Indigenous Intergenerational Teachings: The Transfer of Culture, Language, and Knowledge in an Intergenerational Summer Camp

This article is a result of my PhD dissertation research, which studied intergenerational teachings in an Ojibwe summer camp. The elders of one community wanted to transfer culture, language, and knowledge to the local youths on the topic of the Ojibwe clan system. The study focused on the elders’ teaching strategies and goals. The study also highlighted the youths’ knowledge gained from their elders and their interpretations of the elders’ lessons on the topic of the clan system. Many topics were exchanged within the camp pertaining to the local culture. Research topics within this study included (1) the role of elders, (2) oral storytelling, (3) talking circles, and (4) place-based education within communities. However, the focus of this publication is on Indigenous intergenerational teachings.

The camp was located in St. Ignace, Michigan, a small town located on the Straits of Mackinac in northern Michigan. The setting was the Museum of Ojibwa Culture and the Marquette Mission Park, which play a vital role in safeguarding the local Ojibwe culture. This area of northern Michigan is rich in Anishinaabe and French history. These two cultures have lived together for generations, as the early French explorers settled and lived on the shores of the Great Lakes side by side with the local Anishinaabe. My family’s heritage is French. I am not Ojibwe. My knowledge of the Ojibwe culture comes from the time I have spent with the local Anishinaabe people and from researching the topics of cultural preservation and safeguarding Indigenous knowledge. This research study was important because there is a great need for culturally responsive programming in communities where Native American students live and attend school.¹ The safeguarding of Native American culture is a pressing topic in Indigenous communities.² Therefore, this article details a dissertation study of one Ojibwe community’s efforts to transfer culture from generation to generation through community programming. This study is unique to one community, yet the implications are important for Native American communities that wish to preserve and protect Indigenous knowledge through intergenerational teachings.

The following questions were the major focus of the dissertation study:

1. 1. How did the elders of one Ojibwe community, participating in a museum setting, transfer Ojibwe culture, language, and knowledge to the youths? More specifically, what strategies did the elders use to teach the youths?

2. 2. What were the Ojibwe elders’ cultural and language goals for the youths within the cultural camp lessons? Specifically, what did they want the youths to learn from their lessons about the Ojibwe clan system?

3. 3. What cultural and language knowledge were the Ojibwe youths learning from their lessons with the elders within the cultural camp lessons about the clan system?

4. 4. What were the Ojibwe youths’ interpretations of the elders’ lessons about the clan system?

These questions, which guided this ethnographic study, lead to understanding the culture, language, and knowledge that the elders wanted the youths to learn about the clan system during the summer camp experience.

Definition of terms

The first term to clarify is the spelling of Ojibwe. There are several spellings of the Ojibwe Nation name, including Odjibwa, Ojibwe, Ojibwa, and Ojibway. Historically, the Native Americans of this area called themselves Anishinabek, or “First Peoples.” They migrated to the Michigan Great Lakes region from the Canadian St. Lawrence Seaway, where they belonged to the Algonquian-speaking people. Later, non-Native people referred to these local Native Americans as the Chippewa, Ottawa, and Potawatomi, which referred to the division of the Algonquian people into the Michigan Three Fires Confederacy. However, it is important to note that the name Chippewa is considered to be a “corruption” to the Ojibwe name by the English-speaking people because it referred to the construction of the moccasin, which was “puckered up.”³ One St. Ignace elder explained that the preferred term by this community is the word Anishinaabe (singular) or Anishinaabeg (plural). Depending on the culture, people, or language, different spellings are used. For the purposes of this article, the spelling Ojibwe and Anishinaabe will be used interchangeably to...