Mi'kmaw educator teams up with Wowkwis the puppet to take kids on language journey

As a child of the 1980s, Trevor Gould grew up in awe of Jim Henson's muppets, dreaming of a day when he could join them.

The artist and educator from Paqtnkek Mi'kmaw Nation, N.S., has gotten pretty close to fulfilling that dream now that he's teamed up with a Nova Scotia theatre company to teach kids the Mi'kmaw language using puppets. 

Gould co-stars next to Wowkwis — the Mi'kmaw word for fox — in Mermaid Theatre's Animalingo, a video series for school-aged kids that the organization hopes to bring to classrooms across the province. 

Over 10 episodes, the duo journey to the river, forest and other locations as Gould shares Mi'kmaw culture, traditions and language.

"The ending is getting Wowkwis to a mawiomi, which is very much me, who I am," said Gould, a dancer, singer and powwow emcee.

"People in the Mi'kmaw community that already have an idea of who I am from working in the community, this will be a lot more, I guess, familiar to them and it'll be easier to connect."

Mermaid Theatre uses a mix of live puppetry performed by puppet master Jim Morrow and 2D animation to bring the lessons to life.

"The beautiful part of these stories is we have the human world, and then we go into this animated world where you see Trevor as an avatar and Wowkis in 2D animation," said executive director Danny Everson.

Animalingo has 30 episodes in total, covering three languages: Mi'kmaw, Gaelic and Acadian French.

Anika Lirette guides the Acadian lessons and the Gaelic series is led by Cape Breton musician Mary Jane Lamond.

Lamond stars next to Caoirigh the puppet and hopes the make-believe world they've created together is as captivating for children as it was for her.

"I was completely engaged with this puppet," Lamond said. "I mean, sometimes I was talking to the puppet and I forgot it was Jim actually working it."

The episodes are designed for learners as young at Kindergarten and have a Sesame Street-vibe. Each episode introduce kids to a new animal, number and colour, and the lessons build on one another.

By the end of each series, Everson said students will have learned about 150 to 200 new words, and there are plans to expand the series to include more languages, such as Arabic, Mandarin and Inuktitut.