Danezaa language
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Dane-zaa, known in the language as ( syll: ), formally known as Beaver, is an Athabascan language of western Canada. It means "people-regular language." About one-tenth of the
Dane-zaa people The Dane-zaa (ᑕᓀᖚ, also spelled Dunne-za, or Tsattine) are an Athabaskan languages, Athabaskan-speaking group of First Nations in Canada, First Nations people. Their traditional territory is around the Peace River (Canada), Peace River in Al ...
speak the language. Beaver is closely related to the languages spoken by neighboring Athabaskan groups, such as
Slavey The Slavey (also Slave and South Slavey) are a First Nations indigenous peoples of the Dene group, indigenous to the Great Slave Lake region, in Canada's Northwest Territories, and extending into northeastern British Columbia and northwestern ...
,
Sekani Sekani or Tse’khene are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group in the Northern Interior of British Columbia. Their territory includes the Finlay and Parsnip River drainages of the Rocky Mountain Trench. The ne ...
, Tsuu T’ina,
Chipewyan The Chipewyan ( , also called ''Denésoliné'' or ''Dënesųłı̨né'' or ''Dënë Sųłınë́'', meaning "the original/real people") are a Dene Indigenous Canadian people of the Athabaskan language family, whose ancestors are identified ...
, and
Kaska The Kaska or Kaska Dena are a First Nations people of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group living mainly in northern British Columbia and the southeastern Yukon in Canada. The Kaska language, originally spoken by the Kaska, is an Athabas ...
.


Dialects

The dialects of Dane-zaa language are two main groups. Dialects that developed high tone from stem-final glottalic consonants are called ''high-marked'' and dialects that developed low tone ''low-marked''. From north to south are as follows: *the High-marked Dane-zaa dialects: **
Boyer River The Boyer River is a tributary of the Missouri River, long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 30, 2011 in western Iowa in the United States. Most reaches of the riv ...
(Alberta) dialect is spoken by members of the
Beaver First Nation The Beaver First Nation ( bea, Tsa'tinne) is a First Nation government or band, made up of members of the Danezaa people, also known as the Beavers. The Beaver First Nation is one of only two Danezaa bands in Alberta (the other being the Horse ...
** Child Lake (Alberta) dialect is spoken by members of the
Beaver First Nation The Beaver First Nation ( bea, Tsa'tinne) is a First Nation government or band, made up of members of the Danezaa people, also known as the Beavers. The Beaver First Nation is one of only two Danezaa bands in Alberta (the other being the Horse ...
**
Prophet River The Prophet River is a river in northern British Columbia, Canada. It is a tributary of the Muskwa River. The Prophet River Hotsprings Provincial Park is established on the upper course, and the Prophet River Wayside Provincial Park is located a ...
(British Columbia) dialect is spoken by members of the
Prophet River First Nation The Northern Rockies Regional Municipality (NRRM), formerly the Northern Rockies Regional District (NRRD), and before that the Fort Nelson–Liard Regional District, is a municipality in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. Although portrayed ...
** Blueberry River (British Columbia) dialect is spoken by members of the
Blueberry River First Nation The Blueberry River First Nations is an Indian band based in the Peace country in northeast British Columbia. The band is headquartered on Blueberry River 205 Indian reserve located northwest of Fort St. John. The band is party to Treaty 8. Hi ...
**
Doig River The Doig River is a river in Alberta and northern British Columbia, Canada. It originates on the northern fringes of Peace River Country in northern Alberta, south of the Chinchaga Wildland Park, in the Halverson Ridge of the Clear Hills, then ...
(British Columbia) dialect is spoken by members of the
Doig River First Nation Treaty 8 Tribal Association (T8TA) is an association of six of the eight Peace River Country First Nations bands who are signatories to Treaty 8 in northeastern British Columbia. They have joined together in an effort to negotiate with British C ...
*the Low-marked Dane-zaa dialects: **
Halfway River The Halfway River is a tributary of the Peace River in northeastern British Columbia, Canada. The river originates in the Muskwa Ranges at an elevation of . It flows from Robb Lake, between Mount Kenny and Mount Robb, then flows east to Pink Moun ...
(British Columbia) dialect is spoken by members of the
Halfway River First Nation Halfway River First Nation is a Dunneza First Nations government with a 3988  ha reserve located 75 km northwest of Fort St. John, British Columbia. It is a Treaty 8 nation. The Halfway River people were at one point part of the "Hudson ...
** West Moberly Lake (British Columbia) dialect is spoken by members of the
West Moberly First Nations The West Moberly First Nations is a First Nations located in the Peace River Country in northern British Columbia. They are part of the Dunne-za and Cree cultural and language groups. The West Moberly First Nations used to be part of the Hudson ...


Use and number of speakers

A 1991 estimate gave 300 total speakers out of a population of 600 Dane-zaa people. As of 2007, Dane-zaa was spoken "in eastern British Columbia (in the communities of
Doig River The Doig River is a river in Alberta and northern British Columbia, Canada. It originates on the northern fringes of Peace River Country in northern Alberta, south of the Chinchaga Wildland Park, in the Halverson Ridge of the Clear Hills, then ...
(), Blueberry, Halfway River, Hudson Hope, and
Prophet River The Prophet River is a river in northern British Columbia, Canada. It is a tributary of the Muskwa River. The Prophet River Hotsprings Provincial Park is established on the upper course, and the Prophet River Wayside Provincial Park is located a ...
) and in northwestern Alberta (in the communities of Horse Lakes,
Clear Hills Clear Hills County is a municipal district in north western Alberta, Canada. It is located in Census Division 17. In 1950, the massive Chinchaga fire burned through much of the region. On January 1, 2006, the name was changed from ''Municip ...
, Boyer River (Rocky Lane), Rock Lane, and Child Lake (Eleske) Reserves)." A 2011 CD by Garry Oker features traditional Beaver language chanting with world beat and country music.


Language Loss

English is now the first language of most Dane-zaa children, and of many adults in the Dane-zaa communities. Dane-zaa was the primary language until the grandparents and parents started to send their children to school in the 1950s. English only became dominant in the 1980s. Because the language is orally based, Dane-zaa becomes increasingly endangered as the fluent speakers pass away. The 1918
Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case was ...
epidemic was a contributor in language loss because it decimated the Dane-zaa population, claiming the lives of hunters, mothers and the older population. To fully recover from this, it took several generations. Because fluency lay in the older generation, the epidemic played a part in that loss of language. The loss of Suu Na Chii Kʼchinge, the traditional meeting place for the Dane-zaa, along with residential schools, resulted in the loss of language. As schools were built on the reserves, a lack of teachers due to the isolation as well as them being forbidden to write about the poverty and realities of colonial violence added to that loss.


Language documentation

Alfred Garrioch Alfred Campbell Garrioch (February 14, 1848 – December 2, 1934) was an Anglican priest and author who lived in Manitoba, Canada. He was born in Portage la Prairie, Manitoba in 1848. In 1866 he married Agnes Bertha Crabbe and together they raised ...
(1848-1934) was a Christian missionary of the Anglican
Church Mission Society The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British mission society working with the Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission ...
(CMS) who worked with the Beaver. He was born in 1848 in what would later become Manitoba. In 1876 he established a CMS mission and Indian children training school at
Fort Vermilion Fort Vermilion is a hamlet on the Peace River in northern Alberta, Canada, within Mackenzie County. Established in 1788, Fort Vermilion shares the title of oldest European settlement in Alberta with Fort Chipewyan. Fort Vermilion contains many ...
, under the name of Unjaga Mission. He learnt and analysed the Beaver language and translated the
Gospel of Mark The Gospel of Mark), or simply Mark (which is also its most common form of abbreviation). is the second of the four canonical gospels and of the three synoptic Gospels. It tells of the ministry of Jesus from his baptism by John the Baptist to h ...
into Beaver. In the mid 1880s he visited England where he had his work in the Beaver language printed. In 1886 Garrioch returned to mission work among the Beaver Indians. In 1892 he returned to Manitoba. In 1905 he retired from active work and settled at
Portage la Prairie Portage la Prairie () is a small city in the Central Plains Region of Manitoba, Canada. As of 2016, the population was 13,304 and the land area of the city was . Portage la Prairie is approximately west of Winnipeg, along the Trans-Canada Hig ...
, Manitoba. In 1925 he wrote two autobiographical accounts of his life called ''The Far and Furry North'' and in 1929 ''A Hatchet Mark in Duplicate''. He died in 1934. In 1885 the
Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) is a UK-based Christian charity. Founded in 1698 by Thomas Bray, it has worked for over 300 years to increase awareness of the Christian faith in the UK and across the world. The SPCK is th ...
(SPCK) published ''A Primer and a Vocabulary in the Beaver Indian Language''. In 1886 SPCK published ''A Manual of Devotion in the Beaver Indian Language'' and also published his Gospel of Mark in syllabic characters with syllabarium, supplementary syllabarium, chapter headings and illustrations. In 1886 the
British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Soc ...
(BFBS) published his Gospel of Mark as in Roman characters without the illustrations. This has been digitised and is online on YouVersion and BibleSearch. In 1959 and throughout the 1960s, anthropologist Robin Ridington began working with the Doig River First Nation on the documentation and recording of Dane-zaa. He returned in 1978 with his second wife Jillian Ridington and they worked with Howard Broomfield and linguist Billy Attachie. His daughter Amber Ridington collaborated with Dane-zaa youth and elders to create '': Dane-zaa Stories and Songs-Dreamers and the Land'', a virtual library that has made Dane-zaa pronunciations and other resources on Dane-zaa culture available to the public. In 1968 John chapter 3 was translated by Marshall and Jean Holdstock and published as by Scripture Gift Mission. In 2004–2011, the language as spoken by the elders of the Beaver First Nations communities in Alberta and British Columbia was collected as part of the DoBeS Beaver documentation project. The intent was to document an endangered language from a place names' perspective, collecting place names along with stories of culturally relevant locations and personal migration stories, allowing for the exploration of spatial expressions in the language. These materials, along with other grammatical and pedagogical items, are held in the DoBeS Archive and are available for download, subject to agreeing to the terms of access.


Phonemes


Consonants

Dane-zaa has 35 consonants:


Vowels

Dane-zaa has 10
phonemic In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-west o ...
vowels. Two vowels contrast oral and nasal qualities.


Grammar

Dane-zaa has gender-neutral pronouns where less importance is put on the person. * His/Her/It: ma- * His/Her own: da-


Notes


Bibliography

* Randoja, Tiina (1990
The Phonology and Morphology of Halfway River Beaver
Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Ottawa. * Story, Gillian. (1989). Problems of Phonemic Representation in Beaver. In E.-D. Cook & K. Rice (Eds.), ''Athapaskan Linguistics: Current Perspectives on a Language Family'' (pp. 63–98). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

*Ridington, Robin and Jillian Ridington. 2006. ''When You Sing It Now, Just Like New: First Nations Poetics, Voices, and Representation.'' Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. *Ridington, Robin and Jillian Ridington. 2013. ''Where Happiness Dwells: A History of the Dane-zaa First Nations.'' Vancouver: UBC Press. *Doig River First Nation. 2007. "Dane Wajich-Dane-zaa Stories and Songs-Dreamers and the Land." October 10, 2019. http://www.virtualmuseum.ca/sgc-cms/expositions-exhibitions/danewajich/english/index.html.


External links



* ttp://www.native-languages.org/beaver.htm Beaver Indian Language (Dunneza, Tsattine)
FirstVoices Tsaaʔ Dane - Beaver People Community Portal

Beaver Language, DoBeS

OLAC resources in and about the Beaver language
*Dane Wajich-Dane-zaa Stories and Songs-Dreamers and the Land {{Languages of British Columbia Indigenous languages of the North American Subarctic First Nations languages in Canada Northern Athabaskan languages Dane-zaa Endangered Athabaskan languages