Indigenous languages educator launches animated video series in Anishinaabemowin

An Indigenous languages educator based in Garden River First Nation has just launched a new animated video series for children that's entirely in Anishinaabemowin.

Barbara Nolan said the three- to eight-minute vignettes feature her interacting with an animated environment.

"One video is about who lives in this barn," Nolan explained.

"So in the background is a picture of a farm — like a comic farm with a barn. And so I point to the barn … and then I'll say, 'Oh, listen, and then there might be somebody coming.' A cow might come walking across in front of me …The word for cow is bzhiki. So people will catch on." 

The videos are not subtitled, Nolan said.

"Kids pick up," she said.

"They'll pick up the language that's on the video."

Nolan is a lifelong speaker of Anishinaabemowin who has spent decades revitalizing the language.

She has developed an immersion program and a language learning app, teaches the language and consults with First Nations about developing their own language training programs.

Her latest project, she said, was inspired by her work in daycare in Garden River, where she noticed staff would keep children indoors on rainy or overly hot days and keep them occupied by showing them cartoons.

She met a teacher at an event on Walpole Island who had a number of English animations on his website, and she recruited him to help make her vision a reality, she explained. 

Now children have somewhere they can go online to learn their language in a way that's designed for kids, she said.

"We are losing our fluent speakers on a daily basis," Nolan said.

"They're dying, OK?. And I'm not going to live forever, and I do a lot of work with language. So I may as well do these videos and the videos will live on."

A lot of communities no longer have language speakers and they are longing for their language, she added.

Until now, there were no videos in the Ojibway language for elementary schools or daycares.

"So this is perfect for that," she said, "for First Nations daycares that don't have access to speakers."