Sacred Name Collection

Indigenous languages · recovered texts live

Mi'kmaq — the Mi'kmaq Language

The language of Mi'kma'ki, the Mi'kmaq homeland — named Mikmaque in the grammar of 1864 and Micmac in the history of 1921, and carried today in the people's own schools, classes, and apps.

Recovered texts are here to read. The people's own curriculum doorway is in preparation — in partnership with the Mi'kmaq people's own speakers. The goal is the whole collection in Mi'kmaq: every book to read and to hear, here and in the school. Nothing is published until they have guided and reviewed it.

The language

Mi'kmaq is the language of the Mi'kmaq people of Mi'kma'ki. The two old books on this shelf name it in the spellings of their day — Mikmaque on the title leaf of Maillard's grammar (New York, 1864), whose English title leaf calls it “the Mikmaque Language of Nova Scotia,” and Micmac in Pacifique's sacred history, printed at Restigouche in 1921. In this doorway's own words, following the people's own education authority today, the people and the language are Mi'kmaq.

The people's own education house names the work plainly: Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, the collective voice for Mi'kmaq education in Nova Scotia, serves twelve of the thirteen Mi'kmaq communities in the Nova Scotian Mi'kma'ki, protects the Mi'kmaw language rights of the Mi'kmaq people, and says it remains vigilant in maintaining and revitalizing the language. Its own account of that work names a stand-alone immersion school in Eskasoni for students up to grade 4, immersion classes at Wagmatcook, Mentor Apprentice and Junior Mentor Apprentice programmes, and Mi'kmaw language support offered online and in person to communities without many fluent speakers.

Their own teachers

Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey is the language's own house of teaching for the Nova Scotia communities: a unified team of chiefs, staff, parents, and educators that advocates for its communities and carries the language into its schools — immersion, mentor-apprentice learning, classes for communities with few fluent speakers, and a shelf of Mi'kmaq apps, among them L'nui'suti, Mi'kmaq words and phrases, and Tal-Tluen?, a Mi'kmaq phrasebook. The Mi'kmaq of the other provinces keep their own houses; this door links the authority whose own pages were verified for this doorway.

The writing

The Mi'kmaq taught today is written in the modern spelling of the people's own schools — the spelling of Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey's own pages and apps. The recovered witnesses below keep the spellings their books printed: Maillard's grammar sets the ou-diphthong with a special sort the editor himself names a figure “8,” and Pacifique's 1921 history stands in the spelling of its day. The writings are not the same, and no learner should confuse them. What is relearned here is read in the old spelling exactly as printed, and learned to speak at the people's house in the people's spelling.

Recovered reading

One recovered page stands here, joining two books. The first is Maillard's Grammaire de la langue mikmaque (1864), edited from his manuscripts by Joseph M. Bellenger: both title leaves, the Avant-propos complete — carrying the book's pronunciation key and its accents — and the grammar's first complete lesson, Des Noms. The second is Père Pacifique's Sacred History in Micmac (Restigouche, 1921), of which the title page and Table of Contents stand here only: the Mi'kmaq text proper, which opens at that volume's printed page 3, is not taken, and of Maillard everything from Des Adjectifs (printed p. 13) onward is not taken. Two readings in the Maillard extent stand marked [?] on the page, itemised there; nothing is supplied. It is the people's own witness, recovered as a historical text — not a Sacred Name edition; the collection's own edition in this language waits for the partnership. Read Maillard's Grammar (1864) and Pacifique's Sacred History (1921) — the extents named above

An open invitation

This door stands open by invitation. If you are a speaker, teacher, or language keeper of Mi'kmaq, or you carry its authority, this programme asks to work with you — to be guided, corrected, and reviewed by the people whose language this is. In this collection the holy names are never invented: what the Creator is called in a language is for its own speakers to give, and the spelling of every text is theirs to settle. Write to the publisher at [email protected].

The first door is Mi'kmaw Kina'matnewey, the Mi'kmaq people's own education authority.

To hear it

When Mi'kmaq opens here, it will be heard as well as read — in its own voice, spoken and recorded by Mi'kmaq speakers. Until then this door is silent in Mi'kmaq on purpose: the first voice heard in it should be the people's own.

The other doors

One small advertisement stands at the bottom of this page — never inside the reading text. The words of the book stand more prominent than the advertisement.