Indian...(You're right, I don't have a strong sioux nose like that guy in Dances with Wolves)/ So Tipis, right?"  >_<

It's an uphill battle... 

Mike_H:
Pekane, part of the issue, I think at least, is that so little of the general public knows even the basics of the eastern tribes.  More people know of the plains, southwest and pacific northwest tribes.  It's sad really.

richardzane:
kweh Pekane,
good hearing about you Al8bak folks, and you are fortunate to have speakers.
The main reason i was in DC was I was invited to attend the "Breath of Life" sponsored by the Smithsonian whish specializes in reclaiming threatened indigenous languages. In my team, there were four of us representing the Wendat and Wyandot Every native group that came, from California tribes to Massachusets and Virginia tribes are in the same predicament...even those who have elder speakers are losing them every year.
It was great hanging out for two weeks and sharing languages and each others dances and songs too. 2 weeks in the city was the pits though.

Mike_H
you're right, there's so much american ignorance about this continents aboriginal people groups . It even feels deliberate at times...
There have always been attempts at reducing all natives to a one size fits all NDN... happened first at the boarding schools,taking 1000s of kids from hundreds of very different native communities and reducing them all to a one size fits all NDN kid with cut hair and uniforms.

BowEd:
Interesting richard.Nice pictures.I'm sure you enjoyed yourself on your trip.I don't speak any kind of indian but like a lot of their philosophys towards life.The way I understand history is the Sioux actually were an eastern indian tribe long ago and moved west fighting and conquering other tribes territory as they went.In Iowa here we had the Osage & Iowa indians I think.
When I was at cape cod back in 2007 I went to a meeting where the speaker was a native indian from that area.Very interesting.

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