By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho jayek
(Hello everyone),
We will soon have our new beginner online course up and available. The URL for the course is learning.potawatomi.org. Once you get to the site, create an account, and then click on “Courses” on the left. You should see the “Introduction” course. It has 20 chapters. We also have two courses at memrise.com. One called “A Day in the Life” and the other “Conversational Potawatomi.” They can be found after signing up on Memrise then searching for Potawatomi.
We will be having our annual Winter Storytelling event on February 21 from 6 to 7:30 p.m. at the Citizen Potawatomi Cultural Heritage Center near Shawnee, Oklahoma. We will have food and drinks. Please RSVP to jneely@potawatomi.org so we can get a head count. We will also plan on streaming the event live for those who live out of the area. We have a number of traditional stories that can only be told in the wintertime. During the winter, we traditionally believe that the earth and the spirits are asleep. So, stories that involve Wiske or Nanabozho, the Trickster, and other spirits are often told at this time.
If you wish to listen to a winter story, go to one of our two YouTube channels.
Wiske and the Gift of Fire:
cpn.news/GiftofFire
Wiske & the Gift of Maple Syrup:
cpn.news/GiftofSyrup
Make sure to check out our two YouTube channels by searching “Justin Neely” and “Potawatomi Language.”
Also, if you haven’t already, make sure to try out our online dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com. We currently have over 10,000 words and around 80 percent of them with sound files. In addition to regular sound files, we have been adding example sentences with audio and historical audio files of different speakers. We also have a video component that is good with certain words.
Google’s Woolaroo (cpn.news/woolaroo) is also something you will want to check out if you haven’t. This is a website you can go to with your phone. Once you go to Woolaroo, you will select “Potawatomi.” Using the camera on your phone, you can take pictures of different objects, and then using AI technology, the site will identify the objects and offer an audio file to listen to. It’s pretty cool with basic objects, and the audio side makes it very useful for exploring the environment around us.
We also finished our 12 children’s books. We mailed out six books to those who signed up. If we haven’t mailed them to you yet, we may have had a bad address, or we are waiting to get to 200 so we can mail them out at bulk rate. The next group of books will be available at the Family Reunion Festival in June. We are also looking at a few more books such as a Potawatomi version of Winnie the Pooh, which is now in public domain.
Iw
(End)
