MARQUETTE, MI-- Northern Michigan University has received nearly $135,000 from the state's Native American Heritage Fund to expand undergraduate and graduate Anishinaabe language course offerings.
The NMU Center for Native American Studies will embark on a new initiative called the Anishinaabe Learning Community Project. The ALLC will create two new Anishinaabemowin courses that align with existing courses on Michigan-Wisconsin tribal relations, and tribal law and government. It would result in two new graduate courses, intended to support the potential development of a graduate program in Anishinaabemowin documentation and translation.
The ALLC project is designed to address three challenges facing Michigan’s tribal nations: the endangered status of the Anishinaabe language; low numbers of students graduating from Michigan universities with a distinct concentration in Anishinaabe language learning; and the significantly low number of K-12 Anishinaabe language teachers statewide.
The Michigan Native American Heritage Fund (NAHF) was created as part of the Second Amendment, approved in 2016, to the 1988 Tribal-State Gaming Compact between the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi (NHBP) and the State of Michigan.