By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho, jayek (Hello, everyone),
Ni je na ginwa? (How are you all doing?)
We have been busy in the Language Department. We recently held a new, six-week beginner class at the Cultural Heritage Center from 5 to 7 p.m. every Thursday from April 3 to May 8. Our first class had a good turnout; we had 11 people in person and another 18 households join us online. Shelly Watson did an excellent job facilitating this class. Shelly is one of the newest members of our team but has really stepped up and is doing an excellent job. Shelly has also been doing a great job teaching a Wednesday elders class along with her coworker Josey Wood. I appreciate their hard work and dedication to our language. They are planning on teaching a class at the upcoming Potawatomi Language Conference at Gun Lake Potawatomi in the fall.
April 14, we held a quarterly lunch and learn class for staff at the Tribe. We also hosted a community game night April 29 at the Cultural Heritage Center. We plan on doing these quarterly if folks enjoy them. The first event we provided food but welcomed others to bring a dish or side to share. We played dice and bowl, an old, traditional Potawatomi game. We had prizes, and a good time was had by all. Make sure to come out for our next community game night.
We have a conversational class dedicated to speaking the language every Wednesday from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. online. It’s our hope that more people will get a chance to start speaking and using the words they are learning so that we can breathe life into our language.
Thursday afternoons from 3 to 4:30 we have an ongoing intermediate course which has about seven regular students. We are planning on trying to make this online as well. Currently, this course has been done only on site.
Peyton Neely recently competed in the OU Language Fair in the modern songs 3rd-5th grade category, taking first place for her singing of “Bye Bye Bye” by NSYNC. The video is online at the Tribe’s YouTube channel, which you can find if you search Hownikan. She also received an honorable mention for her video submission of a skit between Peyton and her cousin Addison. I am also extremely proud of the 1st grade students from Will Rogers Elementary, who competed and did an excellent job singing the Benson Boone song, “Beautiful Things,” in Potawatomi. My wife Serena Neely did a great job working with her class.
May 19, we began our eight-week summer master apprentice immersion course. We have had several folks contact us who would like to join us for a week or two, depending on their schedules. We welcome folks joining us. Just let us know ahead of time so that we can plan accordingly.
If you haven’t before, make sure to check out our various online resources. We had a couple of courses on Memrise in the past that have been moved to a community site on Memrise, which are now available again until the end of 2025. They are called Conversational Potawatomi and Potawatomi A Day in the Life. We also have a couple of different courses at learning.potawatomi.org: a beginner course, one for middle school aged kids, a children’s course and a course more based on grammar learning. We also have our online dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com, which has over 10,000 words with sound that can be downloaded and printed out as well.