Minneapolis American Indian Center Native Languages Infusion Project

The proposed project will focus on sustaining our most well-attended set of classes - Ojibwe I and II and beginning to implement a revenue generation plan to support these activities across the long term. When COVID forced the closure of the Minneapolis American Indian Center's doors in March of 2020, we were fortunate that we had already began piloting Indigenous classes using online platforms, so the shift to all-online was fairly immediate and smooth. What we did not expect was the huge increase in enrollment in our classes - they went from 20 to over 200 enrollees in our Ojibwe Intro class. One class had more than 1,000 people trying to enroll, and this included people from all over the country. Apparently, when you remove barriers like time, transportation and cost, a lot more people are interested in learning their Indigenous language. We had to cap each class at about 100 because it was too difficult to fulfill the support activities like taking attendance, grading papers and providing feedback to students.