Wiikwemkoong educator offers free online Anishinaabemowin classes
By Rick Garrick
MICHIGAN — Wiikwemkoong educator Isadore Toulouse is delivering free online Anishinaabemowin classes seven days a week at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. with special guests, including Shirley Williams, Pat Osawamick and Liz Osawamick.
“I used to do this course a couple of years ago — it was a big hit,” says Toulouse, who is currently unemployed after working with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians in Michigan. “During this COVID-19 epidemic, I decided, hey, why don’t I start that program again and see what interest there is. So I got it going and regular attendance has been 60-80 students for my 11 o’clock class and my evening class is about 50-60 students.”
Toulouse says there is room for 300 participants in the online Anishinaabemowin classes.
“The most I had this week was 230 students logging in on Tuesday,” Toulouse says during a May 9 phone interview. “I’ve been teaching for 38 years now, and I kind of know the basics of what to teach new learners [and] people that can speak bits and pieces of the language. So I tried to incorporate a variety of slides to enhance my students, to be able to get them conversing with one another and to be able to get them to understand the various nuances of our Anishinaabemowin language.”
Toulouse says his main priority with the classes is to get the students to understand the simplicity of simple commands, including verbs.
“And as I go along, I continue to create various sentence structures, incorporating a lot of those words I’ve taught them,” Toulouse says. “So they’re hearing the Anishinaabemowin.”
Toulouse says he begins working on the day’s class every morning at about 9 a.m. by getting his slides ready.
“What happens in the [class] is they can hear me but I can’t hear them unless I ask them to come on,” Toulouse says. “So there are different times I will ask maybe five or six students to press ‘Talk Now’ and I can see them and I can hear them so we can do an actual conversation.”
Toulouse says some children aged from three to 16-years-old will log on from time to time.
“We’ll have games and I’ll show simple pictures and they will repeat those pictures, which is really awesome,” Toulouse says.
Toulouse adds that guest speakers are a big part of the classes, noting that Williams does a prayer in Anishinaabemowin to start the evening class.
“He always asks me to say the opening prayer before he starts teaching and then we go into some other lessons like storytelling,” says Williams, a retired Trent University professor. “My niece and I did two skits — the second one we did was about relationships because what happened [is the class] was on a full moon, and so what the people used to talk about on a full moon is this is a time for courting, so we tried to play some of that.”
Williams stressed the importance of enjoying yourself when learning Anishinaabemowin.
“One of the things our Elders have told us is when you are teaching the language or when you are learning the language is to have fun and enjoy it, so we planned on something funny to do,” Williams says. “It was a celebration for Isadore because he is not getting paid for doing this and we wanted to show how thankful we are for him to lead and do this for people wanting to learn the language while we are on lockdown.”
A link is posted on the Online Anishinaabemowin Facebook page for people who are interested in participating in the classes.