Ojibwe home movies

New home movies resurrect endangered Native American language

Educator develops multimedia tools to share, preserve Ojibwe language.

By Science NationMon
With support from the National Science Foundation (NSF), Hermes is combining the skills of native speakers with video technology to help others, young and old, learn the language in the most natural way. She's doing it by videotaping short movies of everyday situations, from going to a rummage sale to planting a garden to helping out a sick relative.

"Because Ojibwe isn't spoken on a regular basis, there's not a store or a rummage sale or a resort, but part of what we're doing is trying to re-envision what that would be like," explains Hermes.

"So imagine if Ojibwe was the language of commerce, the language of everywhere you went; everything you did was in Ojibwe," she says.

"What we are hoping is that you hear it in an everyday way, [with phrases like] 'tie your shoes,' 'get up,' 'hey mom what's for breakfast,'—that kind of informal speaking ... that's not necessarily correct formal grammar, but the way you would speak it," she says.

Once those short movies are transcribed by native speakers, they are combined with vocabulary lists, pronunciations, and interactive games to create educational DVDs.

Nanabush videos teach Ojibwe

Walking and Talking with NanabushThe Ojibwe Cultural Foundation invites you to walk and talk with Nanabush. Nish Tales: Walking and Talking with Nanabush is a language learning and story sharing site for kids and adults wishing to learn Ojibwe. Nanabush’s humorous escapades and great adventures have entertained generations of Anishnaabe and helped preserve our language. Nish Tales: Walking and Talking with Nanabush is a web site created to do the same. Here we use the humourous adventures of Nanabush to help people learn some basic Ojibwe.

There are two Nanabush stories now on the site: The Power of the Skunk and Nanabush Loses the Meat. The stories are presented as animated clips, text and audio files . All media is in a bilingual format for reading, listening and watching.

More entertaining stories of Nanabush and more language learning content will be added in the coming months.

Who Is Nanabush?

Nanabush is the main character in many Ojibwe legends and is as old as the Ojibwe language itself. He was sent to teach the Anishinaabeg how to live. His mother was Anishinaabe-kwe and his father a spirit. Being half spirit he had amazing abilities. But being half human, he had the virtues and flaws that people have and often could not control his humanly wants and needs.

Nanabush could be selfish or generous; cowardly or brave; caring or spiteful; always curious and mischievous and often his own worst enemy. Sometimes he daringly saved the Anishinaabek, other times he caused them everlasting hardship. Nanabush walked all over Turtle Island. His many humorous escapades and great adventures explained the natural world, entertained generations of Anishnaabe and helped preserve the Ojibwe language. He remains an important figure in Anishnaabe culture. Nish Tales: Walking and Talking with Nanabush looks at the humourous and fun side of some of his adventures.Comment:  The videos use limited, cartoon-style animation. The watercolor backgrounds are nice, as are the sound effects and music. The tales are cute and short enough to hold one's attention.

All in all, I'd say these videos are an effective teaching tool.

Cherokee claymation language films

Videographer:  A portrait of Nathan Young IV

By Honey Dawn Karima PettigrewWhile emphasizing cultural studies and bilingual education in Native American languages, Young encountered Joe Erb, who taught him the techniques needed to create stop motion claymation movies. “I had the opportunity to work on ‘The Messenger’ to learn animation and I was lucky that Fort Gibson was so supportive in giving me the resources and freedom to learn,” he said.

Young, whose passion for Native American languages led him to pursue the study of Creek, Cherokee and Choctaw at the University of Oklahoma, viewed claymation films as an opportunity to educate and inspire. As part of the bilingual education program at Fort Gibson, Young’s students created short films, using the stop motion technique. These films shared traditional Cherokee stories, were performed in Cherokee (with English subtitles) by the students, who ranged in age from middle to high school level.And:“I’m also working on a Pawnee language animation. I’m Pawnee/Kiowa/Delaware, and my Pawnee project is part one of a HAKO series that is called ‘Kits-pa-rux-ti: The Wonderful River.’” Young is eagerly anticipating the development of this series as a celebration of Pawnee culture.

“It’s the story of the origin of the Pawnee Medicine Societies. It’s not going to be a claymation, more like cell animation, actually drawn by frame. I’m just getting the language together now so that I can start animating.”