Language nest models now exist worldwide, but only a few exist in the United States. Our connection to our lands is rooted in languages. “Everything we know about ourselves as Native peoples is found in our languages-our songs, our stories, and our ceremonies. “When Indigenous communities lose their languages, they also lose thousands of years of stories and traditions,” Whiteman stated. “It wasn’t until the passing of the Native American Languages Act in 1990 that we saw a federal policy that allowed the use of Native American languages in the classroom,” said Deidre Whiteman, director of research and education for the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, which is based in Minneapolis. Counts vary, but there were at least a dozen of these boarding schools in Minnesota. Hundreds of Native children died in these schools. For generations, Native children were taken from their families, banned from speaking their native language or engaging in traditional religious practices, and often abused if they didn’t comply. This was standard practice in Native American boarding schools. In the late 1800s, the United States government created a policy that banned speaking or teaching in any language other than English in schools. The word Anishinaabe refers to the Indigenous people of this area of the United States and Canada, and Ojibwe is a specific subgroup, so some use the terms interchangeably. He said the language nest got its name because “a lot of young Anishinaabe people always went to Grandma’s house for food, company, legends, and stories.” Through a grant from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation, parents get paid to learn alongside and speak with their children in Ojibwe five hours a day, four days a week.ĭon Jones, whose Ojibwe name is Niigaanibines, is one of the elders who teaches at Grandma’s House. Grandma’s House is not like a drop-off daycare or an immersion school where only the children learn. This was possible for Erdrich’s son because they attend a language nest in Cloquet, Minnesota, on the Fond du Lac Reservation called Gookonaanig Endaawaad, or “Grandma’s House.” The program started in 2020, and now seven families learn Ojibwe traditions and language from elders who speak it as their first language.
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