Algonquian languages are traditionally spoken in Canada and the United States, mostly along the Atlantic coast, in subarctic Canada, and across the U.S. Great Plains as far west as the Rocky Mountains. Specialists in the languages and cultures of speakers of these languages meet annually at different locations. Since 1974 selections of the papers presented at these conferences have been published within a year.

The 36th Algonquian Conference was held in Madison, Wisconsin in 2004. As the topic of the conferences is based on groupings defined by language, it is not surprising that linguistic papers dominate, usually filling one of the parallel sessions on the conference. Twenty-two of the fifty papers presented are printed in the book; fourteen of them deal with language structure, such as old dictionaries and grammars of Old Algonquin and Miami-Illinois, generative analyses of the Algonquian verb complex and WH-word movement, verbal modes and prenouns in Meskwaki, Ojibwe and Menomini preverbs, Arapaho reduplication, and Cree negation. Nonlinguistic papers investigate values among Algonquins in Quebec, the balance between traditional nomadism and urban residence, a biography of an Ojibwe ethnobotanist based on oral history, historical navigating skills of canoemen on the Great Lakes, material culture of a Cree group of Quebec, Penobscot wampum belt use in the 1700s, and finally a study of the attempts of the Maine Penobscots to obtain recognition as a nation. As always, a range of disciplines is represented, but mainly anthropology, history, art and language.

To some extent, three papers link language and society. Andrew Cowell is an amateur ethnobotanist and a professional linguist working on the Arapaho language spoken in Wyoming. His “Arapaho plant names” (135–71) is a solid study based on published sources and fieldwork. Some 150 Arapaho plant names are identified, linked with their botanical names, and in some cases with information about use. John S. Long documents some attempts to implement teaching in the native languages in Ontario in the 1970s and 1980s in “An idea ahead of its time: vernacular-language education for Northern Ontario” (237–53). Based on documents and interviews with teachers and administrators, he describes the ideals of a few Ojibwe and Cree women who wanted to use the native languages in teaching, against the current of the time, when both authorities and parents doubted the usefulness of Native language teaching. J. Randolph Valentine analyzes Ojibwe myths about marriages between people and animals in “Prescription and proscription in Ojibwe animal-marriage tales” (449–71). Comparing myths about marrying dogs, mermaids, a dung-figure, and beavers, only the last one is seen as positive. The union with the beaver is seen as symbolic of the virtues of mixed marriages with fur traders (which led to a whole new population, the Métis), and the others are warnings. Most of the contents would be exciting for Amerindianists but are less so for most sociolinguists. The website http://www.umanitoba.ca/algonquian/cumul/cum-a.shtml provides an overview of all the papers published in the proceedings since 1975.