In Hayward, Wisconsin, a program is working to preserve Native American language and culture in the state and across the world.
Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute is an immersion school where the Ojibwe language isn't only taught, it's the language used to teach all core classes.
Waadookodaading means "a place where people help each other," and the name is apt. The school's mission and activities reach far beyond its own facility, and even past the borders of the state.
Executive Director Brooke Ammann explained Waadookodaading was a founding member of the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools & Programs. That group is made up of schools and programs in 16 states that use an indigenous language as the language of instruction for at least half of the classes offered in the targeted grades.
"We share with each other when we need support, not just in any of the policy fields, but also in planning and sharing best practices that we have all developed over time with our programs," Ammann said, adding that coalition members "share knowledge, resources. At times, we also will review any upcoming federal policies to see if they align with the Native American Languages Act of 1990. It's a law that protects the right to use our native languages in educational settings."
Ojibwe and other Native American languages didn't decline naturally. Federal policy aimed to wipe them out. For example, an 1868 Report of the Indian Peace Commissioners stated "schools should be established, which children should be required to attend; their barbarous dialect should be blotted out and the English language substituted."
Native American children were sent to boarding schools beginning in the 1870s, and often weren't allowed to return to their families and communities when school wasn't in session. While the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 mandated boarding schools be phased out, many remained open into the 1960s and even 1970s.
Given that history, creating an appropriate curriculum and framework was challenging.
"So, what we've learned in our work is we've had to reach out and look at models," Ammann said. "Some of the first models that our founders looked at were in New Zealand, in Wales the Welsh language, Gaelic, like there's many models in the world of kind of less commonly taught or spoken languages."
"And we looked at different efforts that were happening. And that also brought us to our relationship with the native Hawaiian group within the United States as well. So we really looked all over the place for the best ways to revitalize and teach indigenous languages."
The most natural way to learn a language is to grow up hearing and speaking it. Waadookodaading attempts to replicate that by using only Ojibwe in teaching preschool through third grade. This means all of the children are bilingual in English and Ojibwe, since they are likely growing up in English-speaking homes. As Ammann wrote for "The Ways," "By the end of kindergarten, most students at Waadookodaading know two alphabets and writing systems."
Language is key to identity, but so is learning cultural traditions.
"Language alone does not convey or connect people to culture. It is a medium through which culture can be learned," Ammann wrote. She added that "Ojibwemowin, the Ojibwe language, is a language of action. In the Ojibwe worldview, there are two ways to learn: by observing and by doing."
At Waadookodaading, students and staff learn traditional activities like turning maple sap into maple sugar together, and older students help teach younger students, which echoes how many traditions have been handed down for centuries.
According to the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools & Programs, "the Native American Languages Act (1990) established federal policy to allow the use of Native American languages as the medium of instruction, and affirms the right of Native American children to express themselves, be educated, and assessed in their languages."
While this represents progress, the coalition goes on to state that there is uneven application of the act within the U.S. Department of Education.
"I think it really is important to remember that speaking Ojibwe, or practicing our culture, was outlawed in the not-so-distant past. I was born in the '70s, and the freedom of religion for Native Americans was at the end of the '70s," Ammann said. "So even when I was born, some of those things were legally prohibited."
"And I think a lot of what we deal with today is people suffering from shame from some of the trauma inflicted within families and our communities by those efforts. And we know it’s one of the reasons American Indian students still struggle with this kind of mainstream English-only focus in our education. So our efforts, normalizing Ojibwe language and education, it’s part of our effort really to empower, engage, students, families those who have been disenfranchised by the mainstream American education system."
This story is part of a week-long series called First Wisconsinites: Dispatches From Native American Life In Wisconsin Today. Stories explore everything from education to politics to art and more and can be heard on Central Time and online at wpr.org.
