Indigenous languages are disappearing. Across the U.S. and Canada, where there were once 500 such languages spoken, today 150 remain. Of those, only 20 are spoken by children. Ojibwe is among them. There are 500 speakers of Ojibwe left; most of them reside in Minnesota.
Anton Treuer is one of those speakers, and he’s fighting to keep the language of his ancestors alive. The professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University is calling on others to assist in the onerous task of language revitalization in his new book, The Language Warrior’s Manifesto.