 Belinda Daniels, Naseegasun, Sturgeonland, Cochinia, Magasaskatun, Nwigan. My position with Nihilwok language experience, bringing Kree home, I'm a bit of everything. I like the term, Okisken Mahama Ageo, Egoa, Onigania. The program that we run through Raitsaskatun is entitled, Bringing Nihilwok Home. So this was kind of born out of the idea of learning language in a natural setting, which would be our homes around the kitchen table, around food, with family members, with intergenerational family members. So I was just thinking back at the time of learning Kree with my own Nokum, my own Mushum, myself, my family, my children. And so I thought, well, I don't actually really see this going on anywhere. So me and Cheryl put our heads together and said, Hey, let's do something in regards to bringing languages to the community. And then I also have another colleague, Andrea Custer. She was doing something very similar to learning Kree with her family. And so it kind of like just unfolded, like, what's the word, coincidentally. And so that's what our program is about. Learning Kree around the kitchen table, food, terminology for things like, I'm hungry. Are you hungry? What is this? This is good. I want some more that kind of terminology. Food, such as like soup and bannock and pop and juice and milk and salad and pizza, all those kinds of vocabulary where we're learning that together. So it was quite fun and our bellies were quite full after that. One of the reasons why I think it was so successful is that these guys are repeat attendees. They have heard of the New York language summer experience. They have taken the mini language classes and not all of them. And then they heard of bringing the way went home. And I think part of that process why the group like jives or the group clicks is that, you know, we take our time. We introduce ourselves. We state our positions, our positionality in our community, in our home. We allow people to speak about themselves. And people love to talk about themselves, right? We also come together and we share Nihil epistemology, pedagogy where we talk about Nihil beliefs and practices and protocol. And protocol is really important when it comes to language learning. And so the people get to see myself and my guest teachers interact with each other. So like the offering of tobacco in the beginning of class, saying prayer and smudging. I think it creates a sense of like truth and this idea of just a calming about it. Like we really affirmally believe that the language spirit, the language itself is alive. And so when you show respect for the language and operate out of a place of goodness, camps, workshops, classes like that always tend to work out well. And the people are eager to learn. And the teachers are, you know, happy to share the language. I'm happy to share what little I know in regards to the language and how I think as a second language learner and the people coming are second language learners. So there's always like that bridge of information that I can transfer. And the food and the terminology and the coming together of people sharing a common interest or a common goal. That's what makes it like a worthwhile experience. Why this design bringing Neheue went home. Again, this concept is like not a new concept. It comes out of Leanne Hinton's work. She's a huge language revitalizer in the United States. So I must, as you can see, I'm a scholar. All the teachers that I work with are all scholars. They're all master teachers. And my colleague Andrea Custer, she's also very scholarly when it comes to language and land based practices. And so we have the similar interest of passing on language to our children at home. I met Leanne Hinton myself this past summer. And she shared a little bit about what she did in the United States in regards to bringing languages home and then teaching the language to her family members. It's really hard. It's a really hard task. And she affirms this. But at the same time, we all have this intrinsic motivation to wanting to pass on the language to the next generation. So this is why the design. The design comes out of this core belief that if we're not speaking the language at home, where language is more, more, it's more intimate at home. The vocabulary, the relationship building is very different from the school, the school setting or the university setting. Same with even the camp setting. It just goes like a layer deep with your children. And this idea of wanting to teach and pass on language to your children comes out of a place of like love and pride and being proud of who you are and where you come from. Well, obviously we come from here, but we want our children to know that this is our land and this is where we're born from. Our language vocabulary comes from this place. The fundamental aspects for like the overarching goal of all of our programs is that for Nihiawak people to restore, reclaim our language and to, and it's linked to identity, it means nationhood. So that's the overall, the overall goal is who we are as Nihiawak people. It's self-determination, it's sovereignty, it's nationhood. That's the big goal. Some of the smaller outcomes, I guess, or the objectives would be to help others in teaching the language, to mentor others, the importance of language methodologies to become a good teacher, the theory behind second language development. All of those practices are important. And to continue those methodologies, like to be a really good like, I don't know, like mechanic or nurse, you always have to keep on top of new tools or new medicine that's out there and always constantly researching. And that's what we do as language practitioners, language warriors. We're always practicing and making sure we're the best at what we do. Yeah, so that would be another, some of the more fundamental core concepts of who we are. We used a variety of language methods here at Reach Ask a Tune for bringing Nihiawak home. So we had three methods actually. The first method was the Accelerated Second Language Acquisitioning Technique, which was developed by Dr. Gray Morning, and it's based on images, pictures, skill sets. And it's teaching that pictures take us back to memory. It's teaching no translation. It's teaching cognition. It's repetitive and you can learn a lot in a short frame of time with these pictures. So that's what that's about. And so there's different skill sets. And so that particular skill set that I was working on was obviously all only about food. And so Dr. Gray Morning did some observation and some research and looked at how do children learn the language. We repeat, we point to things, we don't translate. And so that's what that's based on. And the other method, the two other methods, one was the direct method. Again, no translation. And it's just talking about what it is that you're doing just directly and you just picking up as a natural learner. Oh, they're talking about this plate or they're talking about this dish, right? And then the third method was task-based learning. And so this is when we pass around things and talk about things and talk about like the eating and bringing me the salt or the pepper, like those kinds of things. Yeah, so we used a variety of like, we use those three methods and we, you know, like just mix them up. Yeah, and always just kept the language moving. Yeah. As far as the intergenerational piece, again, bringing languages home, it was about bringing families into this program and to continue the learning at home with your parents, with your grandparents, with your siblings. Obviously, I had my daughter and my grandson in the class. And so I kind of always had like that in mind. If we ever want to, you know, have successful transmission, successful transfer of language, that will happen with the third generation. Just as when you know when you're getting success, when my grandson can speak Korean to me. Yeah, obviously my daughter too, but that's always in the back of my mind. How do we get intergenerational transfer of language happening? And this is one way. When I think of Indigenous education, those are colonial terms, colonial words. For me, when I think about it from my own perspective of life-long learning, I would probably refer to it as Mumtaneita Nehewin. How do I think as a Nehio would be education? And then how do I transfer what I'm thinking in a Nehio way? And so obviously that starts off with like land, language, which creates the identity. For me that is what Nehio education is. And I wanted to share this quote here in regards to this idea of land, because land is a big deal when it comes to education from a Nehio perspective, from any Indigenous perspective. So I'm going to quote somebody here. As an Indigenous scholar, Mayor writes, When does not simply learn about the land, we learn best from the land. And so the core idea or the impetus of this program was going back home to land. And then finding the connection, the links between language, the lexicon, and the connection to the environment. For me that's true education and then practicing all those other things in between, such as leadership, ceremony, mentoring, small group settings, which is totally opposite of mainstream education. And again it was women who led societies, who led communities, because they knew best, because they had their children raise their children, know their children like no one else could, and could tell what they could achieve that and what they were successful at. And women would gather and talk about this idea of leadership and who should be doing what. Which again is opposite of what we have in mainstream society, which is very male, very patriarchal and very, what did I say, hierarchal. Yes. I actually really didn't think about this idea of lifelong learning until I was actually in this process of gaining higher knowledge. And it's kind of worked in a dual type of process. So I'm a PhD candidate going to the University of Saskatchewan in an interdisciplinary department, right? And so I am fortunate enough to realize that obtaining a higher education has actually pushed me into learning or encouraged or what's the word I'm looking for, actually made me look inward and towards my own people. In regards to how did we do the things that we do? Why do we think the things that we think? So it's made me go deeper into this idea of doing, knowing, thinking and being. And so with language learning, when you're in the context and you're picking up the words and you're using your cognition and you're learning new vocabulary, for me those are really good examples of lifelong learning snippets that I'm gaining. Same with like this idea of like ceremony. When you're learning language, ceremony is really important because it teaches you so much about like patience and compassion and the willingness to just like let things go and let just things happen in a natural process without pushing, which was really hard for me initially. But now I just let things come and go and I write when I can write. I can speak when I can speak. I'll practice when I can practice. And I've let go of timelines. And again those are examples of like being prepared, bringing on time and this is included with lifelong learning. In my language learning journey, one of my uncles asked me this pivotal question like what is it? Are you willing to give up in order to gain something this significant? And so this is where I thought, well what can I give up? Well I gave up half of my employment, the wage, my salary to focus on language and to focus on this idea of Neheo Isi Chigewin. So I could get a better understanding but I still don't know like nothing because it's lifelong learning and you're always learning a little bit just a little bit at a time. Yeah, that's how it's been working for me. Well I hope it still exists and I hope that other language learners have taken on this project. I hope that the new emerging language speakers become teachers. And I hope it's like spread across not only Saskatoon but across Treaty 6 territory through our Neheuwok communities. And I see lots of action happening in regards to second language acquisition. Lots of people are taking up the practice of learning their Indigenous languages. And so I hope we're just naturally doing it in our homes in 10 years. The resources that are needed in regards to the visioning of this particular program is that we operate out of shoestring budgets. We operate out of people's time. Volunteer, like I said earlier, I left my employment half time focused on language and focused on bringing more language opportunities to the community. So what is needed is capital funds, money, access to monies, more partnerships like the one we have with Reed Saskatoon, more open-mindedness in our community of Saskatoon and the province. There's a real sense of interest in people, whether they're Neheuw or not, in wanting to learn Cree. And why not? We're in Cree territory.