Grassy Narrows goes high-tech to preserve language

Page 32

A multi-media CD-Rom project is intended to help Elders in Grassy Narrows First Nation, Ont. pass the ancient Ojibway language and culture on to their grandchildren.

Elders felt powerless as English replaced Ojibway as the first language of local children over the past 20 years, said Roger Fobister, director of education for the Grassy Narrows Education Authority. With the new CD-Rom installed on the Sakatcheway-Anishinabe school computer network, Elders are in position to speak daily to 250 students with the click of a mouse on a computer icon.

"We want to show that Grassy Narrow means business when we talk about language loss - that we can use the latest technology to make it exciting for students to learn their language," Fobister said of the project, believed to be the first of its kind for First Nations in Canada.

Gateway to the information stored in the CD-Rom is a colorful map of the Grassy Narrows traditional lands that can be accessed on computer screens in every classroom in the school - junior kindergarten to Grade 12.

A land-based theme was chosen for the project because of its historical connection to the people and their language. Photos of landmarks or bodies of water can be selected for viewing, as can video footage or audio clips of Elders telling a legend or story that goes with the site. Sites for traditional activities like ricing, trapping and hunting are also depicted, along with the activities themselves.

It's the only way some of today's students can get close to the land and the teachings that go with it, Fobister said.

"They had PhD students coming here from universities to study traditional ecological knowledge for years, but that way was not finding its way into the classroom," said Andrew Chapeskie of Kenora's Taiga Institute, the non-profit organization that developed customized computer software for the CD-Rom.

The Elders on the CD-Rom speak in Ojibway and students can follow their speech with Roman orthography Ojibway text boxes that run alongside the video footage. Students also have the option of reading translated English instead, or pausing the Elder's story to look up a word they don't know in an Ojibway-English dictionary that is part of the CD-Rom.

A special feature is video and audio clips of Elder Maggie Land speaking of the lunar cycle and names for the different moons of the year.

"The Elders speak directly to you. It's not being filtered through an anthropologist or Native history professor," Chapeskie said of one of the CD-Rom's most appealing characteristics.

Hands-on learning exercises allow students to match Ojibway words with corresponding photos of English words.

Fobister convinced the education authority board to set aside $45,000 from its 1996 operating budget for the CD-Rom project after Ojibway immersion classes were introduced to the school the previous year.

Teachers of those classes quickly found they lacked resource materials.

Last winter, local resident Steve Fobister, with filmmaker Dan Prouty of nearby Wabaseemoong doing the video work, conducted Elder interviews.

"Only a few Elders have been interviewed so far so this is just a sample of what's possible," said Chapeskie. "It's really only limited by your imagination."

And finances.

Now that the basic CD-Rom shell and software has been developed, Fobister is looking to secure government and private sector funding to expand upon the CD-Rom's contents.

He's also looking at the project as a business opportunity, with the possibility of marketing the CD-Rom and copyrighting the technology.

Other communities could make use of the technology to plug in local information and language dialects.