Kimberly Blaeser

Because I always think, as an Anishinaabe woman, of the world as animate.

and as a thinking, intelligent world.

So I'm just trying to get to know my relatives in poetry.

Does it change when I use the language?

Yeah.

So, you know, I do think it does because that's a different kind of gesture in the poem.

Sometimes it changes because of the musicality of the language.

So sometimes I use the language because it's beautiful and it has an amazing quality of song to it.

But sometimes it's also because the language itself carries lots of

traditional knowledge, and there are embedded in it already illusions.

So sometimes it's because the language itself carries traditional knowledge and already has embedded illusions to different kinds of

information about the world.

Or what really happens in the language itself is there are root words.

And then on either side of the root words are these other morphemes that show relationship.

Could you give me an example?

Sure.

So, oh my gosh, I want to give you, okay, I want to give you the longest word in the Ojibwe language.

Okay.

So that is 64 letters.

And if you quote unquote translated it, it means simply blueberry pie.