Centre helps keep language alive

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Leann Eamer was raised by a non-Aboriginal family off the reserve, so having an opportunity to learn the language of her people seemed like an impossible dream.

"I always thought it was important to learn our own language, but so few people speak it these days I never thought I would get the chance," said Eamer.

That's why she was delighted when Rose Nadjiwon agreed to hold Ojibway lessons at the M'Wikwedong Native Cultural Resource Centre in Owen Sound.

Eamer and her nine-year-old granddaughter, Brittany, attended the 20-week course together and were among 10 graduates at a recent graduation ceremony at the centre.

"The course was a real challenge, but because so many of us don't know our own language, I knew that it was important to do," said Eamer.

In total 13 students began the course and though the course was difficult only three dropped out.

"Which shows how important this is to our people," she said.

The course was intergenerational with, in some cases, as many as three generations of the same family attending.

Nadjiwon was especially pleased to see children as young as two years old, as well as teenagers and young adults graduate from the course.

Nadjiwon, 61, learned the language at the knee of her mother and grandmother at her home on the Cape Croker reserve on the Bruce Peninsula of Lake Huron.

"It was my first language. We spoke it all the time at home. I didn't speak English until I went to school," she said.

But that's not the case for most of the people on the reserve.

"There are only about 20 or 30 of us who speak it now. Every time we lose an Elder there is more danger that we'll lose it forever, so it's very precious and very important that we preserve it," she said.

Ojibway was spoken by the people who lived around the Georgian Bay region of Lake Huron and in the Sarnia area to the south and is very similar to Cree, said Nadjiwon.

"We can usually understand each other," she said.

The graduates are not fluent, but can exchange greetings, name most objects and follow basic commands such as "sit" and "eat" in their own language.

It's all very different to 20 years ago when a lot of the young people on the reserve had never heard their own language, said Nadjiwon.

"Now they learn it in their classrooms, but unfortunately they often leave it at the school," she said.

Ojibway is mainly an oral language so Nadjiwon herself has struggled to learn the recently developed written version.

"It's hard to remember when it's a long or short a," she said.

There are also dictionaries available but it's very hard to learn a language from a book.

"People have to hear it spoken," she said.

The centre is hoping to get funding to hold an advanced Ojibway course, as well as another beginner's course.

"Now we've got this going we'd like to carry on," said Nadjiwon.