Kanesatake man interprets whole Bible into Mohawk
Harvey Satewas Gabriel picked up the mantle from his great-grandfather, an Iroquois chief and Methodist minister who clashed with Sulpician clergymen over land rights within the nineteenth century.
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KANESATAKE — As a baby in a residential faculty, Harvey Satewas Gabriel’s mom was forbidden to talk Mohawk.
However Gladys Jacobs didn’t hand over her mom tongue — she furtively used it anyway along with her sister and different kids on the faculty in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont.
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“Each probability they obtained, they’d go close to the fence, they’d converse Mohawk,” Gabriel stated. “They had been hiding and in the event that they obtained caught, they’d be put in a darkish room for a very long time. They by no means obtained caught.”
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She handed the language on to her kids.
Immediately, Gabriel, 83, is being lauded for his personal efforts to advertise the language after spending 17 years finishing the primary full translation of the Bible into Mohawk.
The publication of the two,200-page e-book this fall will likely be celebrated within the coming weeks by the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Bible Society.
Gabriel remembers being amazed as a young person within the Fifties when a minister translated elements of the Bible into Mohawk on the fly throughout a church service.
“After I got here dwelling, I stated to my mom, ‘How come we don’t have our personal Bible?’” he stated this week, sitting in a gazebo in his yard in Kanesatake, a Mohawk group 60 kilometres northwest of Montreal.
“The reply my mom gave me caught with me. She stated: ‘That’s a giant venture — who’s going to translate it?’”
It will change into him.
You may say he was destined for the duty.
Gabriel’s great-grandfather was Sosé Onasakenrat, an Iroquois chief and Methodist minister who clashed with Sulpician clergymen over land rights within the nineteenth century. Starting within the late 1860s, he translated the Gospels into Mohawk.
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Greater than 100 years later, Gabriel picked up the mantle.
In 1980, he was requested to start out translating quick scripture passages into Mohawk for weekly providers. Then, in 1999, he joined a number of group members to translate 4 books from the Bible.
After retiring from a Montreal firm in 2005, Gabriel took on the Bible’s 58 remaining books, working three days per week on the venture within the early days, just a few hours right here and there extra lately. He typed it with one finger. 4 biblical students reviewed his work because it progressed.
“Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, e-book after e-book, I stored going,” he recalled, pointing to a replica of the thick, purple-covered e-book, titled Ohiatonhseratokenti – Holy Bible.
“That’s the great thing about working with the phrase of God. You may’t cease. So fascinating and thrilling. I stored going. And I used to be at all times wanting towards the final e-book of the Bible, Revelation. I made it.”
One among Gabriel’s Mohawk names is Awennaras.
“It means ‘echo’ in English. So I wish to echo my translation to the opposite Mohawk communities and allow them to begin studying, get conversant in the phrase of God. That’s my thought.”
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When he was a baby, everybody round him spoke Mohawk. Immediately, fewer than 100 folks in his group are fluent, he stated.
“Younger folks come to go to me. I inform them, ‘Our language — that’s our id. Should you don’t converse your language, you haven’t any id.’
“I maintain telling the younger folks, ‘You don’t wish to lose the language. Learn the Bible. Your language is in there. Like Jesus Christ says, the heaven and the earth will go away, however not his phrases. Now, Mohawk phrases and the phrases of Jesus Christ are in the identical e-book. They’ll by no means be misplaced.’”
He accomplished the venture final yr. Quickly after he was finished, a passage from Gabriel’s translation of the Ebook of Revelation was learn at a funeral service for Queen Elizabeth in Toronto.
“Someone despatched me a video of this fellow studying my translation in Toronto. I stated. ‘Wow, my translation is already working.’ It’s so treasured to listen to my very own language in church readings.”
A number of teams supported Gabriel’s venture, together with the Kanesatake United Church, the Mohawk Council of Kanesatake, the Canadian Bible Society and the United Church of Canada Basis.
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“A part of what I discover so wonderful about that is, the (Bible) is in all these completely different kinds — authorized codes and narratives and poetry and letters,” stated Royal Orr, a basis board member.
“Harvey simply form of turned his hand at translating all of them. For me, it’s actually a outstanding mental and inventive accomplishment.”
For the United Church, the interpretation is “an vital reconciliation venture,” stated Orr, a former broadcaster and one-time head of the anglophone rights group Alliance Quebec.
The United Church, chargeable for 15 residential colleges operated between 1849 and 1969, has apologized for its function in colonization and the residential faculty system.
Youngsters had been abused and Indigenous languages and cultures had been “denigrated and suppressed” within the church-run colleges, a part of a coverage of “cultural genocide,” the Fact and Reconciliation Fee stated.
“The continuing work of reconciliation is one which the church carries as a precedence,” Orr stated. “And so for us, in search of methods to be actively on the trail of reconciliation is one thing we’re at all times supporting.”
With the interpretation accomplished, Gabriel stated he’ll spend extra time serving to out at Karenhatase Karhatakeha, an 800-plant blueberry farm operated by his spouse on their giant property on a rural highway in Kanesatake.
However his Bible work isn’t over.
“There’s nonetheless rather a lot to do,” he stated. “Winter season is quiet, lengthy hours, not working within the backyard. I’m going to report the e-book. Not the entire thing, however there are some stunning tales in there that I’d prefer to report on a CD and provides it out.”
The Mohawk Bibles are to be offered by the United Church of Canada and the Canadian Bible Society. Income will go to Indigenous language initiatives.
Three occasions will rejoice the launch of the interpretation: a Sept. 9 dedication at Kanesatake United Church; a Sept. 26 dinner in Caledonia, Ont.; and an Oct. 1 movable feast at St. James United Church in Montreal.
ariga@postmedia.com
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