By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho Jayek, (Hello everyone,)
Mno wéb pongek! Wi bostonawa ode mzenegas Mko gises Hownikan. Kyétnam nde-wdemzemen bon eje bodewadmimwen tek. Giwse gises ngi-wzhetomen b for Native American Heritage Month. We had some great entries. We are not going to be able to show all the entries, but here are the first, second and third entries from the coloring contest for each age group. We also had the opportunity to do some outreach in the community. We spoke with a first-grade class at Will Rogers Elementary in Shawnee.
We will have gone Christmas Caroling at Elder Housing before this edition goes out. This is a fun event we used to do every year, but we stopped for a little while during the COVID-19 pandemic. We went on Dec. 11 to Elder Housing on Father Murphy and Tecumseh Elder Housing. We have four to five Christmas songs translated into Potawatomi that we sang. It was a good time.
I had the pleasure of being invited to do the invocation for the veterans’ Christmas party. Our drum, Sengo Zibiwes, sang a couple of songs for the elders’ Christmas party in late December.
Our next big event will be our 13th annual Winter Story Telling event. It will be 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Central time at the Cultural Heritage Center on Wednesday, Feb. 4. We will be telling a number of stories that can only be told in the wintertime. We will be using a variety of mediums to tell these stories. This will also be available online at cpn.news/winterstorytelling on that date.
Also, if you haven’t had a chance to check out some of our great resources visit cpn.news/7000tutorial to see some of our newest opportunities for learning the language no matter where you live. We have a number of courses at learning.potawatomi.org. We also have a new course at 7000.org. We have our online dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com with over 10,400 words, most of which have audio attached.
Some more Christmas fun: We have started translating Charles Dickens’ classic “A Christmas Carol,” which is in the public domain. We have the first two chapters up and eventually will have the whole book available. Listening to it is a fun way to pick up new words but also to try to recognize certain common words and phrases. Find chapter one at cpn.news/christmascarol.
Frosty Gon Nene: Frosty the snow man
Frosty Gon Nene
nchiwenmo yawet
konak pwagen mine nish shkishgwen
Kakshe jash zebdo
Frosty Gon nene
Yatsokawen gi kedwik
ga zheton gon
peno-jek kkendem-wat (fast)
ga bmadzet ngot gishget (draw out)
Mamkadnan i wiwkwan
Anet wishkezewen
Egi tonawa kwech shtegwan
Ga nanimedit
Thumpty thump thump thumpty thump thump nekshe Frosty zhyé
Thumpty thump thump thumpty thump thump azhodakewat