- Glossary -

abstraction: (c.f. truth).  The Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language (New World Publishing Co., 1957), page 6, defines abstract as "thought of apart from any particular instances or material objects; not concrete."

acculturate: a policy used by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to destroy Aboriginal Indigenous communities, specifically by replacing Aboriginal Indigenous language, culture, and values with Euro-American ones.

Afrikaners, or Afrikander: like Americans, people of European descent born in an area colonized by Europe.  Afrikaners are people specifical­ly born in the U.S.A. (Union of South Africa), often of Dutch descent.  The British formerly called the Afrikaners Boers, a Germanic word meaning "peasant" or rural person, from which the English word "boor" is derived.

Ah-gwah-ching: a former tuberculosis sanatorium just outside of Walker, Minnesota.  Prior to the development of streptomycin and other antibiotics as a treatment for T.B. in the 1940's, the recommended treatment was bed rest.

alienate (land): the transfer of European land title from one person or group of people to another.  The dictionary includes a collateral definition, "to estrange, make unfriendly ..."  The process of land alienation used by the Euro-Americans was usually the transfer of U.S.-granted title from Indians to Whites, under the presumption that eminent domain was already held by the United States.  Such land transactions have no effect on the Sovereign joint ownership and other relationships that Aboriginal Indigenous people have to our land.

allotment: the U.S. policy of dividing Reservation lands into individual land­holdings, called allotments.  This Euro-American policy was initially applied through the provisions of particular Indian treaties, in this general area including the treaty of September 30, 1854 [U.S. Code, 10 Statutes, Section 1110] and the treaty of March 19, 1867 [U.S. Code, 16 Statutes, Section 721].  After the unilateral passage, by the U.S. Congress, of the General Allotment Act of February 8, 1887 [U.S. Code, 24 Statutes, Section 388], and subsequent amendments, all but two U.S. Reservations were allotted.

allottees: individuals: Aboriginal Indigenous, Indian, Métis and White, to whom allotments were issued.

Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway: one translation from our language is "We, the People."  The Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway are the autochthonous people of this land, and are neither "Chippewa" nor other "Indians."

annihilate: to completely destroy.  See genocide.

aristocracy: man-made class who do not own any resources, but who claim the property of others through parasitic relationships.

assimilate: the destruction of an Aboriginal Indigenous people by absorption into the mass of immigrant peoples, colloquially referred to as the melting pot.  The first meaning of assimilate in the dictionary is destruction of separate existence by digestion.  Assimilation remained an explicit policy of the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs into the 1970's, and continues as an implicit policy.  See genocide.

autochthonous: Aboriginal Indigenous people, those who have "sprung from the land itself" as the original inhabitants of a particular place of Grandmother Earth.  We, the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway, are the autochtho­nous people of much of the Great Lakes, upper Red River, and Mississip­pi Headwaters watersheds.  According to our written traditions, this has been our land since human beings first existed: through four ice ages and at least 36,000 generations.  The bones of our ancestors, the living beings upon the earth, and the earth itself are all one, inseparable.

Beltrami: The county which claims to include much of the diminishing Red Lake Reservation, named after Count Giacomo Constantino Beltrami, an exiled Italian nobleman who was wandering around lost in the woods in 1823.  Beltrami was among a number of Europeans who called themselves explorers, looking for the singular source of the Mississip­pi River, and claimed for himself the glory of discovering Lake Julia, which was never lost.  Beltrami's claim was successfully disputed by former Indian Agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, who was led through the woods by an Indian guide called Yellow Head, to the lake Schoolcraft named Itasca.  Lake Itasca is to the south--and west--of Lake Julia, placing slightly more land on the U.S. side of the internecine boundary dispute between the British-Americans and British-Canadians, and continues to be considered the "source" of the Mississippi River.

Bemidji: The county seat of Beltrami County (population about 10,000); self-proclaimed home of ecocidal folk-hero Paul Bunyan, and retail center for much of the surrounding area, including Red Lake Reservation (population about 7,000).

bioregional: a broad general area in which the climate is consistent and the most visible members (e.g., pine trees and mixed deciduous trees) of the ecosystem are similar.  As an artifact of their English language structure, some ecologists see the areas of transition between bioregions as boundaries, with the embedded and misleading implication of lack of connection.

birchbark: specifically referring to the bark of the birch tree Betula Payrifera Marsh., traditionally used by the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway in a variety of ways including canoe hulls, covering for longhouses, storage containers, household utensils and for writing.  Most of our old birchbark scrolls were destroyed by the Missionaries; some remain outside of the community in museums and in private collections.

Blackduck: a town on the Blackduck river, which flows into Lower Red Lake, named after a species of duck.

blood quantum: referring to Indians: the fractional amount of Indian blood ascribed to that person by the U.S. Government.  Indian blood quantum does not have any verifiable relationship to Aboriginal Indigenous ancestry, but is directly related to the Euro-American "one drop of blood" philosophy of non-White racial identity and what some allege is "white racial purity."

boilerplate: the original template, specifically a "fill-in-the-blanks" legal document upon which, for example, contracts, wills, Indian treaties, and I.R.A. constitutions are patterned; with reference to U.S. federal Indian documents, roughly synonymous to carte blanche in U.S. Indian affairs.

carpet-baggers: a foreigner who moves into an occupied territory for personal gain.  This word which the dictionary calls "contemptuous" came into common usage with reference to Northern politicians profiteering in the occupied Confederacy after the U.S. Civil War, and also applies to a particular class of Indians, not indigenous to the land they occupy, who are in complicity with the Bureau of Indian Affairs in promoting the agenda of the United States Government.

Cass: a county to the south of Beltrami County, which claims some of the land within the Leech Lake Reservation.   Cass County was named after Lewis Cass, governor of Michigan Territory, who was wandering around lost, looking for the true source of the Mississippi River in 1820, and concluded that it was Upper Red Cedar Lake.  c.f. Beltrami.

Chippewa: a Creole word referring to French Métis people who came into Ahnishinah­bæó^t­jibway land in conjunction with the fur trade and as refugees from the feudal French colonial system of peonage.  There has been an intentional misuse of the word Chippewa to apply to Ahnishi­nahbæó^tjibway, which is detailed in this book.  c.f. Chippeway.

Chippeway: a temporary identity applied to French Métis people, used to issue land scrip, synonymous with Chippewa.

chokecherry: prunus virginiana L., a small tree, presently seen only as a bush due to forest mismanagement policies.

circular definitions: c.f. abstractions.

clearcut: refers to both the process and the consequence of Euro-American forestry practices, specifically the mechanized destruction, frequently by shearing (c.f.), of all living beings within a particular area.  Some marketable timber is removed, and the remainder burned.  Clearcutting is euphemistically justified as "creating wildlife habitat [sic]," and in terms of aspen growth.  Aspen, i.e. any of several populus species, is a short-lived tree which is used in the pulp and paper industries.  Much of the extensive clearcut in Northern Minnesota is insulated from scrutiny by the urbanized public by a Potemkin forest, or, as the D.N.R. terms it, an aesthetic strip--a thin illusion of forest about six trees deep, along most highways and fronting waters frequented by tourists.

community: among the Whites, an external force.  Among the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway, community refers to Sovereign individuals coming together, as extended family and as members of a greater and enduring totality.

connectedness: the inter-relationship, in several dimensions and within the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway understanding of time, that exists among all parts of everything.

Custer, George Armstrong (1839-1876): a Lieutenant Colonel in the 7th Cavalry of the U.S. Army, who played a role in the U.S. Government's forcible concentration of Aboriginal Indigenous people onto Indian Reservations.

D.N.R.: Department of Natural Resources, a bureaucratic agency of the State of Minnesota.

Dakota: one of several Aboriginal Indigenous Nations of the Great Plains; since I am not Dakota I cannot define who these people are and are not.

destabilize:  Bureaucratese for promoting chaos within the social organization within a target community, for the purposes of imposing an external agenda and/or external organization upon the members of that community under the guise of restoring order.

dissentions: the product of disagreement with what the dictionary defines as "the doctrines and forms of the established;" the abstract noun resulting from the verb of the same root, which means "to disagree; think differently;" approximately the same meaning as dissident.

Dodem: a patrilineally inherited Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway identity.  Originally there were thirty-two Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway Dodems, of whom five survive at Red Lake.  The English word, totem, is said by the dictionary to have originated from Algonquin words for Dodem, however the English word has not retained the full meaning of Dodem, which also has spiritual significance.  The Chippewa Indians have periodically claimed matrilineal Clans; however these patrilineally Lislakh people do not have Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway Dodems.  The significance of the Dodem is covered in some detail in the text of this book.  The Dodem is a critical aspect of the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway identity.

Dodemians: an Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway word which approximately translates to "my relatives."  An Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway acknowledges all known blood relatives, no matter how distant, and includes all persons belonging to their Dodem, as relatives, and thus excludes them from the category of marriageable persons.

dominant: although defined by the dictionary as "dominating, ruling, prevailing, exercising authority or influence," this word is misused by the politically correct to refer without acknowledged implication of superiority to White Euro-Americans, e.g.. "the dominant society."

élite: the people at the apex of the European hierarchy, for whom the present World Order quite closely conforms to their visions of Utopia.  Roget's Thesaurus offers the interesting synonym, "the four hundred."

enculturation: the process of becoming a part of a particular group of people who hold a specific culture; compare with acculturate.

endogamy: marrying within one's own group, inbreeding.  The Chippewa Indians practice endogamy--this is where the custom which anthropolo­gists identify as "cross-cousin marriage" was observed.  (c.f. exogamy)

enrollee: a person who is certified by the United States Government as being a Federally recognized Indian member of a Federally Recognized Indian Tribe.  Being an enrollee requires being listed on an Indian Tribal Roll drawn up under U.S. Government supervision, either directly by the B.I.A., or through the Indian Tribal Governments operating under the supervision of the Secretary of the Interior under 1934 I.R.A. boilerplate constitutions approved by the Secretary of the Interior.  Although by the 1930's, when the I.R.A. "base rolls" were being compiled, some enrollees were included as Indians by virtue of Indian blood quantum calculated in terms of /256th's, some Federal Indian programs require that the enrollee have at least 1/4 Indian blood quantum, which has no relationship to having at least one grandparent who was an Aboriginal Indigenous person.  c.f. blood quantum

ethnic: although common usage implies that this word refers to any group of people distinct from White Anglo-Saxon Protestants, the dictionary has as its first definition, "of nations or groups neither Christian nor Jewish; heathen."

ethnology: writing done by anthropologists purporting to describe the culture of a group of people other than their own.

Euro-American: a person born in the United States, or residing in the United States and holding ideological affiliation with the U.S., who has an European patriline.

expansionistic: the philosophy held by those who believe in, as the dictionary describes it, "expanding a nation's territory or its sphere of influence, often at the expense of other[s]..."

exploitive: taking advantage of for the advantage of oneself or one's group; with the implication that this is done unethically and without regard for the long-range consequences.

exogamy: marrying outside of a particular group.  (c.f. endogamy)

factioned: referring to a community which has been divided into two or more groups who no longer perceive of themselves as having common interests, and thus behave disharmoniously toward each other.  With regard to Indian Reservations, the creation of factioned communities was frequently done at the instigation of the B.I.A., for the purposes of advancing their own agenda into the rift created within the community.  The use of factioning was described by both Julius Caesar and Machia­velli, and is a frequently used tool of colonial occupation.

Fee patent: the word fee is derived from European feudalism, and the first definition in the dictionary is "an estate in land held of a feudal lord on condition of the performing of certain services; a tenure of land subject to feudal obligations ..."  In real estate legalese, fee refers to ownership of certain individually-transferable rights seen as being attached to a specific piece of land.  A land patent is the "title deed" by which a government conveys Aboriginal Indigenous lands expropriated into the public domain, and transfers fee rights into private, usually White, ownership.  During their allotment of Indian Reservations, the United States Government placed a great deal of emphasis on issuing "fee patents" on Indian allotments, thereby enabling the alienation of the land into White ownership, through sale or tax-forfeiture.  Transferring land titles through Indians' fee patents is one of several strategies in which the United States Government used their Indians in attempt to legitimize the theft of Aboriginal Indigenous peoples land.  Fee patent is an imported European concept, and is a contemptuous and disharmonious relationship to Grandmother Earth which does not belong on this Continent.

Fee simple: the European-American description of the rights to land which are available for private ownership.  Fee simple is usually defined in terms of the allodial system of relationship to land, which differs from feudalism in that property-holders' obligations to the government are payable as monetary "taxes" rather than as goods and labor.  Under the modern Euro-American allodial system, the government claims Aboriginal Indigenous peoples' land as "absolute property," retaining the rights of taxation, eminent domain, police power and escheat.  Fee simple land "title" consists of the residual rights available for private ownership, principally occupancy and use contingent on payment of taxes, and is described by real estate texts as "the largest bundle [of rights] available for private ownership."  From the Ah­nish­i­nah­bæó^t­jib­way perspective, a fee simple relationship to the land is disrespectful and obscene.

Fugawi: referring to an allegorical (and notably lost) subset of the mythological Indians.

fullblood: a person who is of 4/4 Indian blood quantum (c.f.).  Like other fractions of blood quantum, fullblood does not refer to Aboriginal Indigenous ancestry, and there are people who are listed as fullbloods on the Red Lake Indian rolls who do not have any Ahnishi­nahbæó^tjibway ancestors.

gandy-dancer: a laborer whose job description is to repair railroad tracks.

genocide: The on-going policy of the United States toward Aboriginal Indigenous people.  Genocide is defined by the United Nations in the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, adopted in 1947 and ratified by the United States Senate during the Reagan Administration, which is reproduced in Appendix I.

half-breed: a person who has parents of at least two different nationalities.  With relation the Half-Breed Scrip issued as a part of various Indian [not Aboriginal Indigenous] Treaties, a halfbreed was sometimes defined as, for example, a person who was half Norwegian and half Swedish, with the implication that he or she was a half-breed Indian.  Since all Indians have European ancestry at least on the patriline, and some Indians are entirely of Lislakh ancestry, issuing half-breed scrip to full-blooded Scandinavians was no more fraudulent than the rest of the Indian Treaty-making process.

Helot: in Ancient Greece meaning a serf or slave, and in the twentieth century used to refer specifically to the dispossession and enslavement of occupied peoples in their own land.

Hinton: the Hinton Rolls were compiled by the Bureau of Indian Affairs during the early 1900's, listing the presumed blood quantum of the Indians holding allotted land at White Earth; this was done in part because of allegations of fraud in the White Earth allotment process, and in part as a basis for determining "competency."  In the context of Indian Allotment, competency was synonymous with a narrow definition of civilized, interpreted to mean that an allottee would have the allotment removed from the protected status of Federal Trusteeship, so that it could be sold.  During the early 1900's, a person defined as Indian was further defined as "competent" by reason of any documentable White ancestry.  The Indian blood quanta of the people listed in the Hinton Rolls were subsequently changed, often from full-blood to mixed-blood, through litigation, bureaucratic action, and legislation.  The Hinton Rolls are pertinent to the Red Lake Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway in part because the Indian clique supported by the B.I.A. in political power are descended from mixed-blood allottees who lost their land, and came to Red Lake as refugees.

Indian: The dictionary definition is "a. Of or pertaining to India or the East Indians; also, noting, belonging to, or pertaining to the race embracing the aborigines of America ..." (The New Century Dictionary of the English Language.  Appleton-Century-Crofts, Inc., 1952). Indians and Aboriginal Indigenous people are not the same people, and in fact the American Indian is a Euro-American colonial mythology.

infinitesimal: the mathematical inverse of infinity, an abstract description of nearly nothing.

intercropped: an aspect of traditional Aboriginal Indigenous perma­culture, in which companion-planted crops inter-related synergistically to increase yield and harmony, sustain land fertility, and decrease the labor required to grow them.

Inuit: one of the Aboriginal Indigenous peoples of the Arctic, to whom the Euro-Americans have misapplied the derogatory label "Eskimo."

Judeo-Christian: those people who carry the culture, traditions, religious beliefs, and/or bloodlines of the people to whom the Old Testament originally belonged.

Lislakh: I am using this word, which was brought into the English language by linguist Carleton Hodge, to refer to the inter-related and historically connected peoples who share societal, cultural, language and/or patrilineal roots within that usually referred to as an abstract entity, Western Civilization.  Lislakh includes Germanic people and the heirs of the Roman Empire (who speak languages academically categorized as Indo-European), as well as the Arabic and other peoples whose languages are categorized as Semitic, and the Moorish and other North African and Middle Eastern peoples who have common and long-standing historical inter-relation­ships within the context of Western Civilization.

            Lislakh was coined as an abstract analytical category, although it describes historical and present reality.  The word is used in this book to refer not only to the common roots of the Lislakh people, but also to their often violent co-history during their millennia of expansion.  That the word Lislakh is a neologism of limited circulation is itself a manifestation of the ethos of English-speaking and other Lislakh peoples, symptomatic of the abstract isolationism of their linguistic structures and of the extent to which these peoples have been severed from their roots and their own identity.

            In using the word Lislakh, I do not presume to define those people to whom I refer--especially not in the ways that they have tried to re-define and label the Aboriginal Indigenous people as Indians, and have imposed their derogatory names, projections and stereotypes onto the indigenous peoples whose land they have expropriated.  I observe, however, that these people who have no name for themselves urgently need to come to terms with their identity, their past history, their roots, and their present reality: both as an inter-connected group of people, and as human beings with inherent responsibilities.  The people to whom I refer as Lislakh must no longer go about stealing from each other and from other peoples; they can not continue to shirk their responsibilities toward Grandmother Earth.

longhouse: traditional Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway dwelling.  With the tacit support of the U.S. Government, the Christian missionaries burned the remaining longhouses at Red Lake, including my great-grandfather's, in the early 1900's, attempting to justify themselves with the unfounded allegation that we were "worshipping the Devil" in our longhouses.  The abstract concept of the Devil did not exist in Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway culture, and there is no word for the "Devil" on our language.

mahnomen: an Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway permacultural grain crop, categorized by Euro-American botanists as zizania palustris L., and erroneously referred to as wild rice.  Mahnomen is neither wild, nor rice, and is quite different from the hybridized, cultivated Euro-American crop sold as wild rice in the gourmet section of many grocery stores.

matriarchal: a political system in which women hold political authority.  Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway society was and remains an egalitarian harmony of Sovereigns; I write of our political system as matriarchal because women elders, roughly translated into English as Clan Mothers, were accorded great respect and were thus quite influential.

matriline: heritage going from mother to daughter, along female lines of descent (c.f. matrilineal).  Many Jewish people use the matriline to define Jewishness, saying "if your mother is Jewish, you are Jewish."

matrilineal: descriptive of a society in which group membership, status, and other things or concepts of cultural importance are inherited on the matriline (c.f.).  Indian heritage or Indian identity is usually matrilineal.

matrilocal: a society in which residency patterns over the generations follow the matriline (c.f.).  In the context of highly mobile Euro-American society, long-term residency patterns may elude scrutiny.  However, in terms of an Aboriginal Indigenous society, in which residency is counted not in years but in geological epochs, it becomes quite important.  A group of people cannot remain separate from all others, over the millennia.  Some of the social and cultural reasons for this are covered in the main text of this book.  Avoiding genetic problems by refraining from in-breeding is another factor, and one which may not be immediately apparent to an Euro-American whose culture generally defines relatedness as only extending to first cousins, and whose statutes and traditions tolerate what the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway would define as incestuous marriage.  C.f.: patriline, patrilineal, and patrilocal.

medicinals: plants which contain natural medicines.

mestiço: a person of mixed ancestry with a Lislakh, usually White patriline (word of Portuguese colonial origin).

Métis: a person of mixed ancestry with a Lislakh, usually White patriline (word of French colonial origin).

Midé: the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway ancient political, religious, and philosophical tradition/organization; one English word which is a partial synonym is "Grandfather."  Midewiwin is another conjugation of the same word which is sometimes used.

Mille Lacs: a Reservation to the south of Red Lake.

Miranda: The "Miranda Warning," based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision, is a person's legal rights under U.S. law (the right to remain silent, etc.), and, except on Indian Reservations, is supposed to be read to persons being arrested.

monocultural: an ecologically unsound form of agriculture, in which one species, and frequently one uniform variety of one species, of crop is grown over an extended area.

mulatto: a person of mixed ancestry with a Lislakh patriline; this word is also narrowly defined as a person with an African mother and an European father, or "half black and half white."  During the mid-1800's, when the exact racial admixture of African-Americans was politically and economically important, the word mulatto was accompa­nied by quadroon, meaning one quarter African, and octoroon (one eighth African).  In broader general use, mulatto refers to a person of mixed European and African ancestry.  On the 1860 U.S. Census, many of the French Métis who later became categorized as "Indians" were classed as mulatto.

Native American: the literal meaning is "one who is born into the Euro-American paradigm, on the European-defined continent of America."

Nett Lake, or Bois Forte: a Reservation to the east of Red Lake.

nii-jii, or niidji: a Chippewa Creole word which has been commonly translated as friend.

northwoods: in colloquial Euro-American English, this word ambiguously refers to either the intact forest ecosystems maintained by the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway, or to the present-day patchwork of clearcut, tree farms, aspen brush, and Potemkin forests.

Ojibway: in Euro-American English and increasingly in Chippewa Creole, used interchangeably with the word Chippewa (c.f.), to confuse two distinct groups of people: the immigrant Euro-American Indians and the Aboriginal Indigenous Ahnishinah­bæó^tjibway.  The reasons for doing this are detailed in this book.  The word Ojibway is inseparably part of the single word, Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway (c.f.).  It does not mean "puckered moccasins," as alleged by Indian Agent Schoolcraft, and it does not mean "to roast till puckered up," which is the cannibalistic projection of the Chippewa promoted by their celebrated historian William Warren (History of the Ojibway [sic] People, William W. Warren, 1984 Minnesota Historical Society reprint, page 36).

P.O.W.: prisoner of war.

patriarchal: social organization in which political power is held by males (c.f. matriarchy).  Webster's dictionary adds as a second definition, "venerable," and in their cross-cited definition of patriarchy, "in which the father or eldest male is recognized as the head of the family or tribe."  (Descent through the eldest male is more accurately described as primogeniture.)  The New Century Dictionary includes religious governance within its definition of patriarchal, but does not mention the underlying patriarchal social organization of the modern European and Euro-American states.

Patrician: a member of a hereditary élite.

patriline: inheritance from father to son, through the male line; this does not necessarily imply primogeniture, under which all inheritance goes to the eldest son.  One element of Lislakh expansion through the past four millennia has been elimination of the patriline of those people being colonized, through war, genetic engineering, rape, economics, and other forms of gradual genocide.  The genealogy of the people presently recognized as Indians by the U.S. Government at Red Lake is evidence of this strategy.

patrilineal: describes a society in which inheritance of social status, property, or something else of culturally recognized importance is through the male line.  Despite the dictionary definition, which reflects common usage, patrilineal descent and patriarchy do not necessarily occur together.  An obvious example of patrilineal inheritance in Euro-American society is the prevailing use of surnames.  The Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway, who do not have and have never had patriarchal government, have patrilineal Dodems.

patrilocal: describes a society in which long-term residency patterns follow the patriline.  The Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway are patrilocal, while the Chippewa Indians tend to be matrilocal (c.f.).

permaculture: a sustainable form of agriculture, used by the Ahnishi­nahbæó^tjibway and other Aboriginal Indigenous peoples, in which food crops are closely integrated into natural cycles and the primeval ecological base, and in which many of the staple crops are perennial rather than annual.

pincherries: one of many perennial Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway food crops, now scarce.

pinelands: a term used by nineteenth-century lumbermen and B.I.A. bureaucrats to describe vast expanses of virgin pine forests.

Plat: a map showing the surveyed locations and boundaries of individual parcels of real estate; also the process of surveying, dividing and mapping land.  The possibility of platting land into individually held pieces of real estate is an imported Lislakh concept, and the patterns into which the land is platted both reflect and reinforce the values, language and social structure of those doing the platting.

Ponemah: the name given by the European occupation to the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway village on the eastern peninsula between Upper and Lower Red Lake.  John G. Morrison, a White Indian, claims that he gave this name when he was postmaster there, corrupting a word which means "later."

portage: a French fur-trade term, referring to a path along which one must carry one's boat and any load, from one waterway to another, or around rapids.

Potemkin: describing that which exists only as a false front.

primitive: the first definition in Webster's Dictionary reflects the original Latin meaning, "of or existing in the beginning or earliest time or ages, ancient, original."  Subsequent definitions, and the derogatory connotations of popular usage show the mutation of words in the English language as a means of stereotyping, labeling, and creating a dehumanized image of Aboriginal Indigenous people.

quantum: the Latin word for a singular amount.  C.f. blood quantum.

Quebeçois: The French immigrants to Quebec's word for themselves.

recission: Bureaucratese for withdrawing a formal policy statement; it does not mean abolishing the policy outlined in that statement.

Redby: One of three towns on the Red Lake Reservation.  Redby Townsite was platted and sold to the Red Lake and Manitoba Land Company around the turn of the Century, and some of the land in Redby remains on the Beltrami County tax rolls and under State and County jurisdiction rather than B.I.A. jurisdiction--except for those people categorized as Indians by the U.S. Government, who although they may pay property taxes, do not receive protection or civil rights under State law.

Redlake: One of two towns on the south shore of Lower Red Lake.

reforestation: American English euphemism for "tree farm," having absolutely  nothing to do with intact forest ecosystems, which once destroyed, can not be replaced, although they may regenerate if left undisturbed for at least six centuries.

scapegoat: a person, group, or inanimate object upon which the blame for the crimes or misfortunes of others is projected.  The original scapegoat was Biblical, a real goat which metaphorically carried sins into the desert.

shears: in Euro-American forestry, a piece of heavy equipment which uses hydraulics to snip trees for harvest in capital-intensive mass-production forestry.

shi-nabbe: Chippewa Creole corruption of the word Ahnishinah­bæó^tjibway."  Some Chippewa Indians use the broken word shi-nabbe or shinob to refer to themselves.

silvaticus: Latin word meaning "belonging to the forest, not cultivat­ed," which has mutated into the English word "savage," with all of its connotations.

smokescreen: that which is used to obscure.

Stumpage: a tax collected by the State.  Stumpage is explicitly levied on those cutting trees and hay, and is also charged, in the form of license fees, for the harvest of mahnomen and other permacultural crops.

sugarbushes: refers to both the groves of predominantly maple sugar trees, Acer saccharum Marsh., and to the place where the maple sap is boiled down into maple syrup and maple sugar.

Tasmanian: refers to the Aboriginal Indigenous people of Tasmania, who were completely annihilated by Europeans.

tepés: alternate spelling of tipi or tepee.  The tipi was originally used by some of the Aboriginal Indigenous peoples of the Great Plains, but has been promoted by Hollywood as the stereotypical Indian dwelling.

truth: the dictionary defines truth as "the quality or state of being true"  (c.f. circular definitions).  Truth is an abstract Western European concept, and whether or not something or some concept has the quality of trueness is determined by people, living or dead, in positions of authority within the Western European hierarchy.  The abstract within which Truth is defined comes to the Western Europeans through the Ancient Greeks: into modern science through Aristotle and into modern religion through Judeo-Christianity.  Because truth is based on the abstract, in the Ahnishinahbæó^tjibway world-view it has no particular connection to reality.  There is no word for truth in the Ahnishinah­bæó^tjibway language; we did not need one because our world-view is based in living reality rather than in the idealized abstract.

unratified: in the context of this book, referring to a proposed Indian treaty which has not been agreed to by the U.S. Senate.  Since the Aboriginal Indigenous people did not agree to the Indian treaties selling their land, in one very important sense all of the Indian treaties are unratified.  The treaties were marked with "x" marks, and on the treaties and the 1889 agreement affecting Red Lake, these "x" marks were obviously all written by the same person.  The Ahnishinah­bæó^tjibway cannot sell land, we cannot sell our identity, because of our religion and philosophy.  This is why the Indians were used to agree to treaties.

Usufruct: a legal term from the Roman Empire (in Latin, usufructus), meaning "using the fruit" of land claimed by the State without injuring or destroying the ecological infrastructure.

voyageur: one of several categories of fur trade employees.  The fur companies operated in such a way that most voyageurs were perennially in debt to the company store.

Wanna-Be: a person who wants to be somebody who they are not.

A spirit in the Ah­nish­i­nah­bæó^t­jib­way religion, neither good nor bad; in harmony and connected to Grandmother Earth.  In the Chippewa language, Windigo has been corrupted to reflect Judeo-Christianity, and is erroneously defined by Baraga as an evil, cannibalistic spirit.  This is a European perspective--there is neither dualism nor any concept of cannibalism in the Ah­nish­i­nah­bæó^t­jib­way language, culture or religion.

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