Reclaiming Land and Languages: A Games-Based Learning Approach for the Indigenous Community

Drawing from the indigenous reclamation research, decolonized literature, and cultural ecology for indigenous people, this research seeks to understand the indigenous community-based game design approaches to reclaim relationships with land and languages. The study examined games as pedagogies for the Ojibwe learners through multimodal language learning strategies while advocating for community-based participatory research to restore relationships with the indigenous community. Based on this approach, the researchers explored how a games-based approach fosters reclaiming Ojibwe relationships between land and language learning that connects the humans with the more-than-humans.
Research results provide suggestions for the indigenous community to adopt multimodal approaches in learning to reduce gaps in reclaiming relationships. The study also offers a framework for indigenous knowledge development through games that engages the elements of the land that can be helpful to those who need to observe the possibilities of such connections and for future educators to rethink games-based pedagogies as a way of bridging land with language.
Presenters
Jurana Aziz is a PhD student of Second Language Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota focused on indigenous language revitalization and cultural inclusion in language education. She previously worked as a researcher for the indigenous Sadri community in Bangladesh.
Mary "Fong" Hermes is Professor of Second Language Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Minnesota. For over 25 years she has been involved in the Ojibwe language reclamation movement and her research encompasses the indigenous language revitalization to connect land with languages.
This presentation is cosponsored by the Second Language Education program in the College of Education and Human Development.