Indigenous language classes at RRC

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This article was published 28/11/2017 (2882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Red River College now has two new Indigenous language courses open for registration and the college says teaching Indigenous languages is key to its role in reconciliation.

The courses will focus on teaching Anishinaabemowin language and culture through both western classroom teaching and traditional oral teaching methods.

“Language and culture is such an integral part of our identity and our sense of self,” wrote Rebecca Chartrand, RRC’s executive director of Indigenous strategy, in a press release.

The introductory course rolls out in February 2018, and the level 1 course rolls out in the spring. The two courses are part of a partnership between the college’s Continuing Education program and its Schools of Indigenous Education program.

Although the courses are open to everyone, the main focus is to teach K-12 educators Indigenous language and culture — a key point of the Manitoba Indigenous Education Blueprint, an agreement between Manitoba’s public school boards and post-secondary institutions signed in 2015 in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) 2015 report.

The second point of the 10-point document is “bringing Indigenous knowledge, languages and intellectual traditions, models and approaches into curriculum.”

In the education section of the 2015 report, the TRC called on post-secondary institutions to help preserve and promote Indigenous languages by creating new credit courses.

The course curriculums were developed with RRC and Seven Oaks, Louis Riel and Winnipeg School Divisions.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca