Classes reawakening Indigenous languages in southwestern Manitoba

Waywayseecappo First Nation member Julia Brandon says she's on a mission to help others in southwestern Manitoba "find their spiritual selves" by rediscovering their language.

She teaches Anishinaabe as part of a program for Sixties Scoop survivors at the Friendship Centre in the city of Brandon, Man., with the goal of helping them reclaim and strengthen their Indigenous identities and culture.

The Anishinaabe, Cree, Dakota and Michif classes will run weekly until the end of June. 

Many people are hesitant to speak their language after the trauma of residential schools and the Sixties Scoop, says the Anishinaabe teacher.

"It's sad for me to know that our people don't want to learn the language or they don't just don't wanna use their … creator-given, God-given language because of the systems."

Brandon herself is a survivor of the Sixties Scoop — a decades-long period during which thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their homes and placed with non-Indigenous families.

She learned Anishinaabe as a child, but for many years lost the language after being placed in a residential school and the Maples Orphanage in Brandon.

She returned to Waywayseecappo, in western Manitoba, in 1994, where she once again began to speak her language, seeking out elders to strengthen her Anishinaabe.

"I just was drawn to them because they talked the language … [that] I wanted to find myself."

It took time for Brandon to gain the confidence to speak the language out loud, she said, but she became more comfortable with encouragement from her parents.

Teaching Anishinaabe to others was a natural progression.

Her classroom is a safe place free of judgment, where people are bound by the shared goal of strengthening their language, she said.

It's also an opportunity to value Anishinaabe — something that's uncommon in an English-dominated society, said Brandon.

Diana Morrisseau is a Cree language teacher participating in the program, who is originally from Mosakahiken Cree Nation, close to The Pas in northwestern Manitoba.