Rainy River Community College
The objective of this grant is to prevent the Ojibwe language loss, to increase and enhance the understanding of the American Indian language, to ensure positive reinforcement of the self-image and sense of identity with the empowerment of American Indian children. This will be done by offering and participating Ojibwe language competitions with other colleges, as well as, by offering immersion camps, fluent speakers in the classrooms, and language tables. Additionally, the youth will visit maple sugar and wild rice camps.
Minnesota’s most enduring languages are in danger of disappearing. Without timely intervention, the use of Dakota and Ojibwe languages – like indigenous languages throughout the globe -- will decline to a point beyond recovery.
These languages embody irreplaceable worldviews. They express, reflect, and maintain communal connections and ways of understanding the world. Deeper than the disuse of vocabulary or grammar, the loss of an indigenous language is destruction of a complex system for ordering the relationships among people and the natural world, for solving social problems, and connecting people to something beyond themselves.
The project objectives are to prevent Ojibwe language loss, to increase and enhance the understanding of the American Indian Language to ensure positive reinforcement of the self image and sense of identity with the empowerment of the American Indian children.
$550,000 the first year and $550,000 the second year are for grants for programs that preserve Dakota and Ojibwe Indian languages and to foster educational programs in Dakota and Ojibwe languages.
Improvement in enrollment in Ojibwe Language and Culture classes. Youth are ready to start up the Language Table and planning ahead for another Immersion Camp.