By Justin Neely, CPN Language Department Director
Bozho jayek (Hello everyone),
We had a great turnout for our community game night at the Cultural Heritage Center. We had over 50 people in attendance. We played bingo in the Potawatomi Language. We had some great prizes and fun was had by all. Our next event was Christmas caroling for our elders. We met at the Heritage Center and had hot cocoa, loaded up and carolled at Father Joe Murphy and the Tecumseh Elders housing.
After Christmas caroling, our next big event will be our annual Winter Storytelling, which will be Wednesday, Feb. 4 from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at the Cultural Heritage Center in Shawnee. We will plan to use Zoom for folks who don’t live in the area who would like to join us. There are a number of traditional stories which we are only supposed to share in the wintertime.
By the time this goes out we will have wrapped up our four-week online course taught by Ms. Shelly Watson. She had a good group of folks join her for her online course. We are also getting ready to finish up the first semester with our high school classes. We also will have just wrapped up our Native American Heritage Month coloring contest for ages 4-11. Depending on the interest level, we plan on doing an older kids art contest next year.
With the holidays approaching, here is a link to a playlist on YouTube of a variety of songs: cpn.news/songs. Included in this list are several Christmas classics like “Let It Snow,” “Silver Bells,” “Little Drummer Boy,” etc. We should also have chapter 1 of Charles Dickens’ classic, “A Christmas Carol,” on our new YouTube channel at youtube.com/@cpnlanguage.
We are constantly working on updating and adding to our online dictionary at potawatomidictionary.com. Currently it has more than 10,000 words with audio files for over 90% of the words. We are also adding example sentences, images and additional audio.
Also, we are updating and adding to our collection of classes at class.potawatomi.org. If you haven’t checked out our newest addition at 7000.org, make sure to check it out. It’s based on rooms in the house and common vocabulary one might use in areas of the house. For example, in the kitchen you might say “Gbekte ne?” (Are you hungry?) or “Wegni je wjandayen?” (What are you cooking?).
With winter quickly approaching, one of the things we traditionally did in the wintertime was play snow snakes. This game involves carving a stick/snake, then banking up the snow to make a track. The winner was the one whose snow snake traveled the furthest. Another activity we did in the winter is to tell certain traditional stories. Traditionally in the winter we believe the earth and the spirits are asleep. They say when snow covers the ground, it’s like a blanket covering us over.
Here are a few fun winter words
Bbon — winter (bbone)
Ksenyamget — It is cold (kuhsin yahmget)
Mingoswen — gift/present (meen gose win)
Negos — star (nuh gose)
Azheni — angel (ah zhuh nee)
Gonnene — snow man (goen nuhnay)
Gon — snow on the ground (goen)
Bonimget — It is snowing (bone eemget)
Zhwashkwset — sleigh (zhwashk wuh siht)
Adik — reindeer/caribou (ahdeek)
Kwismes mtek — Christmas tree (kwees mis mtuck)
Mjenkawnek — mittens, which is animate (mgin kownuck)
Biskowagen — jacket (bees koe wah gen)
Agem — snow shoe
Agemek — snow shoes (agum, agumuck)
Nshiwpo — heavy snow (nshee oh poe)
Mnwagwnésen — good cover of snow (mnwahg wuhnehsin)
Wéb boni — starting to snow (wahb bone ee)