The following transcript is a discussion between Mi’kmaw Elder, Dr. Bernie Francis, and Dr. Trudy Sable on July 5, 1999, in Sable’s home in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia regarding the nature of the Mi’kmaw language. Their discussion was in preparation for the publication of their book, The Language of this Land, Mi’kma’ki, published in 2012 by CBU Press and later by Nimbus Publishing, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Citation: Francis, Bernie and Trudy Sable.  Mi’kmaw Language Discussion, Halifax, Nova Scotia, July 5, 1999, recorded by Trudy Sable. In, The Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia Archives Collection, Curated by Dr. Trudy Sable.

TS: Trudy Sable
BF: Bernie Francis

BF I shall try (laughs) to explain… let’s say the differences between Kisu’lkw and maqtewe’k. When you’re talking, when you’re talking Creator in Mi’kmaw, Kisu’lkw, there’s an implied meaning that the Creator is an animate object, so therefore that ending would be, the ending in the word would be definitely animate. In maqtewe’k, it could be either animate or inanimate, depending on what it is one is discussing. Simple as that. 

TS   But with Creator, it’s always, always going to be animate? 

BF  Yes. Even if it’s an ‘It’. 

TS    Okay. So that means with certain verbs have an implicit animacy quality, I don’t know if it’s quality to it. Whether — 

BF  Implicit what? 

TS   Animate, animate quality or animate, whatever you would call it. 

BF  Depending on what it is that they’re referring to. Like, for instance, if you said Kisu’lkw, if you said Kisu’lkw and you were talking about a machine, a machine, even though it’s the exact same verb that you used to describe the Creator with, in the sense where you’re talking about the machine,  the ending would be assumed to be an inanimate ending because you’re talking about a machine which is inanimate, but since, since the  Creator will always be animate, then the ending would be assumed to be an animate ending. 

TS   Okay, so you would give it an inanimate (ending?) because you’re talking about a machine. 

BF  A machine which is an inanimate object. 

TS   But in of itself, Creator would be…

BF  Because the Creator is assumed to be animate, the ending would be considered animate. 

TS Okay, I understand what you’re saying, so I’m asking you, are there other verbs that we would make into nouns in the English language, that don’t have a specific reference to a noun, like Creator, that, it refers to the act of creation, right? that in English we would make a noun, that’s implicitly animate? Are there other verbs that are implicitly animate? 

BF: Implicitly…

TS   Unless they are qualified like you said to an inanimate object, where their usual meaning…

BF Yes, I think that yeah, I think you could say, you could say ‘yes’ to that question. Yes, it could be, other verbs could be implicitly animate. Because…in the third person. 

TS    Why in the third person? I was thinking about that the other day, why are you always giving me examples in the third person?

BF  Because that’s where the, it could be ‘either-or’; it seems like it could be ‘either-or’ because we’re talking ‘about’ as opposed to talking to each other. You know what I mean? (laugh) Yeah. If we’re talking to each other, the assumption is that we’re animate. 

TS If you are taking animacy to mean alive or dead, right? But I thought animacy didn’t necessarily…

BF No, that’s right. Yeah, but in this case, it happens to be two talking people, alright?

TS So animacy in this case means that you’re…

BF Yeah, we’re both alive and well…and speaking.

TS Alive, well, and speaking. 

BF But, in the third person, once again, you’re talking not ‘to’ but ‘about’ something or someone, so that ending such as in the word maqtewe’k, it can either be, either be animate or inanimate. You could say maqtewe’k jinm, “a black man”, or you could say maqtewe’k wi’katikm which is a black book. Now if the book is inanimate, and the man is animate, but the verb that agrees with those two nouns could go either way. Could be interpreted as being either animate or inanimate. 

TS But when it’s for the book, it would have to be inanimate. 

BF Yes, yes. So, you know, if you’re asking me some verbs, can some verbs be implicitly inanimate or animate, yes of course, that’s the reason why. 

TS I meant on their own they would be always animate, unless they have to be attached to a noun that was inanimate.

BF Yeah, but it’s impossible, you know? When you talk in Mi’kmaw, I hope you do this in English, that you’re talking about something. 

TS I don’t know, because you’re the one that said everything is like all these words were verbs. *Bernie: Yes, they are. * But you use them as like nouns, so I mean, what are you talking about? What’s the thing you’re talking about when you’re talking about the process of, if you are talking about your mother or a body part?

BF  Well, anything. It could be, you could be talking about anything, absolutely anything.

The so-called nouns in English, for instance, like take a, well let’s take a canoe, okay. Once again, *Trudy Sable: kwitn* right, now where does that come from? Where does the word come from? It comes from the word (ekwitk) which is a verb, 

TS What does ekwitk mean?

BF Ekwitk means ‘it’s floating’, ‘the floater’. 

* Trudy and Bernie spelling the word* 

BF E-K-W-I-T-K 

BF Ekwitk, the floater, right? And so, in this case, but you know, there’s, there’s not enough information there. You know. In that word, by itself, there’s not enough information, all you’re saying is ‘the floater’ or ‘the floating thing’ but you’re not really giving enough information to a person if you want to get an idea across. So, you have to make it into a noun, so you might, you could say ekwitk kwitn, ‘there floats the’, you know, ‘the thing that floats.’ ‘There floats the thing that floats.’

TS So, what’s kwitn mean?

BF Canoe. 

TS Is it a noun?

BF Yeah, *Trudy: Alright* yeah, it’s a noun, right and it comes from the word ekwitk

TS What do you mean it comes from the word?

BF Well, if you take, if you take those, both of those words, the kwit part you’ll see in the middle of the verb and in the middle of the noun, so you have to make it into a noun in order to make sense of what it is you’re trying to say, and how do you do that? In this case by adding an ‘n’ at the end of the word kwitk that’s why you getkwitk’n *Trudy: Okay (laughter)* Yep.

TS Well, do you understand why I’m asking?

BF Yep, yes, I understand.

TS   Okay, does it seem ridiculous to you or does it seem like *Bernie Francis: No… no… no… * Maybe is not a good enough question?

BF  No, no, that’s a good, good enough question, yeah, you know. Yeah, that’s a good enough question. It’s a good question actually. Like for instance, ‘God’ is not a noun, but the implicitness of the verb itself gives us that sort of, an idea you know like, even though the word Kisu’lkw, means ‘he or she made us’, which is a verb. Am I right there?

TS Mmhm.

BF: It comes across as one word in Mi’kmaw. You could say, you could say Kisu’lkw nekm which is a pronoun for ‘he’or ‘she’, you could complete it that way, but it’s not really absolutely necessary to say that because it’s implied that it is, that the Creator is some kind of an object and it is animate.

TS: Okay. Alright, let’s take kmu’j as another. Okay. I got an idea. Maybe the word noun is the wrong word. Maybe what we’re talking about is creating a context of something that’s happening.

BF: Well, that’s what you have to do. *Trudy Sable: Right* Yeah, you’re sort of creating, you are creating a context. As I said, if you spoke in verbs only without any, let’s say, without an implied object, then it would be difficult to make sense of what it is you’re saying. Like, if you say etwitk, for instance, as I said a little while ago, that doesn’t really tell you a whole heck of a lot unless there was something before it.

TS Right, like where…

BF Like if someone were to ask you ‘where is that noun?’ or ‘where is that kwitn?’ then you could say etwitk of course, *Trudy: Its floating* ‘it’s floating,’ you know, ‘it’s in the lake.’

TS If you’re standing by the lake but if you’re not than it could mean a slide or a waterfall or something?

BF Has to be, yeah. Has to be in water.

TS Alright, so, so the question is, okay let’s just take one sentence. Are you okay with that? I’m just curious.

BF Yeah.

TS Let’s just say if you said ‘the canoe is floating in the water.’ from an English point of view, canoe is a noun, but the action is floating, where is it floating? The river, you know, in the water, prepositional phrase, that’s where it is…it locates it right? Okay, so that provides the context. So, if you took that same, if you took that same sentence, how would you say it in Mi’kmaw.

BF Kwitn, right, that’s the noun. Etwitk right, floating. samqwaniktuk

TS Right, is there an end there, or is that just water?

BF In the water, there’s a post position –iktuk 

TS Oh, -iktuk, that’s in there, (unknown 13:44) -iktuk.  Okay, so, kwitn is considered a noun. *Bernie: Right. * Correct? Is that the word you’d use for it?

BF Yeah.

TS It’s a thing?

BF It’s a thing. It’s an object.

TS It is an object?

BF Right.

TS So, you say there are objects?

BF Well, yeah. That is an object.

TS I’m just asking, because you could say, it’s not necessarily an object, it’s just a certain way, space is framed…the context \Bernie: No.* It’s not a process, it’s a literal thing.

BF Yeah, it’s a literal thing, it’s an object. (TS: Static.) Right, static, right.

TS So, the language itself is fluid but it has static things.

BF Exactly, and they’re made that way by the speakers who have to make sense of their world.

TS Okay, so why, if the Mi’kmaw language is verb-based, expressing the world in flux, fluidity \what do you say? Having just said that previous statement, what do you say about that now?

BF Nothing, nothing different except the fact that as I say you have to do something to separate the action from let’s say from the noun in order to make your world make some sense, you listening? So, kwitn. kwitn, once again, because it ends in a noun, it has, it’s been given a, an ending which gives it a noun like quality, originates from the verb etwitk. Simple as that, so you have your verb telling you what the noun is doing.

TS Are most nouns like that? 

BF Yeah. Yeah, they, as I said earlier you know, nouns generally come from, you know, verbs, and some of them are easily detectable, are easily analyzed as to where they come from, how they arrive at the state that they’re in now. Some of them, as I say in the text, are, there has to be much more work. I mean they’re not that easily detectable. You know you have to do a little bit more of an analysis to find out where, which verb it could have come from.

TS So, you still have the verb and the noun that came out of that verb, as the thing that verb refers to. Or in context…

BF Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. The verb…the noun probably would have come from the verb, right.

TS O.k. this has nothing to do with animate or inanimate at this point, (inaudible) No, it makes sense, I mean it makes sense from all sorts of levels.

BF Yeah, well but it’s also what determines animacy or inanimacy though, depending on the ending. Yeah, like kwitn happens to be an inanimate noun. I don’t know why that is. There’s some, you know, somethings like, you would you know, think that a canoe is very, very important in the Mi’kmaw life, but in this case, it happens to be inanimate. I don’t know exactly why.

TS What about (inaudible)…

BF Yeah, I don’t know why that is, I mean you have apples that are inanimate and potatoes that are animate.

TS But what about the parts of the canoe, like birch bark… Wouldn’t there be animate things?

BF Yeah, it could be, could be.

TS Like the gunwale?

BF Could be, yeah.

TS Ash, maybe and paddles, maybe I don’t know, the wood that makes up the paddle? the way you use that?

BF No, it would be animate, but since I don’t know all the different names of the parts of the canoe, I don’t know which ones are and aren’t.

TS I know the parts for the wikuom, Margaret told me.

BF Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, they would be animate and inanimate as well.

TS So really, back to this whole thing about the stone, back when we we’re talking about the Grandmother rocks, and he said if it’s a bear like quality than it becomes a bear, it’s not a rock anymore, it’s a bear. *Bernie: Yeah, that’s right* Okay, that seems to me, really important. Is it? I don’t know why.

BF What do you mean by important?

TS Well, I think because we keep coming back to this animate and inanimate thing and not just here, but with Harold (McGee) and Ruth (Whitehead) and all these people are saying, “Well aren’t all these terms from (inaudible)?’ you know, it’s like, it’s so associated with some kind of spirituality towards one’s world. Like this is a special rock and it’s given these qualities because it’s powerful or it has this presence.

BF Yep, that’s true.

TS But then something else that might have very little, maybe personal significance could be animate too? Like a motorcycle isn’t particularly of great significance to me. You know, so it might be important to like you said, they must include importance or something. Or what’s another thing that might be inanimate like a raspberry, certainly it doesn’t have the same kind of… Is it raspberry or strawberry, is that one of those?

BF Yeah, strawberries.

TS Yeah, but anyway, it doesn’t

BF They’re both animate.

TS I mean it’s a nice thing to eat but it’s not the same as a powerful site, you know, a Grandmother rock. Because that doesn’t seem to. So, all I’m saying is, I kept saying this, there’s two levels of importance to this, one ascribing something to the world but… I don’t know…I guess the word ‘animacy’ has such a spiritual connotation, everything’s alive, everybody says everything’s alive. But in the language, you’re saying no, if you’re taking animate or inanimate as the criteria, words that mean alive or not alive, then you’re saying that’s not true. Raspberries wouldn’t be alive, or jams wouldn’t be alive from that point of view.

BF No potatoes would be, so would raspberries.

TS Or apples wouldn’t be?

BF Apples would not be.

TS Apples would not be, strawberries would not be. Right?

BF Yeah, it, it has something to do with these objects that at the moment, are not necessarily imbued with the spirit.

TS So, like every, why would the strawberry be or not be, but a raspberry would be?

BF I think I’ve answered that question many times before. I don’t know! (laughter) That’s the problem with the animate and inanimate you know, I mean but you know that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t, huh?

BF But we don’t have to have all of the answers to that, that’s okay. *Trudy: No. * All we can say is that it has some significance, and you know, we can always say that humans and animals are always animate. * Trudy: Yeah. * You know, that’s, that’s one guarantee. And we can make a rule for that but as far as making rules, let’s say for objects, especially new objects such as computers, which are animate in Mi’kmaw, and other things. Stereo is inanimate. Things like that. Then…Yeah, anyway all I’m saying is that there are no hard and fast rules to tell you about certain objects.

TS You know why this also is important to me. When you’re teaching science, like the world is alive, so you don’t (kill?) the frog, or this frog is alive. So, I think it keeps going around in circles like, what is there?  I’m trying to figure out well is this true? Ha-ha. You know, is this a very invented thing, which I think it is. Where a child in biology class says this.

BF Say’s everything is alive?

TS   Yeah, if you had… Science breaks it up into dead and alive.

BF  Right, yeah that’s right.

TS   That which has carbon you know, and organic matter, you know so forth and so on. There is a very distinct definition to go into that. So, something that has the potential of either being alive or ascribed with a consciousness, or whatever. But I’m wondering if there’s two separate things here, that I don’t know.

BF  Sometimes I think that the, the whole biodiversity has to be taken into account like, you know. That to me suggests that everything is alive. That’s the part that suggests that everything is alive.

TS   Yeah, because it’s interconnected.

BF It’s interconnected that’s right. If you take for instance, a tree and make it into lumber, then the lumber ceases to have that, that same quality as the tree from which it was.

TS   Yeah, it’s taken out of its relationship.

BF  That’s right.

TS    Out of that relationship but then it’s put into another context, like maybe a house, barn, whatever.

BF  Yeah, but whatever it is, in this particular case, it never…Like again, it varies again to whether it becomes animate. It doesn’t become animate for instance if you use it to build a house or a barn. But it might become animate if you took that lumber and made it into something which is normally referred to as animate object. Like for instance you could make a horse, a rocking horse with that same lumber and that rocking horse made out of the lumber, the same lumber that you used to make your house with, would be animate.

TS   So, just because a horse is animate?

BF  It’s because a horse is animate.

TS   So that’s what the lumber becomes then?

BF  That’s right.

TS   Oh, because it’s always animate, and not because it’s lumber.

BF  That’s right

TS   So, the tree once take from its root, it becomes inanimate?

BF  Yeah, that’s right.

TS    So, is there anything else like that, where if something is taken out or like, what happens to canoe? Like the pot, like I told you that quotation, about the pot with the hole, releasing (?) the spirits, so it could go to the next world. You see what I’m saying, is it that kind of idea? So, it wasn’t a pot anymore, I mean…

BF  If it’s no longer a pot, then it’s no longer animate.

TS     You read that quotation right?

BF  No, I didn’t but I understand what it says though. I understand from what you tell me, that it’s no longer, if it’s no longer, if it can no longer serve as a pot, than it’s not animate any longer. Like junk for instance is inanimate.

TS   What is?

BF  Junk.

TS   (Trudy reads from Nicholas Denys) “Do you not indeed see, said he, rapping again upon the kettle, that it has no longer any sound, there is no longer says a word because its spirit has abandoned it to go to be of use in the other world to the dead man to whom we have given it?” They punctured the pot with holes, so it doesn’t have a sound because it was punctured with holes, (hard to hear: So they call it quality, qualities. Sorry did I interrupt you?

BF  No. Nope.

TS   And here’s Hallowell’s thing about the Objiwe . “Stones are grammatically animate, I once asked the old man; are all the stones we see around us here alive?”

BF That stones are grammatically animate?

TS   Hallowell’s’ is writing Ojibwe, right.

BF  Oh, okay.

TS   (Trudy reading Hallowell text) “If stones are grammatically animate,I once asked an old man, are all stones we see here alive. He reflected a long while and replied, “No, but some are.” This qualified answer made a lasting impression on, and it is historically consistent with other data that indicated the Ojibwe are not animate in the sense that they dogmatically attribute living souls to inanimate object such as stones, the hypothesis which suggests itself would be is that the allocation of stones that animate, grammatical category is part of a culturally cognitive set. It does not involve a consciously imparted theory about the nature of stones. It leaves a door open that our argumentation (orientation?) on dogmatic grounds keeps shut tight. Whereas we should never expect the stone to manifest animate properties of any kind under any circumstance, the Ojibwe recognize apriori, potentialities for animation in certain classes found under certain circumstances.” That’s what Hallowell says.

BF  That’s true. I mean he’s right, of course in Mi’kmaw, grammatically stones are inanimate. But he says they’re animate. And the old man is right when he says some, not all of them are animate, but some are, you know that kind of thing. Yeah, true enough. And cognitively, yes, that’s true, many people would note which usually are and aren’t, you know.

TS   But it wouldn’t necessarily agree with the next person, necessarily. Right?

BF  Yeah, that’s right.

TS   I mean you might.

BF  You might, yeah.

TS   Here it says, “the Ojibwe do not perceive stones in general as animate any more than we do. The crucial test is experience.’ Is there any personal testimony available. In answer to this question we can say that it is asserted by informants that stones are perceived to move as some stones manifest other animate properties, and as we shall see, flint displayed a certain amount of personage in their mythology.”

BF  Flint? Yeah flint rock.

TS: (unknown) We just got to get (on track) with these conversations. Okay, I just got nowhere.

BF  It just means that some is and some ain’t.

TS   Well that’s what I would say, like there’s always potential, but it’s not the same with the grammar necessarily, that’s what I’m confused about, that’s what I was trying to say. Because you have this grammatical thing, where everything is here or there. If that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s a hard class rule.

BF  No, that’s right.

TS   And do things…

BF  Ha-ha. Just reminds me of Cape Bretoner who interpreted the… he couldn’t understand some philosophy. He says, ‘to be or not to be, that is the question’ you know? And say’s ‘what do you mean by that?’ Like I don’t know, “it’s either you is or you ain’t, that’s the way I figure.”

* laughter *

TS   You either is or either you ain’t (laughs)

BF  That’s right.

TS   I don’t know, Bern. Well Bernie, I know you have to go, but I wonder like, I feel like we got too far, we got a little way.

BF  No, we, yeah. We’ll have to kind of let it settle, this, for you know, a bit.

TS   (inaudible)

BF  You know, that’s the way it’s going to be. That’s the way it’s going to be, we can’t you know.

TS   Why don’t I print this off.

BF  Yeah I’ll read it. *Trudy: I’d rather than * but I mean yeah send it, or why not send it to the publisher?

TS   But I know. Okay, I wouldn’t mind having somebody look at it outside of the….

BF  Sure. Okay.

Part 2

(Note: there is a squeak on the recorder, and occasional cat meows!)

TS   July 8^th, 1999 *Bernie Francis: Right on*

TS   Here we go *Bernie: Yep* Check.

BF  Yeah, we need to round it off, round off the chapter. And, basically because I think that in the English-speaking world there’s not a whole lot of analysis going on prior to referring to an object as either this or that, it’s usually an ‘it’, so there’s not, there’s not the same, you know, cognitive processes going on. Whereas, in the Mi’kmaw world, for those who have been brought up, not only speaking the language but living the culture, there’s much more involved prior to describing an object, or trying to classify an object as being either animate or inanimate. And sometimes it happens after the fact. Most of the time it happens unconsciously, whereby the determination would be, for instance, what, what is this object? what does it do? what value does it have? And, maybe, maybe even what movement does it make? And what does it look like? You know, there’s so many things that, that come into play very quickly in the mind of a Mi’kmaw person, at what, and of course all of this is processed much like a computer would process information, and then the determination would be made as to whether that object is classified as either being animate or inanimate. So, that of course could mean that certain objects could be spiritual in nature which would be…yeah, they could be spiritual in nature and it’s not something that I find the English-speaking world worries about or, you know, pays that much attention to and I think that’s one of that’s a major conceptual difference between a Mi’kmaw speaker and an English speaker.

TS   So, for instance, do you feel as though, let’s just take practical situations, say environmental issues or anything, when you’re talking about that kind of conceptual difference, you said something about it being easily dismissed? What would you say goes on in the mind of an English speaker?

BF  When something is easily dismissed you mean? *Trudy: Yeah* Oh I think, without sounding insulting, I think very little is going on in the mind of an English speaker when it comes to that particular object because in, in, in the English speakers mind, there’s really nothing to access, it’s an object, and, and it, it’s, it may serve of course a function but regardless it’s still an ‘it’. And, of course in the English language, it doesn’t have the facility of dividing nouns, whether they’re animacy or in-animacy or as whether they’re masculine or feminine, like, like French does. But the Mi’kmaw language does; it does divide nouns that way and there’s a, I feel that there’s a process going on which gives you the necessary background information so that you can, you can make a decision as to whether you’re going to refer that object as being either animate or inanimate.

TS   And if it’s animate then what?

BF  Well, if it’s animate, then you have to represent it as such grammatically number one, and number two I would say that it has a particular significance I would say, in the Mi’kmaw world.

TS   Like? (laughs)

BF  Well, I think I gave an example back, a while back concerning, let’s say, a bus in Membertou and a bus in Eskasoni.

TS   Alright, alright. Already proved that. Alright, I’m just wondering because it seems to me as though everybody looks at the world is assessing some way, you know, I think the process of assessment is a pretty interesting one *Bernie: It is* depending on what implications there are.

BF  Well, once again, language does cut up reality very differently. The Mi’kmaw language cuts it very differently than, shall we say, all of the other Indo-European languages, which are, you know, not exactly the same but you know, very similar and I think that…So, the filtering system of how reality makes itself known to the mind of a Mi’kmaw person is very different.

TS   Do you think it’s how it makes itself known or how you take that information and construct it? I mean, in other words, *Bernie Francis: Yes, Yes* we’re all perceiving human beings, right?

BF Yes, yes, yes. I suppose that that’s the way to do it, yeah, it’s to say it rather, is how we process that information and we can only process it a certain way because of a particular filtering system that we have, called language. *Trudy: and culture* and culture, yes.

TS   So, in terms of prioritizing information for instance.

BF  Yes, exactly.

TS And the priority for a Mi’kmaw versus saying, an English-speaking person, how would you, what would you say the priority would be? Would it be to determine whether it was animate or inanimate, whether you had a particular relationship or what?

BF: I think perhaps… I think relationship is a better word *Trudy: Ok* because Mi’kmaw people don’t necessarily, although we use the word, at least I use the word animate and inanimate, those are purely grammatical or linguistic terms, but the relationships I would say, is probably a more accurate way of describing how a Mi’kmaw person accesses an object and his or her relationship to it.

TS   Could you do it through a situation say educational, anyway…going into the store, you know, trying to think of…

BF Yeah, I would say yeah. Yeah, almost anything I would say. Yeah, I would say that yeah, that that’s, yeah, I would say almost anything is processed that way.

TS I’m looking for what that relationship is versus… I think it’s important, I’m just trying to get it, you might’ve said it, I’m just trying to… Because for instance, I noticed like different ways of perceiving people between the two cultures, like things that..like for instance, with David, people see him one way in our culture and certain Mi’kmaq may have met him, they see him differently. I mean it’s almost like two different people. There’s differences, you know, it’s not a generalization it’s just something I’ve noticed as well with their… So, I guess we’ll talk about…

BF Yeah, well there’s a…give you an example…there’s a, an object that I bought one time, which is called a hydrocollator, all that is, is just a small little tub that heats up these pads which you can use for therapeutic purposes such as, giving or sending moist heat to muscles in your body which may be injured. Immediately upon buying this thing, I referred to is an animate object because there was, there was, I guess, a perception by me that this, this object is designed to do something for me, in this particular case, to help heal my muscle, my injured muscle. So, therefore I categorized it as an animate object immediately, never having had the object before. I immediately understood that the only, the only way I could categorize it is, is for it to be an animate object, so, I think we do that for other things as well, you know.

TS Yeah, I do that too that’s why I am trying…or it seems like. I mean I agree with you, but would you say maybe that’s a priority in Mi’kmaw to do that, to figure out that specific relationship, or not?  If that makes any sense…. It seems like every culture puts certain values on things, to keep them more valuable. Some relationships, the more valuable… I guess that is what I’m trying to say, so thank you,

BF Yeah, but it doesn’t sort of categorize it any differently even though that the value may be slightly different, either lesser or greater, but the Mi’kmaw culture does, in fact it gives it a different grammatical categorization all together. English does not.

TS So, would you say that’s a more, they may take that sort of thing more seriously, I mean I’m thinking of why *Bernie: Yes, yes* and how people might not understand each other for instance.

BF Yeah, of course, I think that yeah, they, something which could be taking, taken as being more, either very important or not important at all.

TS Okay, so it’s that kind of not understanding the importance of something *Bernie: Yeah, that’s right* just having different ways of describing…

BF  Well yeah, I mean, take for example mountains, mountains are usually referred to as animate objects in the Mi’kmaw culture and language. But, you know, whereas in the English-speaking world, it’s just, you know it’s just rocks and gravel and sand and trees on top of that, you know. Therefore, it’s sort of inanimate in that way. So, once again, there’s a certain amount of respect that goes with animate objects shall we say, that doesn’t apply to inanimate objects.

TS   So how is it that the inanimate object doesn’t have respect?

BF  Not the same amount, you know there’s, there are degrees.

TS   So, you’re saying it’s a hierarchy. I mean every language has a hierarchy.

BF  Well yeah, you could call it that. But I’m not sure if you could call it a hierarchy really, I don’t think so, it’s just, just one seems to be important than the other, not necessarily important *Cat meowing – Bernie: Oh, man, shut up*

BF  You see that the thing is you could, the reason why I say it’s not necessarily a hierarchy is that because the inanimate object can change you see?

TS   Okay, because, back to potential.

BF  Exactly, yeah, so it’s either just one or the other in the beginning, but the inanimate object could easily change to be an animate object.

(Cat continues meowing after being shut out. laughter)

TS   Alright, Do you feel that is of basic importance, that’s one of the most important implications, what we’ve just been talking about this whole chapter.

BF Yeah, except perhaps to include the word respect, you know. I think that you know, respect plays a major role of course, it’s a feeling yes, and, but it plays a major role, it can you know like, some mountains for instance, it seems like in the animate world, shall we say, when I talk about animate world I’m also talking about mountains, whereas the animate world is not quite the same in the English speaking world, but in the animate world, in the Mi’kmaw language which brings in mountains as well, you will have some mountains more important than others and that’s because there will be relationships associated with that mountain. There will be legends about Mi’kmaw people having had experiences on that mountain and so on, and so forth. So, naturnally the respect would be, would be greater. In you know, with some objects and not as much in others.

TS   I wonder, I think later maybe we’ll unpack the word respect. (laughter) Because I think that’s another loaded *Bernie Francis: It is very much, yeah it is. * You know, if there’s respect, fearful respect, there’s respect out there for something as being whatever, greater power, stands for power, or something like that. And then there’s also lack of respect (laughter) for a lot of things which I see. *Bernie: Yep, yep. *

TS   So, okay, well lets, shall we just try that and see where, next chapter.

BF  Can you sort of round it up, like with that?

TS   Yeah, I think so. What do you think?