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How to use the Ojibwe People's Dictionary

anishinaabewi vai

  1. s/he is Ojibwe
  2. s/he is Indian
  3. s/he is human



indanishinaabew 1s ind; nindanishinaabew 1s ind; nidanishinaabew 1s ind; anishinaabewi 3s ind; anishinaabewid 3s conj; enishinaabewid 3s ch-conj; Stem: /anishinaabewi-/

anishinaabewi /anishinaabewi-/: /anishinaabew-/ stem of anishinaabe na ; /-wi/
be, become a certain kind of being or thing

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.

Word Family

anishinaabe na
  1. an Ojibwe
  2. an Indian (in contrast to a non-Indian), a Native (in contrast to a non-Native)
  3. a person, a human (in contrast to a non-human being)
(verb of being) anishinaabewi vai
  1. s/he is Ojibwe
  2. s/he is Indian
  3. s/he is human
 (verb of abundance) anishinaabekaa vii
  1. there are (a lot of) Ojibwes
  2. there are (a lot of) Indians, Natives
  3. there are (a lot of) people, humans

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.

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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.