By Hannah Baxter, photo by TJ Turner
CEHD’s Wezhinoo’igejig Scholars program provides financial support and flexible courses for early childhood immersion education in Ojibwe
Mmya King-Green, Ebiidood Odeminan, grew up on Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation in Ontario, Canada. Her parents were deeply invested in their Ojibwe heritage, traveling with their children to powwows and other events in the region. King-Green learned Ojibwe in elementary and middle school, but because it wasn’t offered at her high school at that time, her studies lapsed after 8th grade. Then in 2021, King-Green became an early childhood educator at the child care center that her three-year-old son attended. The center’s curriculum included some Ojibwe language instruction, but King-Green noticed that neither the children nor her fellow teachers seemed to be making much progress.
“Why isn’t it catching for teachers, for students?” King-Green remembers asking herself. “It was kind of like a problem, a puzzle that I really wanted to solve. I still want to solve it, right? So, what if I continue learning?”
After completing Paswe’aatigook Anishinaabemowin, an immersive certificate program at Fanshawe College in Ontario, King-Green decided to continue her academic studies through Wezhinoo’igejig: Ojibwe Scholars in Early Childhood. This initiative in CEHD provides early childhood professionals, primarily teachers in Ojibwe language immersion settings, with scholarship support and a flexible online enrollment option in the Institute of Child Development’s (ICD) early childhood academic program. King-Green is part of the inaugural cohort of 15 students that started in September 2025.
After successfully founding an after-school Ojibwe program, King-Green’s longer-term goals include starting an immersion childcare center on Mississaugas of the Credit.
“Because if I keep learning, and I can teach adults, and then turn those adults into teachers who want to teach kids—then we’re creating second-language speakers, and then first-language speakers,” she says.
Mya King-Green and her son at the Paswe’aatigook graduation celebration held by Chippewas of the Thames First Nation
A shared focus on the needs of Ojibwe early educations
King-Green’s plan aligns precisely with the vision that inspired Wezhinoo’igejig (way-shi-NOO-i-GAY-jig), which in Ojibwe means “the ones who show or point the way.” This unique approach to supporting Indigenous language revitalization grew out of a series of conversations over several years between colleagues at the University of Minnesota, several of Minnesota’s tribal colleges, and early childhood and language experts in the broader Ojibwe community. The shared goal of this work is to promote Ojibwe language revitalization while supporting early childhood educators in advancing their careers.
Immersion schools are one answer to integrating Ojibwe back into communities. But as Elizabeth Criswell, early childhood education curriculum coordinator and an instructor at ICD, explains, teaching in an immersion school demands more than language fluency.
“Teachers in language immersion programs may have strong language skills but may also lack complex understanding of development and the individual needs of young children,” says Criswell. “Others may have a background in early childhood education, but not specific preparation for immersion settings. This program fills both needs. Students will understand not only the importance of language, but also how best to support Ojibwe language development in infants, toddlers, and preschoolers—as well as their families.”
Wezhinoo’igejig combines core child development and early childhood education courses with immersion pedagogy instruction, while centering Ojibwe cultural perspectives. Undergraduates also benefit from Ojibwe language education through the Department of American Indian Studies at the University; some are double-majoring in Ojibwe language. It was also important that the highly valued early childhood educators for whom the program was designed be able to remain in their jobs and in their communities while pursuing their education, so all required classes are offered remotely.
King-Green as a student in Fanshawe College’s Paswe’aatigook Anishinaabemowin Language Foundations program.
'Nothing but support and really good vibes'
ICD received more than 50 applications—three times the target that program staff had set. Because of applicant demand, a master’s degree pathway was added for mid-career early childhood and Ojibwe language professionals who already had a bachelor’s degree but wished to further their training.
In September 2025, the new cohort kicked off the fall semester with an in-person welcome event at Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College. Despite limited opportunities to meet in person, the cohort format meant students quickly bonded. It helps that classes are synchronous (students gather online at the same time) and scheduled during the late afternoon and evening to accommodate working students’ schedules as best as possible. A lively group chat means cohort members stay connected even when they’re not on Zoom together.
“Nothing but support, and just really good vibes,” is how Wayne Somes, Wezaawibines, who is in the master’s track of the program, describes the cohort experience. Somes currently leads a team of tribal relations specialists at the Minnesota Department of Human Services. He also has profound experience in the early childhood field at all levels, from preschool teacher to quality coach with Parent Aware (Minnesota’s quality rating and improvement system for early childhood programs).
Somes is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Growing up in Michigan, he didn’t know any fluent Ojibwe speakers. His grandmother was a survivor of the boarding school system that the U.S. government established in an attempt to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children, taking them away from their families and forbidding them to speak their home languages. (Canada operated a similar system.) That history eroded the base of first-language speakers of Indigenous languages, including Ojibwe, which had been widely spoken throughout the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada, and as far west as Montana.
For his part, Somes knew some Ojibwe words and phrases from his time teaching in Head Start classrooms for his tribe, but he didn’t feel a particularly strong tie to the language or culture. Then in 2019, Somes attended the Minnesota Tribal Nations Early Learning Language Summit in Cass Lake, Minnesota. He was lining up for a meal when he overheard the two people standing in front of him conversing in Ojibwe.
“That was the first time I heard the Ojibwe language being spoken in proficient sentences,” he recalls. “They were laughing and laughing, and I thought, ‘Man, I want that.’ That moment was the point where I was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to go home and try to figure this thing out.’”
Wezhinoo’igejig instructor Netaa-niimid Aamookwe, Persia Erdrich, explains that in the Ojibwe learning community, such moments are referred to as “lighting the fire.” Prior to joining Wezhinoo’igejig, Somes took online classes, participated in language tables where he met other Ojibwe speakers and learners, and completed the Ojibwemotaadidaa Omaa Gidakiiminaang adult immersion program in Cloquet, Minnesota—twice. He also began working with the Niibi Center in Callaway, Minnesota, which offers language programming for families. Along with his language skills, his connection to Ojibwe culture grew. “Like the elders say, the language and the culture are one; there’s no pulling one from the other,” he says.
For Somes, the hardest part of the Wezhinoo’igejig program has been balancing his different responsibilities: work, family, the Niibi Center, and now coursework.
He’s not alone.
“Everyone has a family and young children, and 4 to 6 is a busy time of day,” he says, acknowledging that online learning takes intense dedication. But he is grateful to program staff and faculty who have worked to help students fit the demands of the program into their schedules. “Everyone’s been flexible, supportive, and accommodating to help us be successful,” he says. “I’d like to highlight that, because it’s been a big help.”
The coursework has added a new depth to Somes’ understanding of early language acquisition. He has been struck by the fact that the same teaching practices that support children’s general language development—like engaging in self-talk, parallel talk, and modeling—are recommended for immersion settings, too.
“Talking about yourself and what you’re doing in your day—‘I woke up, and now I’m washing my hands’—that’s definitely something you can do as a newer Ojibwe speaker as well,” he says. “If you can talk about yourself, that’s still exposure for the kids.”
Teaching first graders—and learning from them
Jada M. Grap, Ningaabii’anookwe, teaches first grade at Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute, a K-8 Ojibwe immersion school in Hayward, Wisconsin. Grap is originally from Aazhoomog in District 3 of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. A direct descendant of the Mille Lacs Band, she is also Chiricahua Apache. Grap’s maternal grandmother was a fluent Ojibwe speaker.
“Sometimes I’d hang out with my grandma, and she’d get picked up to go shopping or to meetings, and there would be other elders in the vehicle, and they would just converse in the language,” Grap recalls.
“Being a little kid, you don’t think anything of it. Once you’re an adult, you realize all the things that you had that you don’t have anymore.”
It was Grap’s aunt who recognized her gift for languages and encouraged her to learn Ojibwe. But it wasn’t until she became a parent that Grap’s studies took on a real sense of urgency.
“It really clicked when I had my first child,” she says. “It was always a thought in the back of my mind: who is going to talk for our dishes at our ceremonies? Who is going to pass on names? And a very, very important one is: who is going to talk for us when we pass on?”
In 2013, Grap was recruited to teach in the Mille Lacs Band’s first Head Start immersion classroom. Her two oldest children were among her students there. In 2024, an opportunity came up at Waadookodaading, and Grap decided to relocate. Although she loved the three-to-five age range, her own language skills had no opportunity to progress in a preschool setting, as she was the only proficient speaker in the classroom.
Wayne Somes, shown here exploring Minnesota’s outdoors with his children, has found his connection to Ojibwe culture deepening along with his language skills.
Teaching first graders—and learning from them
Jada M. Grap, Ningaabii’anookwe, teaches first grade at Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute, a K-8 Ojibwe immersion school in Hayward, Wisconsin. Grap is originally from Aazhoomog in District 3 of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. A direct descendant of the Mille Lacs Band, she is also Chiricahua Apache. Grap’s maternal grandmother was a fluent Ojibwe speaker.
“Sometimes I’d hang out with my grandma, and she’d get picked up to go shopping or to meetings, and there would be other elders in the vehicle, and they would just converse in the language,” Grap recalls.
“Being a little kid, you don’t think anything of it. Once you’re an adult, you realize all the things that you had that you don’t have anymore.”
It was Grap’s aunt who recognized her gift for languages and encouraged her to learn Ojibwe. But it wasn’t until she became a parent that Grap’s studies took on a real sense of urgency.
“It really clicked when I had my first child,” she says. “It was always a thought in the back of my mind: who is going to talk for our dishes at our ceremonies? Who is going to pass on names? And a very, very important one is: who is going to talk for us when we pass on?”
In 2013, Grap was recruited to teach in the Mille Lacs Band’s first Head Start immersion classroom. Her two oldest children were among her students there. In 2024, an opportunity came up at Waadookodaading, and Grap decided to relocate. Although she loved the three-to-five age range, her own language skills had no opportunity to progress in a preschool setting, as she was the only proficient speaker in the classroom.
Jada M. Grap teaches first grade at Waadookodaading Ojibwe Language Institute, an Ojibwe language immersion school.
“I was the only one talking,” she says. “I took the leap to elementary because I wanted to extend my vocabulary—just to be able to talk and learn with kids.” She signed on as a teacher’s assistant for a year, but the lead teacher in the first-grade classroom left abruptly.
“I got thrown—well, I slid into the position,” she says.
First grade ended up being a good fit for Grap, who felt “confident, secure, and supported” at Waadookodaading. Yet at the same time, she felt there was something missing that would make the immersion experience complete for her students.
“When I first came into the classroom, Ojibwe immersion meant to me that it be our traditional teachings, our values, and so on,” she says. But while Grap was ready to teach math, literacy, and science in Ojibwe, she felt less prepared to instruct children in traditional practices. It was a first-semester Wezhinoo’igejig course that provided Grap with the missing ingredient: the confidence to leave the classroom and explore alongside her students.
“One reading talked about going outside, learning, making trails: land-based classrooms. That really inspired me, and helped me feel more trusting in myself to go outside and do these things. Because even though my language is good, I don’t have the necessary teachings to go out and about and teach them about ricing or sugarbushing,” she says. This spring, Grap’s class did sugarbushing (harvesting maple sugar). The kids got to drill holes in the trees and hammer in the taps.
Beyond the coursework itself, Grap also values learning from fellow members of the cohort.
“It’s really inspiring,” she says. “We have an elder in the program, and we have students in their early twenties. You get to hear everybody’s points of view—from their community, from their elders.”
One remark from another student even prompted Grap to borrow from traditional modes of learning in her own classroom structure.
“We were in a breakout session talking about how our children are learning in Western education. She brought up that, a long time ago, it was never like this—never in a classroom, never one adult teaching you. It was always the older kids teaching the younger kids,” she says. She decided to recreate this experience in her own classroom by inviting older children to partner with her first graders. “All the students love it. They love being with each other like siblings,” she says.
Discovering cultural connections in the science of child development
For King-Green, one of the most unexpected things she has learned in Wezhinoo’igejig was how much she already knew about supporting children’s development—not from books or school, but from her community.
“I noticed in the psychology classes how much reflected what Anishinaabe people already do—what our actual beliefs and systems are,” she says, citing the American psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory as an example.
“We already believe that our children are the center of our community and that everything revolves around them. This is how we raise our children, how we support each other. We believe that it takes a community and that every relationship matters.” King-Green also noted that “buzzwords like ‘embedded learning opportunities’ and ‘more knowledgeable others’” directly correspond with traditional Ojibwe ways of learning and knowing. In her written responses to course readings, she felt compelled to point out the irony that “these are the same things that were used against us for how we raised our kids and were why we had our children taken from us. And now these are the same things that they are pumping back into education.”
Similarly, Somes is heartened to see Ojibwe culture increasingly infused into classrooms that serve Native students.
As a classroom teacher, he used a play-based curriculum that he liked a lot, but it wasn’t “culturally relevant and specific to Ojibwe people,” he says. More and more, he says, there is recognition that Ojibwe children receive knowledge from their communities in ways that are “different than the general population.” Curriculum and assessments are increasingly being created that reflect that difference.
Lately, Grap has been thinking a lot about the future, not just of the Ojibwe language and culture, but of the individual children in her class. Recently, she asked her class what they wanted to be when they grew up.
“One of them said they wanted to be president. A couple of other students said they wanted to be a first-grade teacher, like me,” she says.
Taking inspiration from the Wezhinoo’igejig content and cohort, Grap now brings her classroom outside and makes literal trails for her first graders to follow. She and her fellow students are doing the same as educators and language scholars: they are showing the way for today’s Ojibwe learners to create tomorrow’s first-language speakers.