Ojibwe Immersion Program Coming to Duluth Schools

DULUTH - For the Ojibwe people, the language they speak is not only a way to communicate, but it's the way they live their lives.

The Duluth School District has approved an Ojibwe immersion program to start in fall 2014, but it's not the first Ojibwe program in the Northland. 

There’s a program through UMD called the Enweyang Ojibwe Language Nest.

It teaches students the language before they reach kindergarten.

If you take a look at four-year-old twins Brooke and Lilly Dorman; they learn and play like any other preschoolers.

They're not learning their numbers, shapes, and colors in English, but in Ojibwe.

“Through learning our language is how we are reclaiming our identity,” explained the twins' mother, Dixie Dorman. “So that's why they're here.”

They're taught the language by teaching assistants and a master Ojibwe speaker, Gordon Jourdain.

“The community I grew up in, everybody spoke Ojibwe,” Jourdain remembers.

He is an Ojibwe first language speaker and a doctoral student at UMD.

He makes it his mission for children to learn the language of their native land.

“I know northern Minnesota is heavily populated with Ojibwe people. This is our traditional homeland here,” he said.

The Enweyang Learning Nest can only teach children until their first day of kindergarten, but with an Ojibwe immersion program approved through Duluth schools, students can continue their Ojibwe speaking skills throughout their educational journey.

“They're really going to see down the line the benefits of what it's going to do for Ojibwe students,” Dorman said.

Duluth schools hopes the new program will boost the graduation rate of Native American students and build a stronger bond between the school and the native community.

The next step is for the board to pick a school for the Ojibwe classroom and find someone to teach it.

The program is funded through Duluth schools general fund.