Guide to Anishinaabemowin Resources

Anishinaabemowin Leaders

The importance of the Ojibwe language to Anishinaabe language is uncontested.
But the individuals leading efforts to revitalize Anishinaabemowin are of equal, if not greater, importance.

Barbara Nolan
Barbara is a proud Nishnaabe-kwe, formerly from Wikwemikong Unceded Indian Reserve, who now resides in Garden River First Nation.
She has been the Anishinabek Nation Language Commissioner since December, 2020.

Barbara Nolan is grateful to have survived the attempts by Canada’s Indian residential schools system to take her Nishnaabe language from her. As a vibrant first-speaker of Nishnaabemwin, she has spent several decades working with a variety of organizations to revitalize our language.

Barbara particularly enjoys consulting with Anishnaabe communities on the effective development of language nests and immersion programs, as well as training Nishnaabemwin speakers in methods of immersion instruction. She continues to do immersion classes, most recently in a year-long, 270-hour, part-time Nishnaabe-language immersion program.

Aside from immersion classes, Barbara has had the opportunity to produce the Nishnaabemdaa language app which can be downloaded from Apple’s App Store and from Google Play.

You can watch Anishinaabemowin Language Lessons with Barb Nolan on YouTube

Patricia Ningewance
Patricia is Bear clan. She is Ojibwe from Lac Seul First Nation in northwestern Ontario and has traveled throughout Anishinaabe country where Ojibwe is spoken and tries to include all dialects in her books. She has previously written two language books: Survival Ojibwe (new edition with answers included, 2017) and Anishinaabemodaa: Becoming a Successful Ojibwe Eavesdropper (out of print). She is also the author of Pocket Ojibwe and Gookom’s Language. And Patricia is a longtime translator.

She has been able to teach her grandson, Aandeg Muldrew, to speak Ojibwe by taking him to her university classes and language camps since he was 12. Now he speaks and writes it, and teaches Introductory Ojibwe for the University of Manitoba via Zoom, with Patricia teaching Intermediate and Advanced Ojibwe. He is working on his Master of Linguistics at the University of MInnesota. It’s not often a grandmother and grandchild are teaching Ojibwe at the same time at a university!

She is Vice-President for the Indigenous Language Institute, based out of Santa Fe, New Mexico. And is the writer and director of the 12 episodes of Aakoziiwigamig, the Ojibwe Language Radio Drama that airs from NCI in Winnipeg (NCI is a public broadcaster, offering radio programming throughout Manitoba, designed for and by Indigenous people).

Patricia is also the founder and president of the publishing company Mazinaate Incorporated, and the books she has authored may be purchased from their website. Mazinaate Inc. now has 14 books published. They are primarily in Ojibwe, but Pocket Oibwe has been translated into Inuktitut, Dene, Swampy Cree, Ojicree, and Plains Cree.

Helen Roy

Helen is from Wikwemikong Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Island and has been teaching Anishinaabemowin for 30 years. She currently resides in Michigan and recently retired from teaching Ojibwe language at Michigan State University. Over the years, she has developed a working method for new learners. It is called the Sound Based Method of Understanding Anishinaabemowin. It is not just a method; it is the way the language was originally understood before any English was known by Anishinaabeg.
On her website, material is available for purchasing, while some videos and content can be accessed for free.

Stewart Roy
Stewart is an assistant professor of Anishinaabemowin at Algoma University.
He led a project at Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig to record Elders in Anishinaabemowin and these videos can be viewed on YouTube

Anton Treuer
Anton Treuer (pronounced troy-er) is Professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University and author of many books, including The Language Warrior’s Manifesto: How to Keep Our Languages Alive No Matter the Odds. He is also editor of the Oshkaabewis (pronounced o-shkaah-bay-wis) Native Journal, the only academic journal of the Ojibwe language.

His equity, education, and cultural work has put him on a path of service around the region, the nation, and the world.

The video First Speakers: Restoring the Ojibwe Language (2010) is available on YouTube and profiles Anton.

Isadore Toulouse
Isadore Toulouse is a member of the Turtle clan from the Wikwemikong Unceded First Nation located on Manitoulin Island, Ontario.

Isadore recognized the absence of the language and culture within the existing educational system that reaffirmed his belief to pursue a career in Aboriginal education. He enrolled in Trent University’s Native studies program in Peterborough, Ontario in 1979. Eventually, his studies lead him to participate and graduate from Lakehead University’s Native Language Instructors Program in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

For the past twenty-seven years of teaching, he became only too familiar for the need of Ojibwe language material prepared for and by Ojibwe people.

Isadore holds an Online Anishinaabemowin language class. It is a live instructional hour class with Isadore speaking on video, going through the basics of Anishinaabemowin. The class is open to all language speaking levels, and all people. A link with more details can be found here on Facebook.

Mary Ann Naokwegijig-Corbiere

Mary Ann acquire her mother tongue, Nishnaabemwin (aka Ojibwe), through her upbringing in Wikwemikong, a Nishnaabe First Nation on Manitoulin Island in Ontario. After graduating from York University, her desire to be among eNshinaabemjik – other speakers of her language – again full time, took her back home for several years. She has taught her language in university since 1989 and obtained a doctorate in 2007. She has developed instructional resources for adult learners and has partly completed a Nishnaabemwin dictionary with co-author, J.R. Valentine.

Shirley Ida Williams

Ms Shirley Ida Williams is a member of the Bird Clan of the Ojibway and Odawa First Nations of Canada. Her Aboriginal name is “Migizi ow-kwe” meaning “that Eagle Woman”. She was born and raised at Wikwemikong, First Nations Unceded Reserve on Manitoulin Island, now residing in Peterborough. She attended the St. Joseph’s Residential School, Spanish, Ontario. Shirley has lectured across Ontario promoting Nishnaabe language and Culture.

She received her B.A. degree in Native Studies from Trent University. She received her diploma in Native Language Instructor’s Program, Lakehead University and her M.A. at York University on Language and Culture Manitoulin Dialect in 1996. Shirley started her work in the Native Studies Department in 1986 to develop and promote Native language courses within the department.

Shirley is a Professor Emeritus at Trent University, Indigenous Studies where she has taught Anishnaabe language, identity, and culture for many years. Over the course of her career at Trent and still today, Shirley has developed many different resources to help with the teaching and learning of Anishnaabemowin. She is the author of Shoolee: The Early Years, an autobiographical and bilingual (English and Anishnnaabemowin) account of what traditional life was like growing up in the language and living close to the land on Manitoulan Island.

According to Elder Shirley Williams, supporting Indigenous language education is at the heart of reconciliation in Canada today. The residential school system almost destroyed the Anishnaabe language and the Anishnaabe educational system. If we are going to move past the many harms of the residential school system and towards reconciliation in Canada, Indigenous languages need to be supported and we need to write and speak in the language as much as we can. We need to respect and accept each other’s dialect and encourage each other to learn and speak the language. We need to love our Anishnaabe language no matter how it is said. We all belong because the Creator gave us all this language together.

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