Audio | Learning an indigenous language “as any other language, which breaks down to a set of rules that you can learn bit by bit” – Canada

Speaking Ojibwe an ‘act of defiance’ says 19-year-old language teacher | Read or listen to the full story >>

Aandeg Muldrew is the the University of Manitoba’s youngest sessional instructor, teaching Introductory Ojibwe. (Submitted by Maeengan Linklater)

Muldrew, who lives in Winnipeg, started learning the language from his grandmother when he was 10. She invited him out to an immersion camp, where she was teaching adults.

“We would sit under this tent and learn the language,” said Muldrew. “Or we would walk around and learn words in the environment right there.” For Muldrew, the immersive camps were a chance to think in Ojibwe, “thinking how you’d say that and preparing ahead of time,” for anything you might want to communicate to the group. […]

Muldrew tells his students to think of Ojibwe as any other language, which breaks down to a set of rules that you can learn bit by bit.
For him, speaking Ojibwe is a way of “reconciling our past … with the present and bringing … what was lost through all these” residential schools and colonization.

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