kobade
un maillon dans une chaîne
A word in *Nishnaabemowin* shared by Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg writer Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (*As We Have Always Done*, 2017), who learned it from Elder Edna Manitowabi: a single term for great-great-grandparents AND great-great-grandchildren—a link in the chain between generations, nations, states of being, and individuals. By extension, the lineage and the nation themselves, *“a long *kobade* cycling through time,”* tied to all living nations. The speaker does not see themselves at the end of their lineage but as a link, held and holding, with an obligation turned downstream: to give more than they take, for the *kobade* to come.
kobade is a word we use to refer to our great-grandparents and our great-grandchildren. It means a link in a chain—a link in the chain between generations, between nations, between states of being, between individuals.
Here’s the translation, preserving all Markdown, links, italics, and symbols:
The spelling follows the book’s—kobade—and the word doesn’t originate with Simpson alone: she traces it back to her elder, Edna Manitowabi. “A link in a chain” is merely a makeshift French rendering of Simpson’s own gloss, marked as such.
What it fills is a gap rooted in singularity: kobade names both great-great-grandparents and great-great-grandchildren with the same word. French divides what Nishnaabemowin unites—we have “ancestors” and “descendants,” two words for two directions, with the speaker positioned at the center like an observation post. Kobade holds both ends in a single grasp, because the same bond runs through them: the one speaking is not the end of their lineage but a link within it, caught between two holds. I am a link in a chain. We are all links in a chain.
The word quickly spills beyond human kinship. Simpson calls her own nation a long kobade, cycling through time—a long kobade weaving through time: a fabric of ties knotted to plant nations, animal nations, rivers, lakes, the cosmos. And it carries an ethic oriented downstream rather than upstream: we should give more than we take, to ensure the kobade to come survives and thrives.
≠ Whakapapa, the Māori term, which also connects all beings through descent: whakapapa is recited as a genealogy tracing back to the origin, anchoring the present to its sources. Kobade, by contrast, first names the two living ends of the chain and leans toward what lies ahead. One roots by binding to the beginning; the other binds by reaching toward what follows. And where biiskabiyang, another of Simpson’s words, names the movement—the return to self—kobade names the form: the chain of which one is a link.