 Bruce Beardy, Nadijen Kaz, what's that going to make Nadounci? I'm going to be teaching at the University of New York and I'm going to be teaching at the Confederation College in New York. I'm going to be teaching at the Confederation College in New York and I'm going to be teaching at the Confederation College in New York. My name is Bruce Beardy. I am a member of Masgradam First Nation in Northern Ontario. I was hired here at the college, Confederation College, about, this is my fourth month now, and my title is Indigenous Language Professor. My passion is, you know, implementing the values of the Anishinaabe culture. Anything to do with culture itself and particularly the language is very important. I'm so fortunate to be able to speak my own language. It's my first language actually coming from Northern Ontario. And I'm proud to be able to speak it and be able to converse with other speakers of the language. I do communicate with the Ojibwe speakers. My dialect is a little bit different. It's known as Severn Ojibwe or other people know it as Ojikwe language. But it's more of an Ojibwe language than closely related to more of an Ojibwe language and able to communicate with the Ojibwe speakers around here and in Southern Ontario. So that's one of the important things that I believe that should be passed on from myself to my grandchildren and my kids as well. The only thing with that is, the only drawback about that is I'm unable to spend all day with them to be able to teach them the language or use the language on a daily basis. And that's something that I regret, especially with my own children growing up. I don't have three adult children now. My daughter understands when my wife and I are talking in the language. And anything that we say that's funny is she'll be the first to laugh. But my sons unfortunately are unable to understand it, not in the same capacity as my daughter does. And now, about my grandchildren, we try to speak them as in the language as much as we can. That's something that we regret that unfortunately we're unable to pass it on to our own children and then the grandchildren. I guess the excuse is that we are unable to spend, you know, hours, hours with them on a daily basis. But we try to spend as much time as we can with them. And we're also able to do it on a daily basis. I'm not sure if that's what we're looking for, but I'm sure that's what we'll be looking for. And that's something that we're probably going to be able to do in the future. We're going to be able to make the next year or the next year or the next year, and I'm sure that's what we'll be seeing in the future. And I don't think that's what we're going to be seeing. I'm not good at drawing... I don't get what I'm looking for, it's not good at drawing, I don't be good at drawing, I don't have an idea, I'm not good at drawing, I know what to do, I don't know what to do. I've been to the city and it's been great. I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do. I've been once, yeah, but it's too much. Yeah, I guess it ties into a little bit of what I was, the excuse that I was mentioned about not being able to see your children or the grandchildren on a daily basis. In my case, because we live out in the country too, there's not too much interaction that happens with the neighbors and there's nobody close by that speaks the same language as we do in the area that we live. And the only time that I'm able to use the language myself is when I'm either speaking to my wife or address speakers of the language peers that I work with or that I know or ran into. But in the case of using the language at home, we do use the language at home, my wife and I, and there's just the two of us now. All our children are living in the city and they do come and visit once in a while and our grandchildren are living in the city as well with their mother or their dad. And because of that, on a daily basis, I don't interact with my own children or grandchildren. However, when we do see our grandchildren, we try to use it as much as we can to use the language and they seem to understand it and at that time we're trying to repeat what we're teaching them or saying to them in the native language. The job that I'm doing at this point is to kind of maintain the native language, I guess, or start a program. However, there's not so much detail at this point to talk about that, but I did some research on other programs that are being offered, such as the one in Fond du Lac, Minnesota. As a matter of fact, I requested to visit that community and meet with people that are working there and these people that are working there are actually second language learners of the Ojibwe language. That was offered at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities in Minneapolis. It's really impressive to see these people that are learning the language and from what I gather and the questions, the interviews that I did with the workers there. It was a full immersion program that they were taking and it's really impressive just that it works. When I talk to them, I talk to them in my language as well. They understand and they're asking me, they're talking to me in the Ojibwe language. It's very similar to my dialect of what they're learning. They actually did a lot of land-based learning and working with the elders. Everything that they learned, they were experiencing as students at the time or even as workers now. There's always an elder that speaks to them in the native language pointing out this is what is called and eventually be able to transmit the language themselves and they have accents and things like that, which is pretty cool. Just by looking at other programs and how I can adapt what they're doing and bring it into the college. The people that I talked to are more than willing to help out. I did receive some of the curriculum that they've developed, especially the one at the Minnesota there. They actually learned the trapping and fishnet making, that kind of stuff. They're learning the culture at the same time while they're learning the language. It's all holistic rather than just segregating the subject or the language itself. Hopefully, to create language speakers from the college here and expand and recruit new students and just continue on to make the language come alive and fruition, is that even the word? Something that can be passed on from one generation to the next and just to continue. Because it's a beautiful language, it's a spiritual language and it is quite different from the English language and it is verb-based or verb-based language and it's just beautiful. I don't know how else to explain it. Yeah, I think it's languages, Indigenous languages given to us by the creator is very important and as I always say, language is what makes the culture. I think it's, especially with my own language, it is a beautiful thing and I'm really proud that I'm still able to speak it and understand it and hopefully be able to pass it on to the next students. I know there's other people that I know that are non-native, that are picking up the language and they seem to really enjoy and appreciate what they can learn from that along with the culture. It's just different and it is a beautiful language.