Minnesota

Posted on Mon, Oct. 17, 2005
Minnesota

Child care uses immersion to keep Ojibwe language alive
Associated Press

EDUCATION: Lessons for preschoolers contrast with what elders experienced.

MINNEAPOLIS - As a child, Emma Fairbanks was sent to an Indian boarding school, where she was hit with a ruler if she spoke Ojibwe.

But seven decades later, her daughter, Cleone Thompson, runs a child-care center where young children are enrolled in an American-Indian language immersion program.

"I never thought it would come back," Fairbanks, 79, said. "I was worried they (future generations) would forget their Indian ways."

Thompson said that in about 10 years, most of the elders on the reservations will be gone and there won't be anyone left who speaks the language. Her child-care center in her Minneapolis home, Nokomis Child Care, is part of the first Indian language immersion program in the nation for urban preschoolers.

About 55,000 American Indians are enrolled in tribes in Minnesota. Roughly 3,000 are fully fluent Ojibwe speakers, and about 30 are fully fluent in Dakota, according to estimates by the Grotto Foundation, which has focused much of its philanthropy on language revitalization.
Many American Indians can say certain words and phrases, but few can carry on a conversation, community leaders say.

It is part of the legacy of the boarding schools that, for decades, American Indians were forced to attend.

"My parents didn't want me to speak Dakota; they were afraid for us," said Jennifer Bendickson, program director at the Alliance of Early Childhood Professionals, which was awarded the federal grant to launch the preschools this month. "They would talk to each other in Dakota, but when we came in, they'd stop."

Universities and tribal schools have offered language and culture classes over the years. But now, people are finding new ways to keep native languages alive. There is an Ojibwe immersion preschool in Leech Lake, and Indigenous Language Symposiums are held annually. In the Upper Sioux community, a specialized class teaches Dakota to entire households. At the University of Minnesota, language students drive to Canada on weekends in the fall for an immersion experience at wild rice harvests.

Research shows that immersion programs -- from preschool to high school -- have the best results, said Margaret Boyer, executive director of the Alliance for Early Childhood Professionals.

"If you want to learn Spanish, you can go to South America," Boyer said. "If you want to learn French, you go to France. But there's nowhere in the U.S. you can go and hear only Ojibwe or Dakota. So the best way to learn is immersion -- and starting at a young age."

At All Nations Child Care Center, the students practice counting numbers and saying animal names and colors in Dakota. They also are surrounded with drawings of symbols in American Indian culture, such as eagles and wolves.

Similar immersion programs will be launched at Four Directions Child Development Center, Cherish the Children Learning Center and Nokomis Child Care. The first batch of Dakota and Ojibwe speakers is expected to graduate from these programs in three years.

Boyer hopes for a ripple effect -- the students' parents must take a class to learn the same materials as their children. And people playing community bingo will hear numbers yelled out in Dakota and Ojibwe, she said.

"Our project rolls a lot of different things into one," Boyer said. "So all around the community, when people meet each other, they can use the same words."