TOWER- A three-year grant from the Minnesota Department of Education is allowing Vermilion Country School’s Tower campus to expand it Ojibwe culture and language programming. The school has hired Jess Anderson Ojala, of Ely, to head the program. Ojala currently leads the Indigenous Studies Program at Minnesota North’s Vermilion and Itasca campuses part-time.
Ojala has a master’s in American Indian Studies and Languages and is certified to teach Ojibwe language. She previously worked as the Ojibwe Language and Cultural Coordinator for Bois Forte.
Ojala said she likes to teach Ojibwe language and culture by following the seasonal cycles and calendars. She said she is very excited to begin her work with VCS students.
“I’m over-prepared,” she said.
Creating the curriculum around the seasons fits in well with the school’s focus on environmental education, and grounds it to the school’s location in the 1854 Treaty Area of northern Minnesota, said Rebecca Gawboy, the Ojibwe Language Community Organizer at the school.
The program will incorporate Ojibwe culture, crafts, and language as electives, but Ojala will also be working with the math, science, history, and language arts teachers to incorporate Ojibwe teachings throughout the curriculum. Elective classes this year will include making moccasins, beadwork, and birchbark crafts.
“Someone once asked me why we should teach Ojibwe,” said Gawboy. “If I sent my child to school in Germany, we would expect them to learn some German language and culture. This is the 1854 Treaty area. The original language of this area is Ojibwe. The foodways are Ojibwe. Their songs and dances are part of this land.”
The school has also used other grant funding to purchase traditional native foods, like wild rice and maple syrup, to use in the school’s food program. And art classes have taught beadwork, regalia making, and other traditional Ojibwe crafts.
Gawboy said teaching students a land-based, versus a traditional economics-based culture, provides a more proactive way to teach about environmental stewardship.
The focus of this year’s environmental education programming at the school is on water. Students work on individual and group projects in the fall, and then present their work at the environmental expo, which is open to parents and the public.