New dictionary helps to save Passamaquoddy oral tradition

"For me, this is a dictionary that you can read like a book," said Robert Leavitt, who co-authored with David Francis A Passamaquoddy-Maliseet Dictionary that was launched on December 8 at Sipayik. Similar presentations were held at Indian Township and the University of Maine at Orono and will take place in New Brunswick in January.

"As I read the dictionary, all of the culture and all the things people told me about the mid-1900s come out of the pages," said Leavitt, a retired professor from the University of New Brunswick at Fredericton who has been working since 1978 on the dictionary. "The way people talk, their sense of humor C it gives a good sense of the culture." Much of the tribe's history is also contained in the dictionary, he said, noting for instance that many words are of French derivation from when the French were in the area at the beginning of the colonial period. As another example, he observed that the dictionary has about 125 Passamaquoddy words for playing baseball, with only five from English. Noting that might appear strange, since baseball is a recent sport, he said that the Passamaquoddys adapted their language for use in the ball game.

Leavitt related that in the 1880s Lewis Mitchell was the first person to write down words of the spoken Passamaquoddy language. During the 1970s, linguist Philip LeSourd began a contemporary dictionary of Passamaquoddy-Maliseet, which was prepared as a manuscript by the bilingual education program at Indian Township under Wayne Newell. That collection of about 3,000 words was then edited and expanded by Passamaquoddy elder David Francis and Leavitt and published in 1984 under the title Kolusuwakonol [Words]. "Wayne's vision saw this dictionary created," Leavitt said.

Francis and Leavitt continued working on the dictionary, with Margaret "Dolly" Apt joining them as a community research coordinator in 1996. Calling her "a great listener and a great organizer," Leavitt said she enabled them to work with a broad section of the population at Pleasant Point and Indian Township.

Noting that the dictionary, with 18,000 entries in Passamaquoddy, doesn't "have all the words," Leavitt said, though, that it is "a good representation of the language from the 1880s to 2008." Many people from Pleasant Point and Indian Township, along with Maliseets, contributed to the work, and their names are listed in the dictionary.

Co-author David Francis thanked everyone "for helping me to succeed in my own way during my stay here on the reservation C being able to learn about the language and being able to teach how to write it and being able to work and to teach a very difficult Passamaquoddy language." Both Francis and Leavitt received standing ovations from those attending for their work on the dictionary.

Margaret "Dolly" Apt said she had learned a great deal from David Francis. Although she could speak Passamaquoddy fluently, when she first began working with him in 1996 he wrote her a note in Passamaquoddy that she had to decipher. She was able to figure it out with some effort, and replied with a note written in English. When he returned, Francis said he wanted her note written in Passamaquoddy. "He pushed, but not that much," Apt fondly noted of Francis. "I really wanted to learn" to read and write the language that she could speak. Apt presented a plaque made by David Moses Bridges, in which artwork by Tomah Joseph is etched, to Francis for all of his work on the dictionary.

Apt said it has been a journey for her C not only in learning how to read and write the language but also in connecting with the elders of tribe. She would visit with them and get them to tell her their stories. From those stories she would add new words for the dictionary and use the sentences to show how they are used. Even when she went home from work she was still thinking about the language. "I couldn't help but thinking about it," she noted. "I learned so much from these elders."

An editorial committee consisting of tribal elders reviewed the work, and Apt recognized her mentor, Mary Socoby Yarmal, who would tell her what a word meant or if it was being used properly.

Michael Alpert of the University of Maine Press, which published the book jointly with Goose Lane Editions in Fredericton, observed that the University of Maine publishes many good books but once in a great while it gets to publish an important one. "This is truly one" of those important works, he stressed.

In addition to the dictionary, Ben Levine and associate Julia Schulz of the company Watching Place of Rockland, which documents endangered languages, made seven 30-minute DVDs from conversations with 75 Passamaquoddy speakers from Sipayik, Motahkomikuk and Tobique in a project sponsored by Northeast Historic Film of Bucksport. Levine said that the DVDs, which can show Passamaquoddy or English subtitles, will be given to the participants and libraries and can be used in learning the language.

Wayne Newell, in his foreward to the dictionary, wrote that when he was growing up at Sipayik people "spoke Passamaquoddy fluently because our communities were isolated; and that had always been the key to the next generation's learning the language." A transition began in the 1950s with the opening up of the communities to outside influences, including television, telephones and other technologies, and an outward migration and a rise intermarriage. To help keep the Passamaquoddy language alive, he realized that "a comprehensive dictionary should and could be developed to help in the long-term process of enhancement and revitalization."

In their preface to the dictionary, Imelda and David Perley of Tobique wrote: "In our view, the dictionary represents a Sacred Bundle containing ancestral teachings, values, beliefs and world views.... Elder David Francis and Robert Leavitt have truly honored the oral tradition by ensuring its continued existence within the written word. Their masterpiece has just saved another language from extinction. All we need now are the carriers of the language!"