Grassroots Indigenous Multimedia
Report date
February 2018
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
The progress we made through this Community Innovation grant can be seen in the number and nature of relationships grown with families across reservations, communities and urban areas. The families who participated in our building Ojibwe language project first connected through a digital learning community that relied on social media such as a private facebook group to anchor a group of learners in an online Ojibwe language class that took place three nights a week. The digital tools available to our language teacher and the use of facebook to update the group were instrumental to sustaining interest and social connection across great distances.
We relied heavily on social events such as local meet-ups and family language camps to strengthen relationships and increase the number of opportunities for families to speak more language with more relatives and friends. The social aspects of these language learning events were invaluable to the building up both content and context for Ojibwe language among our families. We played games, sang songs, read books, told stories, prayed, laughed, and ate together at summer camps and at participants' homes and local community sites. We worked with fluent speakers aged 13 to 83 who supported GIM staff and participants to use and appreciate language across generations and geographies (e.g., Fond du Lac/Duluth, Bemidji/Red Lake, Minneapolis, Hayward).
Our development of story books in Ojibwe has greatly contributed to our project's progress by providing our participating families with Ojibwe language texts to build on existing family literacy practices, and it has helped to strengthen our relationship with speakers and artists who contributed to the development of certain texts. Rather than translating English books into Ojibwe, our partnerships with speakers, authors, and illustrators enabled us to start building a body of work that is centered around Anishinaabe language and culture. Moreover, this work has the potential to extend our organization's reach to families outside of our initial project network, literally spreading the Word across Ojibwe country.
Key lessons learned
We learned about the importance of social relationships as systems of support and healing in language revitalization projects. For families, attending a summer camp is no small feat of organization and effort. Yet each camp was well attended by parents with children of all ages, and participants were enthusiastic and engaged. We believe that the focus on social interaction helped immensely in creating an atmosphere that was encouraging and adaptable to the needs and desires of our participating families. Occasionally, the participants' desire for social connections seemed to overwhelm the teachers' desire to focus on language. Yet, by letting the social needs of the group guide our programming, we were able to learn more about what our participants want to be able to do with language, which in turn guided our language teaching to better reflect the desires of the Ojibwe families.
The key lesson is that learning in intergenerational families cannot be full immersion. It is too harsh to change the language rules families have already established.
We had mostly families with babies and small toddles (1-3 years). These children mostly learned (mimicked) ojibwe language that was spoken by their peers,
and bulked when their parents used Ojibwe. They would respond in English and demand English at times from parents, but when playing or listening to older children, they were happy to respond in Ojibwe. This is why the Teen helpers (immersion kids) from Waadookodaading were key in what we learned. These kids (11-12 years) have graduated out of the immersion program and are this year in English public school. We need to continue to hire and work with them in our families programs.
We had mostly families with babies and small toddles (1-3 years). These children mostly learned (mimicked) ojibwe language that was spoken by their peers,
and bulked when their parents used Ojibwe. They would respond in English and demand English at times from parents, but when playing or listening to older children, they were happy to respond in Ojibwe. This is why the Teen helpers (immersion kids) from Waadookodaading were key in what we learned. These kids (11-12 years) have graduated out of the immersion program and are this year in English public school. We need to continue to hire and work with them in our families programs.
We also learned that a significant amount of the labor involved in language revitalization has little to do with language directly, but rather involves a tremendous amount of administrative know-how and organizational will. The behind-the-scenes work involved in planning our online language classes, Ojibwe language social events, and family language summer camps far exceeded our initial expectations in terms of workload and cost. Already accustomed to doing a lot with very little, we learned to adapt even more, finding that transparency and genuine requests for additional support from our community aided tremendously in successful completion of project objectives.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The inclusive element of the community innovation process was most important to making progress in our work. We were very thoughtful and careful about which stakeholders to involve as our initial participants in the program because we wanted to work with people who already seemed to understand the problem we were trying to address -- growing Ojibwe language in the home, outside of school. By starting with families who already demonstrated a commitment to using more Ojibwe language at home (e.g., by having kids enrolled in immersion schools, by being part-time or full-time language teachers themselves, by participating in local language tables) the work was more of a collaboration with partner participants than a 'delivery of service'. This social engineering at the outset was also key to building and strengthening the relationships that resulted from the project. As families got to know one another, they found common ground in their experiences with language and life, and in their shared values and goals for their children.
Progress toward an innovation
We believe that the lessons learned throughout the grant period have contributed significantly to new directions for our organization's understanding of how to address the need for intergenerational use of Ojibwemowin among family members. Our online language class was considerably helpful in terms of determining how technology can facilitate and impede language learning and social communication through digital media. We were able to see which digital interactive platforms were most likely to be used by participants and to see the kind of language that was preferred in Google Hangout class ('academic' or performative language) vs. facebook groups and group texts (social, experimental, creative, responsive language). Our social meet-up events and family language camps revealed the desire for family-based language activities, as well as points of weakness in the traditional immersion camp model. We discovered the power of connecting mothers with one another as well as the untapped potential of our youth speakers and their willingness and ability to take on more leadership as language professionals and savvy language users.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
A second iteration (or some semblance thereof) of this grant would allow us to tweak our interventions with the participants and their families. We would do similar planning/organizational work prior to each event/class, however the ways in which these events would be carried out would be quite different in terms of distribution of responsibility (i.e., we would rely more on youth speakers, pay them accordingly) and in terms of the degree to which we attempt to control the linguistic environment (i.e., more adaptive planning, less reliance on pre-determined structures and methods of language generation). In order to do this, we would require additional funding in order to cover GIM's administrative costs along with the costs associated with paying the young speakers and participants and with the accommodations.
What's next?
We are currently looking into funding options for future iterations that can build on what we learned over the last grant cycle.
If you could do it all over again...
Small relationships taking small steps are really the big goal in the making. Don't be disappointed there isn't more and phenomenal growth in language immediately.
I was often frustrated and wanted more language being used! And this was not really a realistic goal. Small bits, mixed with English, not total Ojibwe immersion, was the attainable goal. We are creating bilingual Ojibwe families in the modern age, we can adapt and grow together.
I was often frustrated and wanted more language being used! And this was not really a realistic goal. Small bits, mixed with English, not total Ojibwe immersion, was the attainable goal. We are creating bilingual Ojibwe families in the modern age, we can adapt and grow together.