"Grandmothers Teaching Native Culture"

WINNIPEG (CP) - Native children and parents are learning their culture together in a unique preschool immersion program run by grandmothers.

Abinochi-Zhawayndakozhiwin - meaning "the child we love and respect" in Ojibwa - is attended by 30 children in Winnipeg between the ages of 2 and 6.

Judge Murray Sinclair is one of the parents and believes the program run by the grandmothers and other teachers is a way to keep native people from losing their culture.

"Grandmothers are the primary teachers," said Sinclair, who is one of two judges heading Manitoba's native justice inquiry.

"It's the only way for some of us to have a grandmother's help."

Manitoba's only Indian judge told a native language conference Friday that it's still common in native communities for grandparents to have a strong hand in raising young children.

But young people who leave reserves often lose touch with their grandparents. About 75 per cent of those between 15 and 24 who leave Manitoba's 61 reserves for urban life lose their native language, he said.

Sinclair, who wears his hair in a traditional braid, was part of a group of parents who started the preschool five years ago.

He did not grow up speaking Ojibwa and now is trying to learn the language with his six-year-old daughter. His daughter, now in Grade 1, attended the school for four years.

The conference was organized by the preschool and the Manitoba Association for Native Languages, which hopes to decide whether this type of immersion program should be continued in elementary school.

Sinclair listed about eight Winnipeg schools which have native populations ranging from 40 per cent to 95 per cent. The city's native population is estimated between 40,000 and 60,000.

Immersion programs are the only way for some students to keep their culture in the city, said Sinclair, whose inquiry, now more than a year old, examined how natives are treated by Manitoba's justice system.

The public school system also has to start to work with native parents to come up with ways to safeguard native cultures. And it must work to accurately teach native history in Canada, he added.

"Educators must now begin to come to grips with the fact that young aboriginal children are faced with two realities - that of their own culture and that of the white man's world," Sinclair said.

Winnipeg school board trustee Anita Neville told the conference the school system hasn't met the needs of native children but it's trying.

"We need more aboriginal teachers within our system," she said.