Ecological approaches to language learning and materials use represent educational settings as complex and dynamic systems by applying relational perspectives from the natural world in the classroom. For young bilingual Ojibwe learners, the natural world (i.e., local, rural, and reservation land) is a significant language learning resource unto…

This paper describes 3 language learning approaches common in many urban and rural Ojibwe communities, as well as the ideologies of endangerment that drive and sustain them. Drawing from collaborative language revitalization work with teachers, learners, and community leaders, we analyze some of the teaching and learning practices that lead to the…

Although Indigenous language loss and revitalization are not new topics of academic work nor new areas of community activism (e.g., King, 2001; Grenoble & Whaley, 2006), increased attention has been paid in recent years to the ways that new technology can support efforts to teach and renew endangered languages such as Ojibwe. However, much of…

Endangered Indigenous languages have received little attention within the American educational research community. However, within Native American communities, language revitalization is pushing education beyond former iterations of culturally relevant curriculum and has the potential to radically alter how we understand culture and language in…

In this article, educational scholars L. Janelle Dance, Rochelle Gutierrez, and Mary Hermes share insights from their lived experience as qualitative researchers trying to work in collaboration with diverse populations. They refer to these insights as "improvisations on conventional qualitative methods," reminding readers that their…

A powerful tool for creating culture while, at the same time, a cognitively rigorous exercise, Indigenous-language immersion could be a key for producing both language fluency and academic success in culture-based schools. Drawing on seven years of critical ethnographic research at Ojibwe schools in Minnesota and Wisconsin, this researcher…

The article discusses how Sinte Gleska University (SGU), South Dakota, has been promoting Lakota language since its inception. SGU is the first tribal-based university in the U.S. White Hat, a teacher from SGU, has been promoting Lakota language through his impressive style of teaching. The university requires every SGU student to opt for Lakota…

In considering literacy, we take a step back to ask: literacy in which language? And what is the purpose and measure of achievement? Although not in disagreement with the Bialostok and Whitman article in this issue, we place English literacy as a part of the continuing drive to colonize and assimilate indigenous peoples. Local indigenous control…

Framed by the English language and positioned as a distinct subject, Ojibwe culture and language are often appreciated by students rather than taught for a deeper understanding or fluency, or used as the language of instruction in tribal schools. Ojibwe culture and language have been "added on" to existing school curriculum, an approach that…