Rand Valentine

Biography

Rand Valentine is a linguist who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, jointly appointed in the Linguistics Department and the American Indian Studies Program. He is also affiliated with the Department of Comparative Literature and Folklore. His specialty is the Ojibwe language, which exists in many distinct dialects throughout the Great Lakes area. His main work has been to write a reference grammar of the eastern varieties, Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe (Valentine 2001), and to collaborate on dictionaries of Odawa, with Mary Ann Corbiere, and the Ojibwe spoken in northwestern Ontario, with Patricia Ningewance. He has also long participated as faculty in the Native Language Instructors’ Program at Lakehead University.

Rand has provided key linguistic and technical guidance on the GRASAC database’s language module – of which he and Mary Ann’s Nishnaabemwin: Odawa and Eastern Ojibwe Dictionary forms a crucial part.