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CD honors Ojibwa culture, faith

 


CD honors Ojibwa culture, faith

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A UMNS photo by Mike DuBose

�Nuhguhmowinum� is a compilation of Ojibwa hymns in the language of the Anishinabek people of Michigan and Canada.

April 22, 2004

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (UMNS) — A new CD of Native American hymns will help save a traditional language from extinction, producers say.

Last September, with financial assistance from United Methodist Communications, members of the Ojibwa people came together to record “Nuhguhmowinum,” a compilation of Ojibwa hymns in the language of the Anishinabek people of Michigan and Canada. The Anishinabek or “original people” include more than 150 bands of Ojibwa people.

Recorded live during the annual camp meeting of the decades-old Michigan Area Indian Workers Conference, the compact disc “is historical as well as educational,” said the Rev. Little Eagle Sayles, pastor of PaWaTing MaGedWin United Methodist Church, Grand Rapids, Mich., and one of the many voices on the recording.

The conference is a gathering of Native American congregations who come together for training and worship. They express concerns, share ministry stories and arrange funding for native ministries.

According to the Rev. Jerry DeVine, ministry consultant for the United Methodist West Michigan Annual (regional) Conference, there is a vital movement among many Native American tribes to retain and pass on a living language.

More than half of the languages once spoken in North America have been lost. “Language immersion is a growing strength for the rebuilding and renewing of identity,” DeVine said.

Languages were lost as Indian boarding schools, operated by Christian denominations, punished Native American children for speaking their tribal languages, said Ray Buckley, director of the Native People Communication Office at United Methodist Communications.  The result, he added, was a decline in teaching the language and in some cases, the inability to sing tribal hymns — including some written on the Trail of Tears.

The Ojibwa hymn CD is the second effort of a Native American Hymn Preservation program of the Native People Communications Office. Buckley’s office also has recorded hymns from Montana, Alaska and the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference.   The first project, “With Our Voices,” was recorded live at the 2001 annual session of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference and includes Ponca, Kiowa, Cherokee, Euchee, Creek, Seminole, Comanche and Potawatomi hymns.  

Buckley also said that United Methodist Communications allowed the hymn projects to be copyrighted in the names of the Native American groups, which sell the CDs for economic development and continued communication.

“It is also incredible that we are beginning to recognize Christian hymns as contributions of native cultures after 500 years of discipleship,” he said. “It is not just a gift of language, but of how native people experience the Gospel in faith communities and personal expression.

“The CD of Ojibwa hymns represents the testimony of native people, but even more, the recognition that our native cultures are not only acceptable but also joyful to God,” Buckley explained. 

Sayles, who is the point of contact for the CD distribution, calls the recording a “way to pass on our culture, our values, our communities. We are Christians who are Native Americans. We are Native Americans who have chosen to follow the Jesus way because it is consistent with who we are and what we believe.”

Although Native Americans have recorded many Christian CDs in English, the Ojibwa hymn CD is the “only Christian Native CD in the original language of the Anishinabek,” Sayles said.

Michigan has a long heritage of the Anishinabek, which also means “people of this place,” according to DeVine. Growth and the need to expand geographically brought complimentary trades and evolved into four groups or bands — the Council of Three Fires, the Ojibwa, Ottawa and Potawatomi — with related language with dialect differences. He said most of the language retained is the Ojibwa in the northern regions of Michigan and Lower Canada, as well as across the northern Great Lakes into Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The $15 CD is available by contacting Sayles at PaWaTing MaGedWin United Methodist Church, 1005 Evergreen, SE, Grand Rapids, MI  49507; by calling (616) 241-0007; or by writing to LittleEagle7@comcast.net or LittleEagle7@sbcglobal.net. Checks should be made payable to West Michigan Conference with “IWC” on the memo line.

News media can contact Linda Green at (615)742-5470 Nashville, Tenn. or E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org.

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