A Surge in Online Learning Is Helping Revive Indigenous Languages

A Surge in Online Learning Is Helping Revive Indigenous Languages

Preserving and teaching Indigenous languages is literally a race against time in many cases, and Covid-19 has made that race even more difficult as it most severely impacts elders. One of Treuer’s other projects is collecting stories from elders to print into books. It’s a task that normally requires convening 50 people, and so it’s been put on hold for now. “In Mille Lacs, one of the elders that was a major contributor on our books just died. So if not for that, we probably would have had another 20 stories from her,” says Treuer.

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America Amplified 2020: What National Politics Misses and What Gives

America Amplified 2020: What National Politics Misses and What Gives

“In our politics, especially, we ‘other’ one another. We take an adversarial position with one another,” Treuer says. “I’ve heard some White folk who are really worried about the loss of cultural, political and economic power. That we’re going to flip roles between who is the oppressor and who is the oppressed. So they’re fighting with one another instead of working together to fight oppression.”

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Anton Treuer on Language Revitalization and the Rosetta Stone

Anton Treuer on Language Revitalization and the Rosetta Stone

“I think these things are really valuable and important for a lot of different reasons. We’ve been trying colonization for hundreds of years and it just messes people up. It’s not making them any better. Positive identity development of any human is important. So what does an Indigenous person’s positive identity development look like? Language and culture.”

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THE LANGUAGE WARRIOR: In Minnesota, the country’s last stronghold of native Ojibwe speakers, a professor is racing to preserve their knowledge.

THE LANGUAGE WARRIOR: In Minnesota, the country’s last stronghold of native Ojibwe speakers, a professor is racing to preserve their knowledge.

Anton Treuer’s Indian name is waagosh, the Ojibwe word for fox, an animal known for its spry bounding. Treuer (pronounced Troy-er), a professor of Ojibwe language, often moves in this very manner: light on his feet, perpetually in motion, zigzagging between the ancient world and the modern one. He’s a man with one foot in the wigwam, and the other in the ivory tower, as he’s been known to put it. —Rachel Hutton

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