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Educator Ian McCallum, who grew up listening to relatives converse in their native language of Munsee on Munsee-Delaware Nation, has finished the translation of a 1931 London Free Press article about the death and burial of Shawnee chief Tecumseh – and the mystery surrounding it – into that little-spoken language. jpg, CA
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A long-time Southwestern Ontario mystery about a towering historical figure is at the heart of a new project designed to pique the interest of those learning to speak an endangered Indigenous language.
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Educator Ian McCallum, who grew up listening to relatives converse in their native language of Munsee on Munsee-Delaware Nation, has finished the translation of a 1931 London Free Press article about the death and burial of Shawnee chief Tecumseh – and the mystery surrounding it – into that little-spoken language.
“I did some digging and I thought this would be a really good story to translate,” said McCallum, who lives near Barrie. He’s one of about three or four people who speak fluent Munsee as a second language and he teaches about 50 beginners, he said.
“We were looking for community stories to translate into the Munsee language, and I started with my own family because COVID didn’t allow for a lot of communication with the elders.”