That may seem like an absurd question, but a linguist and his heirs actually claim ownership of the Penobscot language. That assertion of ownership was highlighted by Alice Gregory in a New Yorker magazine article in April, 2021, “How Did a Self-Taught Linguist Come to Own an Indigenous Language?“ The article is a fascinating read, providing biographical details about the late Dr. Frank T. Siebert, Jr. and his obsession with the Penobscot language, and revealing the nature of the ownership claim by Siebert and his daughters. Essentially, Siebert’s life’s linguistic work–a manuscript of the Penobscot language–described as a dictionary along with field notes was bequeathed to the American Philosophical Society. The manuscript was sold at a Sotheby auction for $12.5 million. Siebert’s daughters split the proceeds. The American Philosophical Society owns the legal copyright. No provision was made for the Penobscot Nation.
What Are The Implications for Penobscot People?
The legal claims asserted by Siebert’s heirs and the American Philosophical Society are inherently exploitative, violate fundamental human rights, and contravene international conventions on Indigenous language sovereignty (UNDRIP, Art. 13, 14). This act of language dispossession has taken a heavy toll on the Penobscot people, culture, and heritage. While a self-taught linguist gained academic prestige and his heirs secured a multi-million dollar windfall, the community that provided the true source of this knowledge was marginalized. By bequeathing his work to a distant institution rather than the Penobscot Nation, Siebert left behind a linguistic tool that has hindered, rather than helped efforts to restore the vitality of our language.
Legacy of Harm
Through the perspectives of Penobscot citizens, Alice Gregory exposes a “legacy of harm” perpetrated by Siebert. This New Yorker feature provides a critical examination of the barriers Penobscot people face in restoring our linguistic sovereignty.
Dr. Darren Ranco, Penobscot citizen, and an anthropologist and the chair of Native American programs at the University of Maine, was interviewed and said: “For communities like my own where our language was beaten out of us, literally, and discouraged time and time again, having someone like Siebert come in, with an interest only in documenting the language, not committed to reënlivening it—considering my relatives were his sources—this absolutely upsets me, after the hospitality so many Penobscot gave him.”
Penobscot language master Carol Dana was also interviewed extensively and offered illuminating remarks about the Siebert manuscript and writing system. She said: “Siebert wanted his dictionary to capture how he believed Penobscot was supposed to be spoken,” and she stated further: “He couldn’t stand that certain people spoke the language differently.” She also shared an incident in which Siebert corrected a Penobscot elder in a large public gathering about the way that she spoke the language.1 That was an unforgivable offense and caused resentment and distrust. That incident sheds light on the arrogant, insensitive manner in which Siebert interacted with Penobscot first language speakers, how he conducted his field work, and how he compiled his manuscript.
An interesting observation was noted about the Siebert writing system in a recently published book, “Still They Remember Me,” Penobscot Transformer Tales, Volume 1. In the chapter, Editing Principles and Design Choices, Transcription, and Translation, a seemingly innocuous statement by the authors reveals the mindset and intentional suppression by Siebert, by a comparison to the linguistic works of anthropologist Speck (who was the noteworthy author of Penobscot Man). “…Speck’s early transcriptions, messy and glitchy as they sometimes are, also preserve valuable variations and phonetic details that are often lost in Siebert’s heavily normalized/regularized transcriptions” (Dana et al., 2021). In essence, Siebert’s transcriptions and manuscript ignored variations in pronunciation among individuals, families, and villages; and imposed his own notion of proper spoken Penobscot language.
When completed in 1984, the Siebert manuscript of the Penobscot language was hailed as a masterpiece by Algonquian linguists. But, what is really?
Writer Alice Gregory learned and explained otherwise. She wrote: “Still, the (manuscript) project was flawed. Alphabetized in Penobscot, it was written for an imagined audience of fluent Penobscot speakers—a population that barely existed while Siebert was working on the dictionary, and which now doesn’t exist at all. “It’s not user-friendly,” (language master Carol) Dana said. “Say you want to look up ‘morning star’—well, how can you if you don’t know the Penobscot word for it?” There was no English-to-Penobscot section.2 This deficiency made the dictionary an imperfect tool for reviving the Penobscot language; Dana was one of the few people who could conceivably use it, and that was only because she had been instrumental in its assembly” (Gregory, 2021, emphasis added). Nevertheless, Carol Dana asserted: “Without the manuscript, we wouldn’t have anything” (Gregory, 2021).
Is the Siebert writing system and manuscript the only Penobscot language resource?
Absolutely not!
What are other Penobscot language resources?
First, there are Penobscot speakers, albeit few in number. Today, those Penobscot language carriers are second language speakers, often denoted as L2 speakers.3 Those L2 speakers are mostly older than 60 years, and they had immersive experiences with Penobscot first language speakers, often denoted as L1 speakers. Conversation and engagement with L2 speakers is critical to language transmission and revitalization.
Second, there are many writings produced over the hundreds of years of contact between Penobscot people and Europeans, colonists and settlers, and now Americans inhabiting Wabanaki homelands. Many of those writings are in the phonetic notations of explorers, fishers, settlers, missionaries, merchants, soldiers, folklorists, and others. Noteworthy writings exist, including from Samuel de Champlain, Fanny Hardy Eckstrom, Joseph Nicolar, Charles G. Leland, and Frank G. Speck. Those writings provide a wealth of Penobscot cultural and language knowledge.
Let me draw your attention to these writings:
The writings of Joseph Nicolar are significant. He self-published his work, Life and Traditions of the Red Man, in 1893. This is a rare narrative written by a fluent Penobscot speaker and storyteller.
- The Life and Traditions of the Red Man, Joseph Nicolar (2007 edition).
Anthropologist Frank G. Speck documented and published collections of Penobscot tales. Here is a list and links to those tales:
- Penobscot Tales – Speck (1915)
- Penobscot Transformer Tales – Speck (1918)
- Penobscot Tales and Religious Beliefs – Speck (1935)
Third, there are at least four other known writing systems for the Penobscot language (closely affiliated with Abnaki or Abenaki).
- A Dictionary of the Abnaki Language in North America, Sebastian Rasles (1724)
- Western Abenaki Dictionary, Joseph Aubery (1750)
- The Penobscot Language of Maine, J. Dyneley Prince (1910)
- Western Abenaki Dictionary, Gordon M. Day (1984)
Collecting these language resources and maintaining them in a digital archive would be a significant step taken toward reclaiming our language heritage.
Conclusion
The history of the Penobscot language is not merely a record of academic study or legal disputes; it is a living testament to Penobscot resilience. While the Siebert manuscript remains a complex part of this history, addressing and nullifying ownership claims is only one aspect of the struggle to restore Penobscot language vitality. No one owns the Penobscot language in the usual legal sense. Institutions can hold copyrights under the law, but the cultural ownership remains with Penobscot language speakers and our community.
According to the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Penobscot Nation has the inherent right to revitalize, use, and transmit our language and oral traditions to future generations. Furthermore, Articles 13 and 14 emphasize that Indigenous peoples have the right to establish and control their educational systems, providing instruction in their own languages to ensure cultural continuity.
While the Penobscot Nation has several paths to challenge the ownership claims of the late Dr. Frank Siebert, Jr. and his heirs and the American Philosophical Society, simply abandoning his writing system—though a powerful symbolic move—would not rectify the exploitation and financial gain already realized by outsiders. Instead, the true path to sovereignty lies in reclamation. By extracting linguistic heritage from distant archives and returning it to the community, the Penobscot people ensure our language is no longer a “captured” artifact but a living, breathing foundation for the future.
True revitalization lies in the hands of the Penobscot Nation, the L2 speakers, and the community members who choose to speak, teach, and breathe life into our ancestral language every day. The work of Dr. Darren Ranco and language masters like Carol Dana prove that the spirit of the Penobscot language cannot be owned by linguists or reduced to outsider’s notions of what constitutes proper spoken Penobscot language. Reclaiming our heritage is an act of justice, honoring the elders who kept the language alive against all odds and securing a foundation for the generations yet to come.
End Notes
- In the late 1970s, I witnessed Siebert present his work at the “old” Indian Island School, where his exaggerated pronunciations drew open laughter from the Penobscot first language speakers in attendance. This left a lasting impression on me, even as I later engaged in informative conversations with him when he regularly visited the tribal department where I worked in the early 1980s. Though I didn’t fully understand the weight of his presence as a young man, I now recognize the deep and troubling legacy he left behind.
- The Siebert manuscript was digitized and is published on the Penobscot Nation Language Resources webpage. An English-to-Penobscot search tool is featured now; however, it is very rudimentary. The search results are lexical only–meaning that all related words and phrases are generated. Certain searches, such as the Penobscot word for “water,” generate many pages of results. The search function could be improved to refine searches to list the most relevant in ranked order.
- I am an L2 speaker; and carry the memories and knowledge imparted by L1 speakers. I also earned a graduate certificate in Wabanaki languages from the University of Southern Maine.
Works Cited
Dana, C. A., Lukens, M., & Quinn, C. M. (2021). “Still they remember me.” In University of Massachusetts Press eBooks. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1rnpj52
Gregory, A. (2021, April 12). How did a Self-Taught linguist come to own an Indigenous language? The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/19/how-did-a-self-taught-linguist-come-to-own-an-indigenous-language
Speck, F. G. (1940). Penobscot Man: The Life History of a Forest Tribe in Maine. University of Pennsylvania Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv4s7m66
United Nations. (2007). United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/wp-content/uploads/sites/19/2018/11/UNDRIP_E_web.pdf
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