Search the dictionary Advanced Search

How to use the Ojibwe People's Dictionary

Nodinens rice storage

From Nodinens, a Mille Lacs elder who described her childhood in the late 1850s or early 1860s.
A food cache was always near the sugar camp. We opened that and had all kinds of nice food that we had stored in the fall. There were cedar-bark bags of rice and there were cranberries sewed in birch-bark makaks and long strings of dried potatoes and apples.
from
Frances Densmore, Chippewa Customs (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1979), 122.

The Ojibwe People's Dictionary is developed and maintained by:
Nora Livesay, Editor
John D. Nichols, Founder and Linguistic Editor

with support and collaboration from the University of Minnesota's Department of American Indian Studies and University Libraries.

Additional Resources

Many of the words in the Ojibwe People's Dictionary have related resources. Click through to the full dictionary entry to hear audio recordings, see images, read documents and watch videos. Here's a key to resource icons.

  • Audio recordings
  • Images
  • Video
  • Documents

Speakers & Regions Key

Individual speakers and speakers from different regions use different words when speaking. Each audio recording is marked with the initials of the Ojibwe speaker. Click on a speaker's initials to go to the speaker's bio page. If an Ojibwe word is particular to a certain region, it will be marked with a region code. Click on the region code to go to the Regions page.