Fond du Lac college wins $9.2 million for Ojibwe language revival

Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College has secured a $9.2 million Bush Foundation Community Innovation Grant for an eight-year Ojibwe language effort that is designed to change who can learn the language, who can teach it, and how it is sustained across Cloquet and the broader Northland.

The college said the money will expand pathways for adult learners, preserve the voices of first-language speakers and create more immersive, community-based opportunities to learn Ojibwe. The project also will focus on language documentation, intergenerational learning and community partnership, building a longer-term support system for speakers and teachers rather than relying on short-term programming.

That matters in St. Louis County, where Native language revitalization has often depended on smaller grants and volunteer labor. Multi-year funding gives Fond du Lac a chance to build stability into a field that needs more instructors, more recorded teaching from elders and more places where learners can use Ojibwe every day. Bush Foundation grantmaking officer Mattie Harper DeCarlo said the work can be developed, tested and spread, and said it will help build infrastructure for adult learners while strengthening the language pipeline. DeCarlo is a citizen of the Bois Forte Band of Ojibwe.

The college already has a language base to scale up. Its programs include an Anishinaabe language certificate and major, the Ojibwemotaadidaa Omaa Gidakiiminaang immersion program, the Ojibwemowining Digital Arts and Storytelling studio, tribal partnerships and the Ojibwe Language Symposium. A 2024 feature on the college said students can take four semesters of Anishinaabe language, Anishinaabe language for the classroom and Ojibwe Immersion Academy classes.

Robert Sonny Peacock, the Fond du Lac Elder and Tribal College director, said Ojibwe learning is lifelong and has to keep adapting as the world changes so it stays relevant to future speakers. The Ojibwemotaadidaa program says its purpose is to increase the quality and quantity of proficient speakers in Minnesota and surrounding states, with direct involvement from elder first speakers, faculty members, young adults, language teachers and program staff.

The new funding lands alongside other local efforts already taking root. Grandma’s House, a Cloquet language nest that began in 2020, was serving seven families as of February 2023, with parents learning alongside children five hours a day, four days a week. The Fond du Lac Band also created its own Ojibwemowin language program in 2015. Together, those efforts show how the college’s grant could reach beyond campus, into homes, classrooms and tribal programs where the future of the language will be decided.