DRYDEN (ON), Canada, August 2, 2008 — The August 2nd launch of the new Ojibwe Scriptures was the culmination of a twenty year collaboration anchored by the Canadian Bible Society.
Portions of the Bible had been available in Ojibwe as early as 1833, but the New Testament was not completed until 1988. The current project began with revisions to that New Testament and the additions of a number of Old Testament books.
The work proceeded under the guidance of Anglican priest Robert Bryce who served as a consultant to CBS, working with Henry Hostetler from Impact North and Ojibwe translator Jim Keesie. They were supported in their work by the team in the CBS' translation office in Kitchener. After the initial translation work was done, Ruth Spielmann, Ed Peters, Hart Wiens, Jeff Klassen and Barb Penner worked together to double check the text and then lay it out and typeset it for production.
This is only the latest of many such projects that CBS has nurtured and launched. In fact, the Ojibwe Bible was only one of three new Native Language Bibles in the final stages of production this year, and the ministry has been providing cutting edge logistics and technical support to the ongoing translation process in dozens of other countries around the world.
While this Bible is typical of the CBS process in many ways, it is does reflect two unique elements. It contains the Ojibwe text in its indigenous syllabic script and then next to it on the facing page the corresponding text in our Roman script. This makes the Bible accessible both to the older Ojibwe people who only read their own Syllabic alphabet, as well as to those who only read the Roman script taught in schools today.
Sometimes, because of time and resource constraints the difficult decision has to be made to produce a Bible with only an abridged Old Testament. In this case the Ojibwe Bible includes about 50% of the Old Testament text. As resources allow the rest would be completed, but the dire need in so many languages sometimes requires these difficult decisions.
"Aside from our ongoing contacts with Bible Society supporters who have a heart to see God's Word translated into the heart language of our own first nations' people, we also take some creative steps to generate necessary funding to see this part of our work through to completion" said Joel Coppieters, who oversees the new product development process for CBS. "Our fall promotional sale for standard English pew Bibles for instance allows churches across Canada to renew their stock of pew Bibles at very competitive rates while we earmark a $1 contribution from each Bible purchased to the progress of translating, producing and distributing Bibles for Canada's First Nations."
The launch of the Ojibwe Bible took place during the Family Camp Music Festival held at the Northern Youth Ministries' Beaver Lake Camp.
"We believe the timing was right!" said Henry Hostetler. "This Family Camp/Music Festival has been an annual event for the past 28 years and pulls together several hundred people from all over NW Ontario and from Manitoba. It is both a social and spiritually inspirational event. The feeling was that this provided a venue where the Bible would have the greatest possible exposure to people from many communities, plus being sold at the same time. We feel very grateful to our Heavenly Father, and those who pulled things together at CBS, that it did happen in time for the 1st weekend in August."
William Forbester, Former Ojibwe Chief
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The dedication process over the weekend included presentations to several dignitaries by representatives of the CBS.
Former Ojibwe Chief, William Forbester, was thrilled to be at this important event and he said, "I'm really happy that we'll be able to teach or talk to our people in our own language, from the Scripture. I'm so excited that this is happening. I had the first part of the New Testament, but I sort of missed that Old Testament part. Now today is a great day for me to be able to read the Old Testament now with the New Testament."
Hart Wiens called this particular Bible "a wonderful gift for our Ojibwe speaking brothers and sisters" and emphasized that, "this Bible will be a great encouragement to the Ojibwe people because it can now be read in their own language. Nothing moves the heart like God's Word in a person's heart language."
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