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3/20/01
Grotto Foundation Supports Native American
Language Revitalization
St. Paul-based Grotto
Foundation's board of
directors recently approved nine grants totaling $258,500 to support
language revitalization efforts in Minnesota's Native American
communities.
The foundation's grants will fund a diverse range
of projects that seek to reverse that loss of Native languages in
Minnesota and the region. Grotto says it based its support for these
projects on evidence that children who learn the formal structure of their
heritage language do better academically in English and math.
"The seeds are now being planted in
the Native language restoration field - carefully tilled in the past 18
months by Native language activists," said Margaret "Peg"
Thomas, Grotto's executive director. "When these seeds mature, the
resulting garden will be the restoration and sustenance of a community's
well-being and language."
The Native language projects funded by the
Grotto Foundation include:
- A Collaborative Effort to Revive
Ojibwemowin, a statewide Ojibwe language revitalization effort that brings
together three organizations-Native American Education Services, the
College of St. Scholastica and Anishinaabe Wi Yung. Their vision is to
create a replicable, comprehensive, tribal language education and training
program whose primary outcome will be the creation of K-12 language
immersion schools.
- The Ojibwe Language Immersion School on
the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Reservation in northern Wisconsin. The
school is gradually expanding its kindergarten language immersion school
to serve K-12 students. The school has joined with neighboring Hayward
Community School District to actively pursue Wisconsin charter school
status, with the hope of opening the K-12 Ojibwe language immersion school
in the fall of 2001.
- White Earth Land Recovery Project in
northwestern Minnesota and the Ojibwe Language and Culture Project at Elk
River, Minn., which are building infrastructure to enhance Ojibwe language
instruction to their respective students. These projects also have
built-in curriculum components to address the need for language materials
sorely needed by language activists and teachers across Minnesota.
- Duluth PBS-8 television's "Ojibwemowin
-- The Ojibwe Oral Tradition " project, which provides a
timely, powerful complement to language revitalization in the state and
region.
- Bemidji State University's "Oshkaabewis Native
Journal" publication, which provides Ojibwe language scholars,
students and elders with both an outlet for their academic and research
work and a teaching tool.
- Anishinaabe Center, Inc., Detroit Lakes.
The Center is initiating the mid-winter tradition of Anishinaabe
storytelling to area youth through which the history and culture of their
community is passed on by elders using the Ojibwe language.
- The Dakota Language Revitalization
Initiative, which calls together the four Minnesota-based Dakota
communities in a series of annual meetings as a means to devise strategies
to ensure the survival and vitality of their language for the benefit of
future organizations.
- The Dakota Media Art Fund, which will
build organizational capacity and begin development of video productions
using the Dakota language.
The Grotto Foundation's mission is to
benefit society by improving the education and the economic, physical, and
social well-being of citizens, with a special focus on families and
culturally diverse communities. Grotto is further interested in increasing
public understanding of American cultural heritage, the cultures of
nations, and the individual's responsibility to fellow human beings.
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