Indigenous Ways of Knowing at Ashern Central School

The language of a people tells us about how they view and understand the world. We categorize and make sense of things with words, for example, languages mark things as animate (alive) or inanimate (not alive). There are things in Ojibwe that are marked as alive, such as rock, that are not in in English. In Ojibwe there are many more words for the colours blue and green because they have great importance in the natural world. These details in language are a window to understanding the culture and history of a people and these meanings cannot be translated; they are lost.  

Indigenous languages possess knowledge of culture, of ways to relate to each other, and ways to relate to our environment. They contain priceless knowledge of a people and the land, and they are in danger of being lost. At ACS we are committed to working together with the community in preserving and supporting the teaching of Indigenous languages to the next generation and seven more generations to come.