One of the legacies of residential schools where students were forbidden to speak their language is that few young Indigenous people can speak their Nation’s language, making language reclamation programs of critical importance to Indigenous peoples across North America, says Ashley Glassburn.

A President’s Indigenous Peoples Scholar in women and gender studies and a member of the Miami Nation of Indiana, Dr. Glassburn has been working on Myaamia language curriculum since 2007. Her newest project focuses on teaching Myaamia learners how to center a Miami view of the world when writing in the language.

She will discuss this work in a lecture entitled “Thinking, Writing, Speaking Myaamia: Language reclamation for life-long learners” at 3 p.m. Thursday, March 23.

Glassburn will explore why she and her team completely rewrote all their teaching materials in the last two years and are now basing their approach to writing around core language models developed for Augmentative and Alternate Communication practices originally designed for use with adults with severe expressive communication differences. The result is a significantly different approach to teaching Algonquian verbs and grammar that has ramifications beyond Myaamia language circles.

Presented by the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, the event will be held in room 268, Dillon Hall, and is open to all; RSVP to clekic@uwindsor.ca.