Winnipeg teacher invites colleagues to incorporate Indigenous language into classrooms with new resource

A Winnipeg high school teacher is calling on colleagues to incorporate Indigenous languages into their daily routines this school year. Michelle Arnaud, who is Métis and whose ancestry is Cree, Anishinaabe and European, has been working on decolonizing education over the summer and created a virtual agenda that will be used to welcome students to the classroom each day. The agenda includes terms in Cree, Michif, Anishinaabe, Dakota, and Oji-Cree in order to bring Indigenous languages back into the classroom. Arnaud has invited on other teachers to incorporate the daily calendar as well, and has posted the template for download so that it is accessible to non-Indigenous colleagues. Arnaud is also planning to record a pronunciation guide so that educators know how to properly pronounce each word on the template. “The late (elder) Ted Fontaine said to me: ‘You have a knowledge within you that has been suppressed for hundreds of years, that you are going to start learning yourself. Share it as far as you can, because it’s not going to help the students that you teach, but it’s going to help the colleagues who are non-Indigenous help those kids,’” said Arnaud.