Treuer Voice and Language Revitalization Valuable (June 27, 2008)
I was delighted to hear David Treuer speak about Ojibwe Language revitalization efforts and the importance of language to faith and ceremony. I believe language is integral to one's identity, faith and world-view. Being able to speak one's language and express one's faith through that language is a human right.

Ojibwe people continue to struggle for the right to speak their language. The language revitalization movement is not about reviving a "dead" language. It is about continuing to speak a living language, ensuring that future generations will be able to participate in ceremony.

Nora Livesay
Grand Marais, MN (KNOW, 91.1 FM)

60-Year-Old White Boys Need You (June 23, 2008)
Since moving to Asheville a few years ago and becoming a WCQS addict, I have, with increasing delight, discovered your program. I would not describe myself as either religious or spiritual, but the wide range of topics and people you include compels me to listen every week if I can.

I just enjoyed the program on the project to protect and maintain the Ojibway language, and it is an excellent example of what one would not normally think of as an issue for a program on faith. I also loved the program a couple weeks ago in which you interviewed a British scientist who is also a member of the clergy. It provided a fascinating look at the potential convergence of faith and science. This was very encouraging to those of us frustrated with the seemingly endless battle between the devout and the scientific.

I really appreciate the gentle open-minded approach you take to your subjects. You ask the right questions but not in an aggressive or combative manner. Programs like yours are the reason I have supported NPR for almost three decades now. Keep it up. 60 year old white boys who grew up in Indiana need you.

Steven Goldstein
Asheville, NC (WCQS, 91.0 FM)

Fog in a Landscape (June 22, 2008)
This is one of my favorite SOF programs in the last year. It seemed not so much about what a specific faith was, but rather how the deep beliefs within the culture are sustained, and that they are held sacred enough to be respected in the form as part of the substance.

What I like most about it was expressed so well by your guest speaker when he shared the two things he could about Ojibwe ceremony. It must be conducted with sustainable technology (i.e., low tech) and in the Ojibwe language. It cannot be translated or transmuted, but continued in its essence of Ojibwe-ness. When he talked about the ritual of spear fishing with his friends he was accompanying on a Northern Wisconsin lake, he compared the culture of the TV watching home owners by the lake to fog, in contrast to Ojibwe traditional practices that honor, honor elders and life far more ancient, that takes notice and value of what is in the world, and cares for those elders, those who came before. Knowing that it is in many fragile acts, of thought, of notice, of language, of respect, through ceremony and ritual that speaks in Ojibwe, in the elements used in ceremony, that these understandings of connection through time and space to life are honored and held within this community.

The beauty held in the sense of difference in verb forms, of speaker, actor, time, etc. holds the sensibility and notions of these different tenses as distinct and worth communicating, and gives us just a glimpse of the ability to hold distinct and valued nuances, which creates a much fuller and better articulated view of the world, and also places the user of the language into a very connected and complex community in/across time and place. Such richness to see so much as merely fog in a far greater landscape.

Sara Vandenberg
Colorado Springs, CO (KRCC, 91.0 FM)

Local Nationalisms (June 22, 2008)
While respecting the ability and dedication of your guest, I am very doubtful that the benefits of preserving minor languages such as this one (which apparently did not even have a written form until recently) outweigh the disadvantages. The disadvantages include the expenditure of considerable intellectual effort which could be more profitably devoted to the social and economic advancement of the tribe and the development of communication barriers between the tribe and its surrounding social environment which create psychological and economic barriers. The sentimentalism which accompanies this defense of obscure languages reminds me (though I don't claim they are equivalent) of the nationalism of fascist and Nazi nationalist movements of the thirties which did indeed lead to war, authoritarianism, and oppression. I think the potential downside of encouraging local nationalisms needs more attention.

James Woods Halley
Minneapolis, MN (KNOW, 91.1 FM)

Skepticism about the Value of Language Preservation (June 22, 2008)
Preserving every culture's native language and custom is extremely important. What bothers me is the extent to which the Native American culture believes that they have an inherent right to the bounty of this earth over and above all other cultures. For example, I wanted to learn how to harvest a black ash tree, remove its bark, and pound out strips to make black ash baskets. I e-mailed a Native American basket maker and sought her expertise, training, and counsel. Her comments to me were that the black ash belonged to the Native American and it was illegal for me, a white man, to harvest and use the tree. What she failed to realize is that I am here today because my forefathers hunted game, fished the great waters, gathered wild herbs and vegetables in handmade baskets, and survived exactly as her forefathers did. If mine and every other culture's forefathers had not hunted, fished, and gathered in handmade baskets, exactly as the Native Americans did, then I and every other white man, black man, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, Korean... ad infinitum, would not be here today.

My ancestors fished, exactly like the Native American did, to provide food for their families. So why should the Native American's descendants have any more exclusive rights to fishing than mine or any other cultures descendants? Now the white man's comment "Indians Go Home" is certainly ignorant and offensive; however, we are all people of the earth. We are all home. It is our earth. And the bounty it provides is for all its people, not just the Native Americans. I also have a very strong interest in the Inuit culture. I would be very interested in tasting whale meat, whale blubber, seal meat, and other Arctic delicacies. I do not want to do so if it perpetuates the decimation of a species, but if there are adequate resources and we are not harming the balance of nature, then why should I not have that right to share in that bounty? The whale belongs to the earth, not just the Inuit or Japanese cultures, and yet it is illegal for me to purchase whale meat and have it sent to me in the lower 48. The black ash tree belongs to the earth and the earth's people. It is up to all of earth's people to properly manage its resources; not enable certain cultures to benefit from the bounty at the expense of other cultures. I am of Pennsylvania Dutch and Irish extraction. Should "our people" legislate to have many of the foods and harvesting techniques we have developed banned for use by non-Pennsylvania Dutch Irishmen? That would be ridiculous! Every culture has had its hardships. When the Native American recognizes that the white culture is offended by the Native Americans' belief that their "right" to hunt or fish or gather basket making materials is more important than our right, only then will Native American and white sportsmen come together and have a greater likelihood of living in harmony with each other on our earth. This is not just the white man's earth or the Native American's earth or any other culture's earth. It is our earth and we must come together to ensure all who wish to harvest and partake of its bounty are able to do so.

Tom Miller
East Lansing, MI (KNOW, 91.1 FM)

Urge to Go Back (June 22, 2008)
The urge, the longing, the effort to preserve a language, the Ojibwe Indian language is delusional, bizarre, fanciful, primitive and regressive. The foolishness of this advocacy to maintain a separate language is to advocate tribalism. It is to claim that Indian ways are better than civilization's ways. It is to maintain and even enforce boundaries of isolation that foster conflict with other tribes who are also preserving and protecting their different ways. Conflict inevitably leads to wars and killing. This story is another fairy tale of delusional diversity, ignorance of human behavior, incentive, and nature.

Dave Covert
Indianapolis, IN (WFYI, 91.0 FM)

Language and Identity (June 21, 2008)
I was very interested in David Treuer's discussion of certain tribal ceremonies/rituals that can be carried out only in the Ojibwe language. I find it interesting to note that over 2,000 years ago the rabbis of the Jewish tradition held a similar attitude. In the Talmud, Tractate Sotah, sections 1 and 2, we are instructed that certain prayers and ritual formulas may be recited in any language one understands, while others must be recited only in Hebrew. If we examine the Hebrew category carefully, we find that these prayers speak to Jewish identity and tie the reciter to Jewish history. Thus they are statements by which the reciter reaffirms his/her place in the Jewish community.

Marim Charry
Great Neck, NY (WNYC, 93.9 FM)