NotesFAQContact Us
Collection
Advanced
Search Tips
Back to results
Peer reviewed Peer reviewed
Direct linkDirect link
ERIC Number: EJ937276
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2011
Pages: 22
Abstractor: ERIC
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0730-3238
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: N/A
Waasechibiiwaabikoonsing Nd'anami'aami, "Praying through a Wired Window": Using Technology to Teach Anishinaabemowin
Noori, Margaret
Studies in American Indian Literatures, v23 n2 p3-24 Sum 2011
Teaching an endangered language today requires extreme measures, and there is no guarantee of success. But the situation is dire and demands adaptive, creative survivance. Anishinaabemowin is one of twenty-seven Algonquian languages, the ancestral birthright of more than two hundred communities in the United States and Canada. Now used as a single term to refer to several closely related dialects, Anishinaabemowin is the language of the Three Fires Confederacy Tribes, the Odawa, Potawatomi, and Ojibwe. Approximately 80 percent of its speakers are over sixty, and no one learns Anishinaabemowin as a first or only language anymore. Many understand that the language is dying, but first attempts at resuscitation were local, oral, and often without historical and political context. To see and save language, people have always relied on technology. Today, technology is a myriad of tools and systems allowing language to transfer concepts of identity, complex instructions about the universe, arching narratives, whispers of love, or plans for war. Language is still, and has always been, united with technology. This essay focuses primarily on the site "Noongwa e-Anishinaabemjig: People Who Speak Anishinaabemowin Today." The site is hosted by a server in the University of Michigan School of Information. Content is created primarily by Howard Kimewon and Margaret Noori, the Ojibwe language instructors in the Department of American Culture, and is altered regularly by Stacie Sheldon, an information architect with extensive experience in "sitemaps, wireframes, metadata, e-commerce and SYNC websites". Other sites and postings are mentioned as they connect to "Noongwa," creating what would now be termed a "cloud of computing." (Contains 12 notes.)
University of Nebraska Press. 1111 Lincoln Mall, Lincoln, NE 68588-0630. Tel: 800-755-1105; Fax: 800-526-2617; e-mail: presswebmail@unl.edu; Web site: http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/catalog/categoryinfo.aspx?cid=163
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Opinion Papers; Reports - Descriptive
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: N/A